Derek’s voice came through again. “Perfect,” he said, and then he laid out the next move with the calm confidence of someone who believed the ending was already written: tomorrow, as soon as I’d had breakfast and gone to the spa “gift” they’d arranged, Ethan would go to the bank and transfer everything to the Cayman Islands account, and by noon there wouldn’t be any money left.
“And the divorce?” Ethan asked, coldly, casually, like he was asking what time dinner started.
“Three months later,” Derek answered without a pause. “Irreconcilable differences. She’ll be emotionally devastated and she won’t fight it, and with the loan outstanding and the house as collateral, she’ll have to sell it to pay it off.” He paused just long enough to make my skin crawl, then added, “And I, as her brother and accountant, will offer to ‘help’ her with the sale.”
Then they laughed—three people who knew me, who had eaten at my table, who had hugged me at funerals and toasted me at my wedding—laughing with the satisfied certainty of people who believed they’d already won.
Under the bed, carpet fibers dug into my knees, my ring felt like it was burning through my skin, and my body shook so hard my teeth threatened to chatter, and Brianna turned playful, tilting her head as if I was a minor detail. “And her?” she asked, nodding toward the bed.
“Leave her alone,” Derek said, like he was ordering coffee. “The sleeping pills are strong. She’ll wake up around noon with a headache, and by then we’ll already be moving.”
Brianna murmured Ethan’s name the way you say something you think you own, and they agreed to meet at the bank at eight, and then they kissed—right there, inches from where I stood invisible in the dark—and the sound didn’t make me cry so much as it filled me with a rage so hot it blurred my vision.
And then something finally broke, but it wasn’t my heart—that had already shattered—it was my fear.
I’d been the good girl my whole life, the one who trusted, who forgave, who tried to see the best in people even when it cost me, and standing under that bed in the worst moment of my life, I made the first real decision I’d made in years: I was not going to be the victim in my own story.