The Wife He Regretted Losing

The annual Winter Solstice Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was the premier social battlefield of Manhattan's ultra-elite.

Beneath the soaring glass atrium of the Temple of Dendur, the champagne flowed like liquid diamonds. Four hundred hedge fund titans, real estate barons, and foreign dignitaries mingled in tailored tuxedoes and haute couture gowns. Yet, despite the sparkling orchestra and laughter, the atmosphere turned whisper-quiet whenever Julian Sterling entered the room.

At twenty-nine, Julian was the apex predator of Wall Street. As the sole heir and CEO of Sterling Global Logistics, his shipping armada moved one-tenth of the world's raw commodities. Standing six-foot-three with broad, athletic shoulders, razor-sharp cheekbones, and piercing blue-gray eyes as cold as arctic glacial ice, he looked like a dark prince carved from obsidian. He wore a bespoke Tom Ford tuxedo that clung perfectly to his powerful frame, his left hand shoved casually into his trouser pocket, a crystal tumbler of Macallan 25 gripped in his right.

Beside him clung Victoria Croft, draped in a crimson Valentino gown, chattering animatedly about her upcoming winter charity polo cup. For three years, Victoria had desperately claimed in the tabloids that they were reconciling, clinging to his orbit at public galas while her family sank under Julian's predatory credit lines. But Julian’s face remained an unreadable mask of glacial detachment. He hadn't touched her since the night Clara left. He barely heard her voice.

Julian Sterling was a man haunted by a ghost.

Three years ago, inside the mahogany library of his Fifth Avenue penthouse, he had committed the greatest, most unforgivable sin of his life. Convinced by fabricated photographic evidence supplied by Victoria that his quiet, submissive wife Clara had sold board secrets to his competitors, Julian had thrown divorce papers across the desk without giving her a chance to speak. He had called her a gold-digging mistake. He had watched her sign the papers with trembling hands, tears streaming down her pale, delicate face, before she walked out into the freezing November rain with nothing more than a single suitcase.