Chapter 10
GWEN
For several days, my entire existence had been reduced to the rhythmic, crashing waves against the sea stacks and the agonizing pull of weeds in the dirt.
The deep, bleeding gashes across my palms had slowly begun to scab over, hardening into rough calluses that caught against the fabric of my clothes.
I had existed in a state of muted isolation.
I didn't turn on the television. I kept my phone on silent and shoved in the back of the nightstand drawer.
I lived on black coffee and whatever canned soup I could find in the back of the pantry, punishing myself with physical labor until my muscles screamed, and then collapsing into exhausted, dreamless sleep.
One morning, I sat on the top step of the wooden wrap-around porch, a mug of lukewarm coffee resting against my knee.
The wind off the water rustled the peeling bark of the old madrona trees framing the property.
I stared blankly at the horizon, watching a distant cargo ship crawl across the blue water, my mind as blank and empty as the shoreline.
Gravel crunched sharply at the bottom of the long, winding driveway.
My head snapped up. The sudden, invasive noise shattered the profound quiet of the property. For a split second, a wild, panicked flutter erupted in my chest. I thought it was him. I thought Reid had ignored my boundary and driven out here to force the meeting he had demanded over the phone.
A silver, nondescript sedan broke through the tree line and rolled to a stop near my dusty SUV.
The engine cut out. The driver’s side door opened.
My stomach plummeted at the sight, leaving me entirely breathless.
Victoria Albright stepped out onto the dirt.
She did not look like the razor-sharp, flawless consultant who had stood in my penthouse kitchen and casually destroyed my marriage.
She had deliberately shed her corporate armor.
She wore a pair of simple, dark denim jeans and a soft cashmere sweater that looked incredibly expensive but distinctly casual.
Her hair wasn't pulled back into its usual twist; it was down, slightly windblown, framing a face entirely devoid of its usual aggressive, painted confidence.
I stood up, my grip tightening on the ceramic handle of my coffee mug. I didn't walk down the steps to greet her. I planted my boots firmly on the porch boards, my heart hammering a frantic, warning rhythm against my ribs.
Victoria closed the car door and walked slowly toward the house. She stopped at the bottom of the wooden stairs, looking up at me with wide, painfully sympathetic eyes.
"Gwen," she said, her voice soft, tentative, and entirely stripped of its usual commanding projection.
"Why are you here?" I asked. My voice sounded raspy from disuse, but the hostility backing the words was unmistakable.
Victoria wrapped her arms around her own torso, a perfectly executed gesture of vulnerability. "I took the early ferry. I couldn't sit in that office anymore. I couldn't stomach the lying for another single second, and I absolutely refuse to let Reid string both of us along."
The air in my lungs turned to solid ice.
I stared down at her, my brain desperately trying to process the arrangement of her words. String both of us along.
"What are you talking about?" I demanded, the ceramic mug shaking slightly in my grip.
She let out a shaky, trembling exhale, looking down at the dirt before lifting her gaze back to mine. "Reid and I have been sleeping together for the last six months.”
The world tilted on its axis. The roar of the ocean faded entirely, replaced by a high, piercing ring in my ears.
"Get off my property," I whispered, pure, instinctive denial rushing to protect my fracturing sanity. "You are lying. You are a horrible woman and I want nothing to do with you. Leave. Now.”
I turned my back on her, fully intending to walk inside and throw the deadbolt.
"He stalls whenever I bring up the divorce," Victoria continued rapidly, her voice rising, stepping onto the first wooden stair to stop my retreat.
"He tells me that filing the paperwork right now would trigger a catastrophic scandal.
He says the board is already skittish about the capital leverage, and an ugly, public separation would completely spook the investors for the Tacoma plant expansion.
He begged me to just wait in the shadows until the expansion phase was completely secure. "
I stopped. My boots refused to take another step toward the door.
The logic of the excuse was terrifyingly accurate. It sounded exactly like the risk-mitigation strategies Reid employed every single day. It was the exact phrasing he used to manage his executives.
Slowly, agonizingly, I turned back around to face her.
"I know it's hard to believe," Victoria said gently, taking another step up the stairs, her tone dripping with toxic, sisterly compassion.
