15. Skye
— ? —
Skye
I’ve been back to Rowland Studios exactly once since I walked out of my marriage - for a Foundation audit, weeks before the gala.
I remember the way the security guards had nodded at me, the way employees had smiled as I passed, the easy familiarity of being the CEO’s wife.
The building had felt like an extension of home, a place where I belonged.
Everything is different now.
The guards check my ID twice, comparing my face to my photo with the careful scrutiny reserved for potential threats. An executive I don’t recognize - young, nervous, clearly briefed on who I am - escorts me to the elevator with the stilted politeness of someone afraid to say the wrong thing.
And when I step onto the executive floor, conversations stop. Heads turn. People pretend very hard to be focused on their computers, but I can feel their eyes tracking me as I walk past.
The woman who was accused of embezzlement. The woman who turned out to be innocent. The woman whose husband publicly apologized on live television.
The woman they don’t know how to look at anymore.
I keep my head high. I didn’t come here to cower.
I came here to watch Adriana Stuart lose everything.
Her office is at the end of the hall - corner unit, floor-to-ceiling windows, the kind of space that screams ambition. The view stretches across Los Angeles like a promise of power, all glass towers and distant mountains and money flowing through concrete veins.
Two security guards flank the door. Inside, through the glass walls, I can see Harrison from Legal, another attorney I don’t recognize, and Adriana herself.
She’s seated behind her desk like a queen on a crumbling throne. Perfect posture. Perfect makeup. That sleek dark hair falling just so over her shoulders. She looks exactly like she did at the gala - composed, confident, untouchable.
But there’s something different in her eyes now. Something hunted.
Harrison looks up as I approach. His face cycles through several expressions - surprise, concern, and finally resignation.
“Mrs. Rowland. You didn’t have to-”
“I wanted to.” My voice is calm. Controlled. I’ve practiced this in my head for days. “I wanted to look her in the eye.”
Harrison hesitates, glancing at the security guards, then back at me. I can see him calculating the risks, the potential for a scene, the liability issues.
Then he nods. Steps aside.
I walk into the office.
Adriana looks up from her desk. For a second - just a second - something flickers behind her perfectly composed expression. Surprise, maybe. Or fear. The briefest crack in that immaculate facade.
Then the mask slides back into place.
“Skye.” Her voice is honey-smooth, dripping with false sympathy. “How lovely to see you. I heard about the investigation. I’m so glad the truth came out.”
“Are you?”
“Of course. This whole situation has been such a nightmare. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through.” She tilts her head with practiced concern. “I hope you know I never believed those horrible accusations. Some of us could see from the beginning that something wasn’t right.”
The audacity of it takes my breath away. She’s sitting here, surrounded by lawyers and security guards about to escort her from the building, and she’s still performing. Still playing her part.
I step closer to the desk. “The forged documents. The fake hotel texts. The carefully timed explosion at the gala.” I pause, watching her face. “You planned every second of this.”
Adriana’s smile doesn’t waver. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Miranda gave a full confession. The version history shows every edit you dictated over Miranda’s shoulder.
You made sure the files pointed at her, not you - and she kept the receipts.
The payments from your accounts are documented.
” I tilt my head, mirroring her earlier gesture.
“It’s over, Adriana. The only question is how much dignity you want to lose on your way out. ”
Something shifts in her expression. The smile cracks.
For a moment, the office is completely silent. Just the whisper of the vents, the muffled city far below, and my own heart slamming against my ribs.
Then Adriana laughs.
It’s not a pleasant sound. It’s sharp, brittle, breaking - the laugh of someone who’s watched their careful plans crumble and decided to stop pretending.
“You think you’ve won?” Her voice drops the honey-sweetness, revealing something harder underneath. Something raw. “You have no idea what this industry is like for women who don’t have a billionaire husband to open doors for them.”
“This isn’t about the industry-”
“Of course it is.” Adriana stands, and I realize she’s taller than me.
I’d forgotten that, or maybe I never noticed - she always seemed smaller at events, deferring, playing her part.
“I’ve spent fifteen years clawing my way through this business.
Fifteen years of being passed over, talked down to, dismissed.
I was running development at Netflix before your husband’s company even existed.
I built careers. I greenlit projects that made hundreds of millions of dollars.
And then I watched him build an empire while I fought for scraps. ”
“So this is about jealousy?”
“This is about what I deserve.” She steps around the desk, closer to me, and I force myself not to back away.
“Jayden Rowland built a billion-dollar company, and who does he share it with? A woman who writes checks for children’s charities and picks out curtains for their mansion.
A woman who doesn’t understand the first thing about power. ”
“And you do?”
“I understand that power is taken, not given. I understand that the wife seat was wasted on someone who didn’t know what to do with it.
” Her eyes glitter with something that might be madness, or might just be ambition stripped of its mask.
“He would have loved me eventually. Once you were gone. Once he saw what a real partner looked like.”
I study her. The hunger in her face. The absolute conviction that she was owed something the universe had denied her. The certainty that she was special, destined, entitled to everything she’d tried to steal.
“You don’t want him,” I say slowly, and I’m surprised by how steady my voice sounds. “You want what he represents. The empire. The power. The name.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The difference is that he’s a person. Not a stepping stone.” I shake my head. “You never loved him. You just wanted to own him.”
