Homecoming in Red

The Maybach glides to a stop in front of the Pacific Heights penthouse at exactly 11:12 a.m. The building still has my name on the deed. For now.

Alexander kills the engine himself. No driver today. He wanted this moment private.

He doesn’t open my door. He waits until I do it myself, like he’s testing whether I still can.

I step onto the sidewalk in the nineteen-thousand-dollar white silk slip dress and the black diamond ring that feels like a loaded gun on my finger. My hair is blown out, makeup armor-grade. I look like a bride who just murdered the groom and wore the blood as highlighter.

Cameras are already across the street (paparazzi spawned the second the marriage certificate hit the wires). Phones rise like rifles.

Alexander rounds the car, two steps behind me, close enough that his shadow swallows mine. He’s in head-to-toe black, no tie, the white rose pinned to his lapel the only color on him. He doesn’t touch me. Not yet.

The doorman (Marco, been here six years) sees me and freezes. His mouth opens, closes. He knows better than to speak.

I walk past him like I own gravity.

The private elevator still needs my thumbprint. I press it to the pad. The doors slide open with a soft hiss that sounds like a threat.

Alexander finally speaks, voice low enough only I can hear. “Whatever happens up there, you don’t flinch. You don’t cry. You smile like you’re watching them bury their own children. Understand?”

I don’t answer. I don’t need to.

Thirty-eight floors of silence.

The doors open directly into the foyer.

And there she is.

Amara Quinn, barefoot in my kitchen, wearing Theo’s Stanford hoodie and a pair of my La Perla shorts I reported missing last month. She’s holding my favorite mug (the one Theo brought me from Iceland) and stirring oatmeal like she’s lived here for years.

Theo is at the island, back to me, scrolling on his phone. He hasn’t heard the elevator yet.

The air smells like burnt toast and sex.

Amara sees me first.

Her eyes flick from my face to the rock on my finger to Alexander looming behind me. The spoon stops moving.

For one perfect second, the only sound is the city thirty-eight floors below.

Then she smiles (slow, venomous, delighted).

“Well” she drawls, “look what she dragged in.”

Theo’s head snaps up. The phone clatters to the floor.

He looks at me like he’s seeing a ghost. Then his gaze slides to Alexander and the color drains so fast I’m worried he’ll faint.

“Livia” he starts.

I cut him off with one raised hand. The black diamonds catch the light like warning shots.

“Don’t,” I say, voice soft but lethal. “Don’t say my name with that mouth. Not after where it’s been.”

Amara laughs (high, musical, designed to cut).

Theo recovers enough to stand. He’s in sweatpants and yesterday’s T-shirt. He hasn’t shaved. He looks like a man who spent the night celebrating the end of his marriage.

“Livia, we need to talk…”

“Actually,” I interrupt again, stepping fully into the foyer, “we don’t. You served papers. I accepted different ones.” I lift my left hand. The ring flashes. “Meet my husband.”

Theo makes a sound (half choke, half laugh, all dying animal).

Amara sets the mug down with deliberate care. “Congratulations,” she says, eyes glittering. “I always knew you’d land on your feet. Or someone else’s wallet.”

Alexander finally moves. One step forward, and suddenly the temperature in the room drops ten degrees.

“Careful,” he says quietly. “That’s my wife you’re talking to.”

Amara’s smile doesn’t waver, but her pupils blow wide.

I walk past them both, heels clicking across the floor like bullets chambering. Straight to the kitchen island. I pick up Theo’s phone (still open to a text thread with his mother that just says what have you done).

I lock it and slide it into my clutch.

Theo finds his voice. “You can’t just…”

“I can do whatever the fuck I want,” I say, turning to face him. “This is still my apartment. My furniture. My company you almost tanked. My life you just set on fire.” I tilt my head. “I’m here for my things. Then I’m gone. Forever.”

Amara leans against the counter, arms crossed under the Stanford logo that used to be mine.

“Take whatever you want, sweetheart,” she says. “We’re redecorating anyway.”

Something inside me detonates.

I move before I think. Two steps and I’m in her space, close enough to smell the heat on her skin.

“Touch one paint swatch,” I whisper, “and I will end you in ways that make prison look gentle.”

Her smile falters for the first time.

Theo steps between us, hands up like he’s calming a wild animal.

“Livia, you’re upset”

I laugh. It echoes off the glass walls.

“Upset?” I repeat. “Theo, I watched you tongue-fuck your mistress on stage while I was about to tell you we’re having a baby. Upset doesn’t begin to cover it.”

The silence is deafening.

Theo’s mouth opens. Closes.

Amara recovers first. “A baby?” She looks at my still-flat stomach, then at Theo with theatrical shock. “Oh honey. You didn’t tell me.”

Theo’s face crumples. “Livia, I didn’t know”

“You didn’t want to know,” I snarl. “You wanted her. You wanted easy. You wanted the version of me that smiled while you took credit for my work. Well, congratulations. You got her. And you lost everything else.”

Amara breaks the silence with a soft, pitying laugh.

“Poor Livia,” she says. “Always the victim.”

I turn to her slowly.

“No,” I say. “Poor you.”

I reach past her, open the drawer where we keep the spare keys, and pull out the one to the safe in the study.

Alexander finally speaks again, voice like velvet over steel.

“Five minutes,” he says to me. “Take what you need. Leave the rest. It’s all ash anyway.”

I walk down the hallway.

In the walk-in closet, Amara’s clothes are already hanging where mine used to be. Red dresses. Gold heels. A hoodie I bought Theo in our senior year.

I rip it off the hanger and drop it on the floor like trash.

I pack one duffel (passports, the hard drive with every incriminating Whitford file I ever saved, the first ultrasound, the hospital bracelet from when I thought we were trying).

Nothing else.

When I come back out, Theo is in the living room, looking at me like he just saw a ghost.

Amara is watching him with something close to disgust.

Alexander is exactly where I left him, arms crossed, white rose still perfect.

I walk straight to him.

“Let’s go,” I say.

He nods once.

As we step into the elevator, Theo finally finds his voice.

“Livia, please…”

The doors close on his broken sob.

Thirty-eight floors down, I don’t cry.

I smile.

And it feels like the first real breath I’ve taken in eight years.