Chapter 6

I stared at Vincent from the hospital bed.

Bruises covered my ribs and stomach beneath the thin gown. Three days in detention had left my lips cracked, my body exhausted, and my flight only hours away.

The doctor had told Vincent I collapsed from dehydration and exhaustion. I had said nothing about the women who beat me or the order that supposedly came from the Moreau house.

Vincent stood there as though everything had happened for my benefit.

I started laughing.

At first, it was only a quiet breath. Then the laughter grew until tears ran down my face.

Every movement hurt my ribs, but I could not stop.

Vincent’s expression darkened.

“What is so funny?”

I had once believed he was the safest place in my world.

Now he had sent me to jail because he thought three days without his protection would frighten me into obedience.

Someone else had simply carried his lesson further.

When the laughter finally faded, I wiped my eyes.

“Nothing.”

“Sophia.”

“I said it was nothing.”

“I instructed Russo to keep you in private holding.”

I looked at him.

“He told me you refused to apologize, refused my attorney, and refused to come home,” Vincent continued. “I let you stay because I thought you needed time to calm down.”

Perhaps he had not ordered the beating.

He had still placed me inside that cage because he believed pain would make me easier to control.

The difference no longer mattered.

“The doctor says you can leave this afternoon,” he said. “I’ll take you back to the estate.”

“I can go alone.”

“No. You collapsed outside a detention center. You can barely stand.”

He reached for my hand.

I moved it beneath the blanket before he could touch me.

My phone lit up beside the bed.

Your flight departs at 10:40 tonight. The divorce petition will be delivered at midnight. Everything is ready.

I locked the screen before Vincent could see it.

A few more hours.

That was all I needed.

Vincent took me back to the Moreau estate that afternoon.

He helped me out of the car, one hand beneath my elbow. When I flinched, his gaze sharpened.

“Where does it hurt?”

“Everywhere.”

“I’ll have the doctor examine you again.”

“No.”

“Sophia—”

“I’m tired.”

A velvet box waited in the guest room.

Inside lay my mother’s pearl necklace, cleaned and restored.

“Marco found the dog,” Vincent said from the doorway. “The necklace wasn’t damaged.”

I touched the sapphire pendant.

“Thank you.”

My polite answer unsettled him more than anger would have.

“I told you I would handle it.”

“Yes. You always handle everything afterward.”

His brows drew together.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

His phone rang before he could question me further.

Vincent checked the screen and walked toward his office.

“Rest. We’ll talk tonight.”

He still believed everything could be repaired later.

In the guest room, my suitcase was already packed. I placed my mother’s necklace inside, then added my passport, medication, and flight confirmation.

Finally, I removed my wedding ring from my coat pocket and left it on Vincent’s side of the bed.

By evening, Marta and the household staff had gone home. Vincent left through the private entrance after receiving another call, and the guards remained stationed beyond the front gates.

The estate was empty.

I walked through each room one last time.

The walls were bare where our photographs had once hung. Boxes of wedding gifts and travel souvenirs waited in the hall to be removed.

Even stripped of our memories, the house still felt like an extension of Vincent’s ownership.

Beside his cigar case lay a gold lighter.

Vincent had given it to me during our first winter together. My initials were engraved on one side, his family crest on the other.

At eighteen, I had mistaken it for a promise.

Now it looked like a mark of ownership.

I opened the lighter and touched the flame to the silk curtains.

Fire climbed the fabric and spread across the wooden frame. The security alarm began to scream.

I closed the lighter, placed it beside my wedding ring, and pulled my suitcase toward the front door.

Outside, I called emergency services before crossing the street.

By the time the first fire engines reached the estate, black smoke was pouring through the arched upper windows and rolling above the wrought-iron gates.

I sat on my suitcase across the street while firefighters flooded the circular marble drive.

Flames broke through the master-bedroom windows, turning the pale limestone façade gold before smoke blackened the walls where our wedding portraits had once hung.

I did not cry.

Twenty minutes later, a black armored sedan cut between the emergency vehicles and stopped hard at the gates.

Vincent jumped out before the driver could open his door. He shouted instructions at his men, then searched the crowd.

When he saw me across the street, he ran toward me.

“Sophia! Are you hurt?”

I looked at him without answering.

His hands moved over my arms and shoulders, searching for burns. When he found none, fear gave way to anger.

“Did you do this?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

I stood and extended the handle of my suitcase.

Vincent stared at the burning estate, then back at me.

“If you wanted the house gone, I would have torn it down myself.”

Of course he would have.

Vincent always wanted to decide how everything ended.

“Fine,” he said. “Burn it if that makes you feel better. I can build another.”

He spoke as though I had staged the fire for him, another spectacle meant to force a reaction.

“But this ends tonight, Principessa. You’ve made your point.”

He still did not understand.

I had not burned the house to make him afraid of losing me. I had burned the last place where he expected me to wait.

This was not another demand to be chosen.

It was a farewell.

I pulled my suitcase toward the corner.

Vincent stepped in front of me.

“Where are you going?”

“Home.”

“You are home.”

“Not anymore.”

His eyes narrowed.

“I’ll have Marco take you to a hotel. You are not getting into a random car in your condition.”

“I don’t need your permission.”

Before he could respond, his phone rang.

Vincent answered in a low voice. I caught only a few words—Chicago, ambush, missing men.

When the call ended, one of his guards was already opening the car door.

“I have to leave for Chicago.”

I moved around him.

“Marco will take you to a hotel,” Vincent continued. “Stay there until I return.”

I kept walking.

“Sophia.”

The command in his voice made me stop.

When I looked back, he was standing beside his car with the burning estate behind him.

“Do not leave the hotel,” he said. “When I return, we are going to settle this marriage.”

“All right.”

It was the first lie I had ever told him without guilt.

Vincent watched me for another moment before getting into his car.

I stood beneath the streetlight as his taillights disappeared.

“You won’t find me when you come back.”

A cab waited at the corner.

I loaded my suitcase and gave the driver the address of JFK Airport.

During the ride, I reviewed every payment Vincent had made on my behalf since the accident.

Hospital bills. Rehabilitation costs. Deposits into my account. Household expenses charged under my name.

The total was eight hundred and seventy-three thousand dollars.

I transferred the full amount back to him and emailed the receipt to my attorney.

Add this to the divorce file. I owe Vincent Moreau nothing.

Then I removed the SIM card, snapped it between my fingers, and left the phone in the cab.

For the first time in ten years, Vincent could call and I would not answer.

Inside the terminal, the departure board showed that my flight was on time.

I passed through security and reached the gate with minutes to spare.

Beyond the windows, several private aircraft waited across the runway.

A convoy of black cars stopped beside one of them.

Vincent emerged and climbed the stairs of his jet without looking toward the terminal.

The gate agent called my boarding group.

I stood and watched the door of Vincent’s plane close.

Then I turned away.

His jet lifted into the dark sky ahead of us and disappeared west.

Minutes later, my own plane left the ground.

The lights of New York grew smaller beneath me until I could no longer distinguish the Moreau estate, the auction house, or any other place where I had once begged to be loved.