Chapter 6: The evidence

"I broke his heart?" Claire let out a sharp, bitter laugh, keeping her voice low so she wouldn't wake the man sleeping in the bed. "Are you insane, Ethan? He broke mine. He broke it into a million pieces, ground it into the marble floor, and didn't even notice the mess."

"Keep your voice down," Ethan warned, glancing nervously at Raphael.

Claire crossed her arms, her nails digging into her sleeves. "I'm just stating a fact. Don't try to rewrite history just because he's lying in a hospital bed looking like a victim."

"I'm not rewriting history," Ethan said softly, stepping away from the door. "But you're acting like he was some kind of emotionless monster who felt absolutely nothing for you. Do you really believe that?"

"Yes," she said without a single second of hesitation. "He stopped loving me years ago, Ethan. He didn't want a wife. He wanted a pretty, quiet fixture for his penthouse who wouldn't ask too many questions."

Ethan leaned against the wall, shaking his head. He looked at her with a mixture of pity and frustration. "Claire, my cousin is a lot of things. He is a stubborn workaholic, he is ruthlessly arrogant, and he has the emotional intelligence of a brick wall. But a man who feels nothing for his wife doesn't drink himself half to death and wrap his car around a concrete pillar the night she leaves him."

Claire flinched. "He was drunk. Sophia said so. It was a stupid, reckless accident."

"Raphael doesn't have accidents," Ethan countered, his voice dropping into a serious, heavy tone she rarely heard from him. "And he hasn't touched hard liquor since his father died. You know that. But the night you walk out, he suddenly downs half a bottle of neat whiskey and drives straight into a massive storm? That's not an accident, Claire. That's a man who just lost his entire world and didn't care if he survived the night."

"Stop it," Claire whispered, her chest tightening painfully. "Stop trying to make me feel guilty. I gave him five years. I begged him to look at me, to talk to me. But all he cared about was Kingston Corporation. He chose the company over me. He chose the board meetings over our marriage. He wasn't even there when..."

Her voice cracked. She couldn't say it. She couldn't bring up the baby. It still hurt too much.

Ethan’s face softened. The playful VP was entirely gone. "I know, Claire. I know he failed you there. I'm not making excuses for that."

"Then don't tell me he loved me."

"He did," Ethan insisted quietly. "He just forgot how to show it. When the board tried to oust him last year, they threatened to drag your name and your dad's company through the mud to get to him. Did you know he took the hit entirely on his own? He worked ninety-hour weeks for a month straight, crushing them one by one, just so you wouldn't have to worry about a single negative headline."

Claire stared at him, completely stunned. "What?"

"He's an idiot," Ethan repeated, running a hand through his hair. "He thought being a good husband meant being an unbreakable shield. He didn't realize you just wanted him to be a person. You think it's a coincidence that every single supplier who tried to screw over Ellis Designs suddenly faced a hostile takeover by Kingston Corp? He weaponized a billion-dollar conglomerate for you. He just never told you because he's emotionally constipated."

Claire shook her head, feeling a dangerous, suffocating wave of unshed tears. "That's not love, Ethan. That's control. And it doesn't matter anymore. It's too late. The marriage is over."

"Is it?" Ethan asked, gesturing toward the bed. "Because his brain seems to think otherwise."

Claire turned to look at Raphael.

He looked so peaceful sleeping. The harsh, stressful lines around his mouth that had deepened over the years were completely gone. With his dark hair falling softly over his bandaged forehead, he looked exactly like the man she had married. The man who used to cook for her at midnight and kiss her forehead before leaving for work.

She forced herself to look away. She couldn't afford to fall for the ghost of her husband.

She thought back to last night. The screaming argument. The coldness in his eyes when he told her he was providing for them.

I'd rather be actually alone than feel alone while sitting right next to my husband.

She remembered walking over to the entryway console table. Pulling out the thick manila envelope. Dropping it onto the glass coffee table with a heavy thud.

She remembered Raphael grabbing his pen. Scrawling his signature aggressively on the dotted line without even reading the terms, just to prove a point.

Then, she grabbed her suitcase. She walked out the door.

The heavy brass door clicked shut.

Wait.

Claire’s breath hitched. Her heart did a painful, violent flip in her chest.

She didn't take the papers.

She had left them right there. On the table.

Raphael stormed out after her, got drunk, and crashed his car. He didn't take them either.

"Oh my god," Claire whispered, the blood completely draining from her face.

"What?" Ethan asked, stepping forward. "What's wrong?"