Something flickers in Adriana’s expression - a crack in the armor, quickly sealed. For just a moment, I see something underneath the ambition and the scheming. Something that almost looks like loneliness.
“Love is what weak people call it when they don’t have the courage to take what they want.”
Before I can respond, Miranda speaks from the doorway. I hadn’t noticed her arrive - she must have slipped in while Adriana and I were talking, escorted by another suit from Legal.
“There’s one more thing,” Miranda says. Her voice is hesitant, trembling slightly, but she meets Adriana’s eyes without flinching.
“After you told me you’d frame me if I talked, I got scared.
So I started digging. I called someone I knew from Netflix, where you worked before.
” Miranda’s voice steadies, finding strength in the evidence.
“She told me there was a senior executive whose marriage fell apart while you were there. His wife accused him of an affair - with you - that was never proven. The whole thing was buried under NDAs so thick you’d need a machete to get through them.
He left the company quietly. Gave you a glowing recommendation on his way out, actually. Probably to keep you from talking.”
I stare at Adriana. “He recommended you. The man whose life you destroyed helped you get your next job.”
“That’s how she operates.” Miranda’s voice is bitter. “She makes sure her victims are too compromised, too ashamed, or too legally bound to warn anyone. By the time people figure out what she is, she’s already moved on to the next company. The next target.”
I look at Adriana. Watch her face go carefully, deliberately blank.
“You think she did this before?” I ask.
“I think she’s been practicing.” Miranda’s voice gains strength. “I think you’re not the first wife she’s tried to destroy. You’re just the first one who fought back.”
Adriana’s composure shatters.
“You ungrateful little-” She lunges toward Miranda, and the security guards are there instantly, catching her arms before she can reach her target. “You had a good deal! I paid you well enough to fix your problems, and this is how you repay me?”
“You didn’t save anyone.” Miranda’s voice is quiet but steady now. “You bought my silence with my mother’s suffering. There’s a difference.”
“And the photo,” Miranda continues, her voice steadier now.
“The one of you walking into the Malibu house the night of the gala. She had a paparazzo parked across the street for hours before she ever knocked - she wanted the picture of herself going in. Then she made me send you the link. From her burner. She stood over my shoulder while I typed it. Told me she wanted you to see it, Skye. Wanted you to think he’d already moved on. ”
Adriana thrashes against the guards’ grip, her perfect hair falling loose, her carefully constructed image crumbling in real time. “You have no idea what I’m capable of! I will destroy all of you! I will-”
“That’s enough.” Harrison steps forward, his voice professionally neutral despite the chaos. “Ms. Stuart. You’re being terminated effective immediately. Your personal belongings will be sent to your residence. Please come with security.”
They lead her out. She screams threats all the way to the elevator, her voice echoing through the executive floor, rising to a pitch that makes the employees at their desks wince.
Nobody responds. Nobody even looks up.
Adriana Stuart is already becoming invisible.
I stand alone in the empty office, looking out at the view she’ll never see again.
The city stretches below, glittering and indifferent.
The same sun that rose over my college dreams rises over this moment - but I’m not the same woman who chased those dreams, and I’m not the broken woman who fled the gala.
I’m someone new. Someone I’m still learning to recognize.
I don’t feel triumphant. I feel tired.
But somewhere underneath the exhaustion, there’s something else. Something that might be peace.
I proved it. I cleared my name. I watched the woman who tried to destroy me get dragged out screaming, and I didn’t need anyone to save me.
My phone buzzes. A news alert.
brEAKING: ROWLAND STUDIOS VP UNDER INVESTIGATION FOR FRAUD, FORGERY, AND HARASSMENT - CEO’S WIFE FULLY CLEARED
I read it twice. Then I screenshot it and send it to Ellen.
Told you I could save myself.
Ellen’s response is immediate: Never doubted it for a second. Now come home. There’s wine and I ordered pizza.
I smile. A real smile, the first one in what feels like forever.
I’m walking toward the elevator when my phone buzzes again. Ellen.
Heads up. Jayden was on TV again. The press conference is everywhere. He’s not asking to see you. He’s not calling. He’s just… disappeared. Weird, right?
I stop in the middle of the hallway, staring at the message.
I’d expected him to keep pushing. Keep showing up. Keep making grand gestures and pretty speeches and all the things Jayden Rowland does when he wants something.
The silence is confusing.
And, I realize with a jolt of irritation, it’s worse.
Because now I’m thinking about him. Wondering where he is, what he’s doing, why he’s suddenly respecting my boundaries after years of taking me for granted.
Is he giving up? Is this some new strategy? Or is he actually, finally, learning to listen?
I don’t know. And I hate that I care.
The elevator arrives. I step inside and press the button for the lobby.
Adriana is gone. My name is cleared. I should feel nothing but relief.
Instead, I feel the ghost of Jayden’s presence everywhere - in the building he built, in the life we shared, in the stubborn, unwanted hope that keeps flickering to life no matter how many times I try to smother it.
The elevator doors close on the executive floor, on Adriana’s empty office, on the wreckage of the woman who tried to steal my life.
And I ride down alone, wondering what comes next.