Chapter 10

Clara's POV 

The brass doors of the elevator slid open with a soft, whisper-quiet hiss, releasing me into the fourth-floor corridor.

The atmosphere up here was suffocatingly still, insulated from the distant, muted bustle of the lobby below. The carpet beneath my feet was so thick, plush, and deep that it swallowed the sound of my worn shoes entirely, making me feel like a phantom haunting a hallway I had no right to walk. The air was cool and crisp, heavy with the sterile scent of expensive linen spray, polished mahogany, and fresh-cut lilies.

My heart was hammering against my ribs with such violent force that each beat felt like a physical blow, threatening to fracture the bone.

I moved down the hall, my back scraping against the silk-wallpapered wall, desperately searching for a place to hide. Twenty feet from the elevator bank, I found a small, recessed alcove housing an ice machine and a service cart. I ducked into the shadows, pressing my spine flush against the cold, metal side of the ice machine, using the dark corner to shield my body. From here, I had a clear, unobstructed view of the long, carpeted hallway stretch before me.

I looked down at my watch with a hand that refused to stop shaking.

11:58 AM.

Two minutes.

Every muscle in my body coiled tight. A cold sweat broke out along the back of my neck, making my cardigan cling uncomfortably to my skin. I pressed my palm flat against my chest, desperately trying to quiet the loud, ragged sound of my own breathing, terrified that someone would walk by and catch me lurking in the shadows like a criminal.

Ding.

The soft, cheerful electronic chime of the arrival elevator echoed down the silent corridor.

My blood instantly ran to ice water in my veins. My breath locked in my throat. I pressed myself back even deeper into the alcove, the cold metal of the ice machine digging into my shoulder blades, and cautiously peered just half an inch around the drywall corner.

Mark stepped out of the elevator.

My lungs completely seized. Seeing him here, in this place, transformed the abstract nightmare into a sharp, undeniable reality. He had already discarded his dark suit jacket, draped casually over one arm, and his silk tie was nowhere to be seen. The top two buttons of his white dress shirt were undone, exposing his collarbones in a way he only ever did at home after three drinks.

And he was laughing.

It wasn't the sharp, sarcastic chuckle he used when he was cutting me down at the dinner table. It wasn't the polite, plastic corporate laugh he offered to his superiors at company dinners. It was a genuine, boyish, lighthearted sound—a sound I hadn't heard escape his mouth in four long, suffocating years.

My eyes shifted slowly to the source of his happiness, and my entire world fractured into a thousand jagged pieces.

She was hanging off his bare arm, her slender fingers buried in his dark hair. She was stunning. She had sheet-straight, platinum-blonde hair that tumbled past her shoulders, and long, porcelain legs that seemed to go on forever. She was wearing a skin-tight, sleeveless red cocktail dress that clung to every narrow line of her body—highlighting a completely flat stomach, narrow hips, and high, small breasts.

She was everything Mark told me I wasn't. She was the absolute physical antithesis of my soft, curvy, postpartum body. She was the ideal he weaponized against me every single night: thin, unburdened, unmarked by motherhood, and painfully light. She was everything I had spent years hating myself for failing to be.

Mark stopped in front of a heavy mahogany door directly across from my alcove.

412.

He pulled a golden keycard from his trousers pocket. But before he swiped it through the electronic lock, he grabbed the blonde by her narrow waist and slammed her gently back against the dark wood of the door.

His hands moved aggressively down her back, sliding over the smooth red fabric, gripping her completely flat hips with a desperate, possessive hunger he had never once shown me. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, inhaling deeply—breathing in that sweet, cheap vanilla perfume I had smelled on his jacket two mornings ago.

When he pulled back, he brought his mouth down on hers. He kissed her with a fierce, ravenous intensity, his mouth open, his fingers tangling in her straight blonde hair, pulling her body flush against his until there was no air left between them.

A sharp, unbearable physical agony ripped through the center of my chest. It was so real, so intensely violent, that it felt like my ribs were snapping inward, puncturing my lungs, carving away whatever was left of my heart. A choked, pathetic gasp rose in my throat, and I slapped both of my hands over my mouth, biting down hard on my own knuckles until I tasted copper to keep from screaming.

All the gaslighting, all the cruel comments about my weight, all the times he called me paranoid, crazy, and ungrateful—it was all a lie. I wasn't insane. I wasn't making up ghosts. I was just a woman being systematically destroyed by a man who was giving his devotion to someone else.

The little LED indicator on the door handle beeped, turning a bright, glowing green.

Mark pushed the heavy mahogany door open, his hand remaining clamped firmly around the woman's thin waist, dragging her into the room after him. He didn't even bother to turn on the lights inside before kicking the heavy door shut with his foot.

Thud.

The solid, heavy click of the deadbolt sliding into place echoed down the empty, carpeted hallway like a gunshot.

It was the final, irreversible sound of my four-year marriage dying. The fragile, pathetic illusion I had bled myself dry to maintain had collapsed into dust, leaving me stranded in the dark shadows of a hallway, holding the bloody pieces of my ruined life.