"The divorce papers," Claire's eyes widened in sudden, absolute horror. "Ethan, I left the signed divorce papers sitting right in the middle of the glass coffee table at the penthouse!"

Ethan froze. The color instantly vanished from his face too. "You're joking."

"I'm not," Claire gasped, grabbing her coat from the chair with trembling hands. "They're just sitting there. Out in the open. With both our signatures on the last page."

Ethan started pacing the small hospital room, chewing on his thumb. "Okay. Okay, don't panic. The penthouse is highly secure. Only you, Raphael, and the private cleaning staff have the passcode."

"And Sophia!" Claire hissed, dread pooling heavily in her stomach. "Sophia has the master keycard to the private elevator. She handles all his personal affairs. If he needs clothes, she’ll be the one to go get them."

Ethan groaned softly, looking at the ceiling like he was begging the universe for a break. "And my Aunt Vivian. She uses her emergency access to go over there sometimes to snoop when you two aren't home. If she walks in and sees those papers..."

"If Vivian sees those papers, she won't just ruin the 'corporate divorce' lie," Claire said, panic rising in her throat. "She will march right into this hospital room, shove that document into Raphael's face, and trigger a psychological collapse just to punish me."

"We need to get them," Ethan concluded immediately. "Right now. Before anyone else decides to do a welfare check on the apartment."

"I have to go," Claire said, shoving her arms into her coat. "If I take my car, I can be there and back in forty minutes."

"Wait," Ethan grabbed her arm gently, pointing at the bed. "He literally told you not to leave. If he wakes up and you're missing, he's going to rip that IV out of his arm again. I'll go. Hand me your keys."

"You don't have security clearance for the top floor, Ethan," Claire shook her head frantically. "The elevator system will lock you inside the box before you even reach the penthouse. I have to be the one to go. Just... text me if he wakes up. Stall him. Tell him I went to the cafeteria again."

"Claire, this is a bad idea," Ethan warned.

"Everything about today is a bad idea!" she whispered back fiercely. "Just watch him!"

Without waiting for his reply, Claire bolted out the hospital door.

She practically ran down the quiet VIP hallway, her heels completely abandoned as she carried them in one hand to run faster. She hit the elevator button repeatedly until the doors slid open.

The drive to the penthouse was a blur of slick city streets and blaring horns. The rain had finally stopped, but the dark clouds still hung heavily over the skyline.

Claire’s hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles were white. Her mind raced with terrifying scenarios. What if Vivian was already there? What if the cleaning staff had already thrown the papers away, or worse, put them on Raphael’s home office desk for him to review later?

Thirty agonizing minutes later, she pulled into the underground garage of their luxury high-rise.

She badged into the private elevator. The screen glowed green.

Access Granted: Mrs. Kingston.

The ride to the top floor felt like it took three hours. When the polished silver doors finally slid silently open, the massive penthouse was completely dark.

Claire let out a massive sigh of relief. No lights meant nobody was home. She wasn't too late.

She stepped into the foyer, dropping her keys onto the entryway console. The apartment felt dead. The silence was suffocating, exactly the way it had been last night before everything fell apart.

She didn't bother turning on the main lights. She just needed the papers.

Claire hurried down the short hallway and stepped into the sprawling, sunken living room. Moonlight spilled through the massive floor-to-ceiling windows, casting long, elegant shadows over the velvet furniture.

She looked at the glass coffee table.

There was the crystal decanter.

There was the empty whiskey glass.

But the table was bare.

Claire stopped dead in her tracks. Her breath caught in her throat.

The manila envelope was completely gone.

"No, no, no," she muttered, rushing forward. She checked under the table. She checked between the sofa cushions. She checked the side tables.

Nothing.

"Looking for these, Mrs. Kingston?"

The voice came from the darkest corner of the room, near Raphael's private study.

Claire gasped, spinning around.

A sleek desk lamp flicked on, casting a sharp pool of yellow light.

Sophia Lin was sitting perfectly straight in one of the leather armchairs. She was still wearing the same impeccable suit from the hospital.

And resting delicately in her lap was the thick, brown manila envelope.

Sophia slowly pulled out the crisp white papers, holding them up by the edges. Even from across the room, Claire could clearly see the two bold signatures on the final page.

"A Petition for Dissolution of Marriage," Sophia read the title aloud, her voice eerily calm and devoid of any emotion. She looked up, the light catching the cold, sharp gleam in her eyes. "You know, Claire... I always wondered what it would take for you to finally set him free. I just didn't expect you to almost kill him in the process."