Her tone carried no tremor, yet something in her hazel eyes had changed since the day she discovered the truth about her husband, something sharper and colder that no longer asked for love.
Her phone buzzed, and a message from her lawyer appeared, saying everything was ready just as they had planned and she only needed to trust the process.
She smiled faintly at the word trust, because after everything she had lived through, that word felt almost foreign and strangely ironic.
“Give me five minutes,” she whispered while closing her eyes and taking a slow breath, allowing memories to rise without breaking her composure.
She remembered the hidden rent receipts, the late night meetings that always sounded rehearsed, and the phone calls that ended the moment she entered the room.
Then she remembered the day in April when she saw Ashley Monroe walking out of that apartment building, adjusting her blouse and smiling like someone who had finally taken what she wanted.
Ashley had once been her college acquaintance, a woman who always admired her life a little too closely, and now that admiration had turned into something far more destructive.
A knock on the window pulled her back, and there he stood, Gregory Hale, dressed in a perfect suit with a confident smile that now felt like a mask.
Beside him stood Ashley, wearing an elegant dress and heels that clicked against the wet pavement with calculated confidence.
“Are we going in?” Gregory asked politely, though his tone carried impatience beneath the surface.
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