"I know he acts like the untouchable, perfect CEO when he's with you.
But I know what he looks like when the armor cracks.
I know exactly how he rubs the back of his neck with his left hand when a lithium battery cycle fails a stress test in the lab, and he thinks no one else is watching. "
My breath hitched. It was a microscopic, unconscious habit Reid had possessed since his days running experiments in our tiny apartment kitchen.
"I know about the Macallan eighteen-year reserve," she continued smoothly, her eyes locked on mine, watching my devastation take root.
"The unbranded bottle he keeps hidden in the bottom left drawer of his executive desk.
The one he only pours at two in the morning when the work feels insurmountable. "
The ceramic mug slipped from my numb fingers. It shattered against the porch boards, sending a spray of lukewarm coffee across the toes of my boots, but I didn't even flinch.
"He talks to me, Gwen," Victoria whispered, delivering the lethal, final blow.
"He talks to me about his legacy. He told me how suffocated he feels.
He told me how trapped he is in a marriage to a woman who doesn't understand the energy sector, a woman who fundamentally cannot keep pace with his altitude.
He told me he needed a partner who actually understood his ambition, instead of a wife who constantly punished him for it. "
Every single syllable she spoke was a precision-guided missile designed to obliterate the foundation of my reality.
She took the real, grueling late nights Reid spent at the office—the nights I had spent pacing the penthouse, begging him to come home—and painted over them with agonizing, passionate details.
She described the exact cadence of his voice when the boardroom doors locked and the rest of the floor went home.
She described the specific, suffocating exhaustion he carried, and how he supposedly sought refuge in her understanding.
To my shattered, traumatized brain, the story was devastatingly plausible.
Victoria held all the intricate, hidden pieces of Reid Mitchell that I had been begging him to share with me. She had his vulnerabilities. She had his late-night confessions.
If he had already given this woman his mind, his secrets, and his time, why wouldn't he give her his body, too?
"I am so incredibly sorry," Victoria said, her voice dropping to a remorseful whisper.
She took a step backward, retreating down the stairs.
"I thought you knew. When you left the penthouse, I thought you had finally figured it out.
I thought he was finally going to end it.
But when he came into the office yesterday in a panic, trying to schedule a meeting to bring you back, I realized he was just going to keep using you as a PR shield to keep the investors happy.
I couldn't let you sit out here in the dark anymore. "
She didn't wait for my response. She didn't need one.
Victoria turned, walked back to the silver car, and slid into the driver's seat.
The engine purred to life. The tires crunched against the gravel as she backed up, turned around, and drove away, disappearing into the dense, towering pines, undoubtedly assuming she had successfully eradicated her final obstacle to the throne.
I stood completely alone on the porch, staring at the empty driveway.
I waited for the tears to come. I waited for my knees to buckle, for the familiar, suffocating wave of grief to wash over me and drag me down to the floorboards.
It never arrived.
The profound, weeping sorrow I had been drowning in for the past week instantly flash-froze. It hardened into a slick, impenetrable wall of absolute clarity.
All the confusion, all the desperate longing for the man he used to be, all the lingering guilt over abandoning my marriage all vanished, burned away by the white-hot, purifying realization of what I had actually been to him.
I wasn't a neglected wife. I was a domestic prop. I was a convenient, smiling placeholder designed to project stability to his board of directors while he took his consultant on his desk. I was an obligation he had to manage just to keep the stock price from dipping.
I stepped carefully over the shattered ceramic pieces of my coffee mug.
Walking into the mudroom, I didn't hesitate. I didn't pack a bag. I grabbed my purse from the hook. I dug my keys out of the front pocket.
I was entirely done being managed. I was done waiting in the dark, and I absolutely refused to be the pathetic, naive woman who sat quietly in exile while her husband built an empire on top of her humiliation.
The drive to the ferry terminal was a blur.
The hour-and-a-half crossing over the choppy waters of the Puget Sound passed in a blink.
The ninety-minute drive from Anacortes into the heart of downtown Seattle felt like teleportation.
I was operating on pure momentum, moving with a simple, unyielding purpose.