Chapter three

Chapter three- 

Hannah

The shop was quiet when I got in, just the hum of the ceiling fan and the smell of new fabric. A deep blue evening gown sat half-finished under the machine needle from the day before, and I settled in to finish the hem, grateful for something that asked nothing of me but focus.

The rhythm of the stitching pulled me out of my head for the first time in days.

Then came the boots.

Three men walked in like they owned the space, one of them already pulling a folder from under his arm.

"Hannah Vale?" the tallest one asked, though it wasn't really a question.

I stood, wiping my hands on my apron. "Can I help you?"

"The owner sent us. Rent expired four months ago. We're here to clear the place."

The needle was still buried in fabric, thread still taut. "There has to be a mistake. I paid—"

"Paid last year." He held the folder toward me like it was a mercy. "Nothing since."

My mind scrambled backward. Kingston handled the shop's rent — had for two years, ever since business slowed enough that I stopped paying it myself. It never occurred to me to check. I'd trusted him with it the way I used to trust him with everything.

"Please," I said, my voice trembling now, "just give me today. I'll sort it out. I promise."

The man didn't blink. "We have a court order, ma'am. This isn't personal."

Before I could argue they went in and started to move my furniture, wrapping the mannequins in plastic, sliding my fabric bolts into crates like they were nothing.

My hand went to my phone, then stopped. Calling him meant admitting I still needed him for something, after everything. It meant handing him one more reason to feel like the one holding all the power in this marriage. 

Last night he stood in my room and asked for a second wife. Now I was supposed to call him for help like none of that happened. 

But the shop was already coming apart around me, crate by crate.

My hands shook as I dialed Kingston, the phone pressed so hard to my ear it hurt. 

He picked up on the fourth ring.

"Kingston, they're here to lock up the shop, they're saying the rent hasn't been paid, I need you to—"

"Hannah, I'm in a meeting." His voice was clipped, distant, like I was an inconvenience interrupting something that mattered. "I'll call you back."

"Kingston, wait—"

The line went dead.

The men continued to pack everything. 

"Please," I tried again, quieter now. "Just today. I can get the money."

No one answered. By the time I stepped outside, the shutters were already coming down, the padlock clicking shut with a finality that stayed with me longer than it should have.

They loaded everything I owned into their truck and drove away and I couldn't do anything to stop them.

Standing by the sidewalk, I stared at the locked door of the one thing I had built entirely by myself and the anger inside me only grew louder the longer I stood there.

If Kingston had just listened. If he'd picked up the phone and given the men two minutes of his time instead of dismissing me like an afterthought, none of this would have happened.

I raised my hand and hailed a cab. 

***********

Sovereign Heights rose ahead the way it always did—glass and steel and ambition. The day Kingston bought this building came back uninvited: standing in the empty lobby with nothing but an architect's sketch and a bottle of cheap champagne, him lifting me off my feet, spinning me around. 

“This is ours, Hannah. We built this together.”

It felt like it belonged to different people now.

The elevator carried me to the top floor, heels clicking against marble that used to feel like mine to walk on. His assistant tried to stop me at the door. 

There was no waiting for permission.

The door swung open.

Kingston sat behind his desk, and across from him, curled in the visitor's chair like she'd been there a hundred times before, was Emma, Again. A takeout container sat open between them, and he was eating from it while she talked, laughing at something she'd said, more relaxed than he'd looked in months.

My heart didn't just break. It emptied.

Emma looked up first, her smile faltering for exactly a second before she recovered it.

Kingston straightened. "Hannah. What are you doing here?"

My spine stayed straight, my voice level, even though everything in me wanted to fold. "They locked up the shop, Kingston. Rent hasn't been paid in months."

He set down his fork slowly. "I know. I've been meaning to talk to you about that."

"Meaning to talk to me?" The crack in my voice betrayed me. "I need the money to reopen. Today, if possible. This week at the latest."

He exhaled like I'd asked him to move a mountain. "Hannah, I don't have the money right now. The company's going through a rough patch. We took a loss on the London project, and—"

"I'm asking for my shop."

"You don't need that shop." He said it so plainly, like he was stating a fact about the weather. "You have everything you need at home."

Waiting for the part where he took it back didn't help. It never came.

"I have a lot of expenses right now," he continued, rubbing his temple like I was the burden in this conversation. "I can't keep stretching myself thin. You need to stop pressuring me over this."

Pressuring him. I had never once asked him for a dime beyond what the shop needed to survive. Four years building something from nothing so I wouldn't have to depend on anyone, least of all him. And the one time I needed something back, he made it sound like I was asking for the world.

Emma said nothing. She just watched, her expression arranged into something like sympathy, her eyes telling a different story entirely.

Arguing further felt pointless. There was nothing left to argue with. Turning to leave, chest tight enough to steal my breath, a folder on the edge of his desk caught my eye — an invoice, half-tucked beneath a stack of papers.

Two thousand dollars for a necklace with his name on the purchase. 

His company was suffering a loss but he just purchased a necklace worth two thousand dollars?  

No need to ask who it was for, I just walked out without another word. 

***********

The drive home passed in a blur—traffic lights, the sound of my own breathing, ragged and uneven, like I'd been running instead of sitting still.

Letting myself in through the back door, too tired to face anyone in the living room, their voices carried anyway, drifting from the sitting room down the hall.

"The guest list should be smaller this time. Intimate," Caroline was saying. "We don't want too much attention and I don't want Hannah creating a scene." 

"She'll come around," Samantha said, amusement lacing her voice. "Or she won't. Either way, it's happening."

My hand pressed flat against the wall to hold myself up.

They weren't even hiding it anymore. Planning his wedding to my sister like I was already gone, like I was a formality to be cleaned up before the real celebration could begin.

There was no confrontation left in me. Just the stairs, each step heavier than the last, and the door closing behind me.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, for the first time in days, the tears didn't come.

Just thought.

The shop I built with my own hands, locked up over money he couldn't spare while a two-thousand-dollar necklace sat waiting on his desk. Four babies lost while he grew colder with each one. Emma's arms around him in that office. Caroline's voice, already planning the next wedding before this one had even ended.

Seven years of silence. Seven years of shrinking myself smaller and smaller so there'd be room for all of them.

Somewhere in that quiet, something inside me finally settled.

I was done.

Done waiting for him to remember who we used to be. Done hoping his mother would see me as something other than an obstacle. Done watching my sister wear my life like it was al

ways meant to be hers.

What leaving would cost—that part was still unclear. Only one thing was certain: staying wasn't an option anymore.