Chapter 3

Nadia’s POV:

His silence was the only answer I needed.

“You are leaving me,” I said, slowly, “for a woman your mother selected for you. You are ending our marriage because Vivienne decided she wants someone different in this house, and you don't have the backbone to tell her no.” I looked at him. “Three years, Dorian. Three years I was your wife. And this is what I get in return.”

“It's not like that…”

“Then tell me what it's like,” I said. “Because from where I'm standing, it looks exactly like that.”

Vivienne picked up the check and held it toward me again.

“Does it matter what it's like?” she said. “He doesn't want you. That is the only thing that matters. And if you stay and choose to fight this, I want you to understand very clearly what that will look like. If you fight us, I will make sure the story that comes out is not kind to you. I can tell the press you were unfaithful. I can tell them you were stealing. I can tell them anything I like, and I can make people believe it, and when it is all over you will walk away with nothing except a reputation that will follow you for the rest of your life.” She held the check a little higher. “Or you can take this money. Take it and go quietly, and I will say nothing about you to anyone.”

I looked at Dorian one last time.

“You are going to let her threaten me,” I said. “After everything. You are just going to stand there.”

He put his hands in his pockets.

“Take the money, Nadia,” he said. “Please. It's a lot of money. You can start over somewhere. Find a nice place, find someone new. Just…” He exhaled. He sounded genuinely exhausted. “Just go. I don't want tonight to get any uglier than it already is. It's been a long day.”

I looked at the check in Vivienne's outstretched hand, and I took the check from her hand.

Vivienne's expression didn't change. But I saw it… just for a fraction of a second, there was a flicker of surprise. She must have expected resistance. She must have been ready for tears, and begging.

But I gave her none of that.

“Good,” she said, recovering. She opened the drawer again and produced a document already prepared. A divorce agreement. “Sign this before anything else. I want everything settled before Richard comes home. He doesn't need to be involved in this.”

I looked at the papers, then at Dorian, who was staring at the window.

I picked up the pen. Before I put it to the paper I looked up at Vivienne one last time.

“The money first,” I said. “Not a check. A transfer. I want it confirmed in my account before I sign anything.”

Vivienne's eyes narrowed. Just slightly.

“You are in no position…”

“I am in exactly the position I need to be in,” I said. “You want me to go quietly. I want a confirmed transfer. Those are my terms. I'm sure a woman with your resources can arrange it in a few minutes.”

The silence stretched between us.

Then Vivienne reached for her phone.

It took eleven minutes. When the notification arrived on my phone, I put the pen to the signature line without another word. I signed cleanly. Then I placed the pen back on the desk.

Vivienne picked up the document and checked the signature thoroughly. Then she set it down, and a very satisfied smile moved across her face.

I did not give her a reaction. I turned and walked out of the library.

~~~

The staircase felt longer than usual.

I went up the big stairs to our… no, his… bedroom. I found my suitcase under the bed. I started throwing my jeans and my t-shirts into it. I changed into a hoodie and sweatpants and left the silk dresses on the hangers. I left the expensive shoes in the closet.

I took off my wedding ring.

I held it for a moment. It was beautiful. He had good taste in rings, at least. I set it on the nightstand next to the lamp and I did not look at it again.

I zipped the suitcase and picked it up.

I took one last look at the room. The expensive curtains and the artwork I had never been allowed to change and the bed where I had laid awake more nights than I could count, listening to a marriage slowly come apart.

“Goodbye,” I said. I wasn't sure who I was talking to.

I walked downstairs.

They were waiting in the hallway. Of course they were. Vivienne stood with her hands clasped, watching the bottom of the stairs. Dorian stood a step behind her, his jacket still off, his expression somewhere between guilt and relief.

I crossed the hallway toward the front door.

At the door I stopped.

I looked at Dorian.

“I hope she makes you happy,” I said. My voice was even. “But if she isn’t… and she won't, because no one is happy in a cage your mother built for them… I want you to remember standing here and letting her do this to us because I really did love you, Dorian. But you don’t deserve my love.”

Dorian opened his mouth.

Vivienne put her hand on his arm. She shook her head once and he closed his mouth.

That was, in the end, the most honest image I would carry of my marriage. Dorian, with something to say, chooses his mother's happiness instead.

I opened the front door.

The air was cool and clean, I breathed it in for a moment at the top of the steps. Then I walked down.

There was a car waiting at the bottom of the drive. I loaded my suitcase and got in. The driver asked where I was going, and I told him the hotel near the park, and he nodded and pulled out through the gates without another word.

I watched the mansion through the rear window as we drove away.

I put my hand in my hoodie pocket and felt the check.

Vivienne thought she was paying me to disappear. She was proud of herself. I could see it in the set of her shoulders and the small satisfaction behind her eyes when I walked out.

She was wrong about what the money was.

It was three years of silence and humiliation.

This was less than what they owed me. She could have written me a check ten times this size and still owed me something.

But it was only the beginning.

I had expected to be devastated. I had braced myself for it. But what was actually sitting in my chest as we drove through the dark was not grief. It was anger… the kind that didn't make you cry or scream. The quiet kind.

“Enjoy it, Vivienne,” I thought, watching the city through the window. “Enjoy thinking you have won. Because this is not the end. This is not even close to the end.”