Chapter 1 Exit Wound
The sound of a pen scratching against paper can be louder than a gunshot. I learned that the night my life ended. Every stroke, every scratch of ink against the crisp page echoed in my chest, in my bones, louder than the roar of the rain against the penthouse windows. I could hear Tristan’s breathing, sharp and uneven, but he didn’t look at me. He never did anymore—not since the photos, not since the messages, not since Ida had chosen to weave her lies with the precision of a surgeon.
"Sign it," Tristan said.
His voice had lost the warmth it once held, the baritone that used to hum against my neck while we slept. Now, it was gravel and ice, and the sound sliced through me with surgical precision. He stood by the floor-to-ceiling window of the penthouse, his broad frame silhouetted against the city lights shivering under the rain. His back was rigid, as if holding himself together by sheer will, and he refused to even glance at me. My own reflection in the glass seemed a stranger.
"Tristan, please," I whispered, my fingers trembling over the divorce decree. My nails dug faint crescent moons into the paper. "I didn’t do it. You have to believe me. I don’t know who that man in the photos is. I swear to you—I never—"
"Stop lying!"
The shout made me flinch, my pen trembling. Ida, sitting stiffly on the velvet armchair in the corner, clasped a handkerchief as if it were a talisman against some unseen evil. Her face was streaked with tears, her lips trembling with false fragility. She looked devastated, a mourning angel, but beneath the surface. I saw the flash of triumph, the dagger hidden in satin gloves. She had won.
"Minerva," Ida said softly, her voice trembling with what she wanted me to believe was compassion, but the undertone was razor-sharp. "I found the messages on your iPad. I found the hotel receipts. Just... just go. Don’t hurt him anymore. He’s my brother. I can’t watch you break him."
I looked at her carefully. Beneath the tears, the tremble, the quivering lips, I saw it: the smirk that didn’t reach her eyes, the satisfaction that she had orchestrated this destruction and played the martyr. The poison she poured into Tristan’s mind had already taken root.
"You planted them," I said, my voice gaining a fraction of strength, a brittle shard of defiance. "Ida, tell him the truth."
Tristan turned then, finally. I caught the ghost of hesitation in his eyes before it vanished. His gaze, normally the color of warm whiskey that had lulled me to sleep countless nights, was dead now. The warmth was gone, replaced by something sharp and brittle, like glass breaking quietly.
"Get out," he said. His voice was low, full of the authority and finality of a judge's passing sentence. "You take nothing. You leave with nothing. If I see you in this city again, I will destroy whatever pathetic life you try to build."
He threw a check at me. It fell to the floor like a dead leaf drifting in the wind. I didn’t reach for it. Money, like pity, was irrelevant. I picked up the pen instead, the weight of it somehow grounding me, reminding me that I still had the power to sign, to end this chapter with my own hand.
I signed my name. Minerva Hayes.
I stood slowly, deliberately, leaving the ring on the table. It made a hollow clink that echoed off the walls, a sound that seemed to mock the promises it had once represented. My hand lingered above it for a second longer than necessary before letting it go.
"You're right, Tristan," I said, my voice suddenly stripped of tears, raw and detached. "I’m leaving. But remember this moment. Remember that you didn’t look me in the eye when you threw me away."
I walked past Ida, close enough to smell her. Lavender and rot. Perfume masking something much fouler underneath. I felt her stare burn into my back, but I kept walking.
The city lights flickered through the rain-streaked glass as I stepped into the lobby. The marble floor was cold beneath my heels, indifferent to the fact that my heart felt hollowed out, pulverized into fragments. I could hear the soft click of my heels, each step a small rebellion against the narrative they had written for me.
Outside, the rain had turned the streets into mirrors. I paused, letting the water soak the hem of my coat, feel the chill that reminded me I was still alive. I didn’t run. I didn’t cry. I didn’t beg for redemption. I disappeared, but not like a coward. I disappeared like a woman who had learned the cost of trust and the strength of her own silence.
And as the penthouse vanished behind me into a haze of fog and rain, I promised myself one thing: the world would remember my name again. But this time, it would be on my terms. Not theirs.