CHAPTER 3
POV: Vivienne
I smiled until my face hurt.
The after-party stretched on in the way these things always did—low lights, expensive whiskey, conversations that circled the same three topics like sharks.
I stood where I was supposed to stand. I laughed when the board members’ wives laughed.
I accepted compliments on the dress I did not remember choosing.
Sienna Hale laughed at one of Cassian’s dry remarks about recovery timelines. The sound was low and precise, the kind of laugh that belonged in rooms like this. Cassian’s mouth tilted the way it did when he was pleased with himself. He never looked in my direction.
My nails pressed into my palms.
I kept them hidden in the folds of the black dress.
Four crescent moons of pain, one for each finger, grounding me.
The clay under my manicure had been cleaned away by the hotel bathroom sink an hour earlier, but I could still feel the ghost of it.
Grit. Evidence. Proof that I had existed somewhere else before this room.
I watched his hands instead of his face.
They moved when he spoke—small, economical gestures that had once made me think he was careful with everything he touched. Tonight they looked like tools. Efficient. Detached. He gestured toward Sienna once, open-palmed, as if presenting a solution the rest of us should be grateful for.
He never once glanced at my hands.
Not when I reached for a water glass. Not when I smoothed the front of my dress. Not when I stood close enough that the sleeve of his jacket brushed my arm. Seven years of marriage and he had trained himself not to see the parts of me that got dirty.
I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted metal.
Blood, faint and coppery. I swallowed it and kept smiling.
The evening ended the way it always did. Cassian’s security detail appeared. The car door opened. I slid in first. He followed, already scrolling. The silence between us was thick enough to press against my ribs. I counted the turns back to the house. Fourteen. I had counted them for years.
The house was dark except for the exterior lights that came on automatically. Cassian went straight to his office without removing his coat. I heard the door close. The soft click of the lock that was never meant for me.
I walked upstairs.
The bedroom looked the same as it had that morning. Perfect. Staged. I opened the closet and took down one bag. Not the largest. Not the one that matched the luggage set he had bought me for the trips I took alone. A soft black duffel I used when I drove to the studio for long weekends.
I packed slowly.
Three pairs of jeans that still held the smell of the kiln. Soft, earthy, permanent. Two sweaters with clay dust ground into the cuffs. The spare boots I kept for wet days on the Oregon coast. Underwear. A toothbrush. The small leather notebook where I sketched forms before I ever touched clay.
At the bottom of the bag I placed the only piece the attacker had missed.
A small, unfinished vessel, no taller than my hand.
I had been working on it the last time I was at the studio—three weeks ago, before Tokyo, before the board dinner, before the gala.
The walls were still uneven. The rim still needed refining.
I wrapped it in one of Cassian’s old T-shirts that had somehow ended up in my drawer and settled it carefully between the sweaters.
Then I went to the safe.
The diamonds were exactly where they belonged—velvet boxes stacked by value.
Anniversary. Birthday. Apology. I left them all.
The wedding rings came off last. The band had left a pale indentation on my finger that looked like a scar.
I set both rings on the kitchen counter under the pendant light, side by side, and did not look at them again.
The deed to the Oregon property was in the bottom drawer of my desk. My name only. I had insisted on that the day we closed, though Cassian had raised an eyebrow at the time. I folded the papers once and slid them into the interior pocket of the duffel.
It was 11:47 p.m. when I walked out the front door.
The night was cold and clear. I put the bag in the passenger seat of the older car—the one that did not come with a driver—and started the engine. The gates opened for me the way they always had. I did not look in the rearview mirror.
The city fell away in stages. Lights. Then fewer lights. Then the long dark stretch of highway that led north. I kept both hands on the wheel. The nail marks in my palms had faded to dull red crescents, but the ache remained. I focused on it. Used it.
The Pacific appeared on my left after an hour, black and endless under a sky with no moon. The water moved like something alive and indifferent. I cracked the window and let the salt air in. It smelled clean. Honest. Nothing like the perfume and whiskey of the party I had just left.
I did not cry.
I had used up every possible version of crying years ago—quiet tears in bathrooms, silent ones in the passenger seat of cars, the kind that came at three in the morning when the house was too large and too quiet. Tonight there was only the road and the decision I had already made.
Somewhere past the second rest stop my phone buzzed in the cup holder.
I ignored it for three miles.
Then I picked it up at a red light that existed for no one but me.
Unknown number.
One line of text, no punctuation, no signature.
He will never choose you. I made sure of it.
The light turned green.
I set the phone face down and kept driving.