CHAPTER 6

Amelia's POV

The line went dead,I stood frozen beside Lily's car with the phone still pressed on my ear, staring at nothing. The night air was cold but I couldn't feel it. I couldn't feel anything except the slow, terrible process of understanding what had just happened.

Sophia Laurent called me within minutes of me signing those divorce papers, that woman had picked up a phone and called me personally to gloat.

"How." Lily's voice came out low and dangerous beside me. Her eyes were fixed on my phone, her expression completely still in a way that was far more frightening than her earlier fury. "How did she know?"

I lowered the phone slowly. "Someone told her."

"Someone told her." Lily repeated the words carefully, like she was turning each one over in her mouth. Then she looked up at the mansion. Her gaze swept across every lit window, every shadow behind the glass. "Someone inside that house picked up a phone the second you signed those papers and called Sophia Laurent."

The realization hit differently when she said it out loud.

I turned and looked back at the Blackwood mansion too. Three floors of architectural perfection. Iron gates. Manicured hedges. Every window glowing warmly from within like nothing had happened inside tonight.

Like I didn't just end my marriage inside those walls.

"Amelia." Lily grabbed my arm firmly. "Get in the car."

“Hold on.." I said.

"Right now." Her grip tightened slightly. "Before I turn around and say something that lands me in a police report."

I got in,Lily rounded the car quickly and dropped into the driver's seat. She started the engine before she had even fully closed her door. The gates opened automatically as we pulled forward and within seconds, the Blackwood estate was shrinking behind.

I watched it disappear in the side mirror.

Neither of us spoke for a long stretch of road. The city unfolded ahead. Streetlights washed over the windshield in steady, rhythmic waves. Lily's hands gripped the steering wheel tightly to the point that her knuckles had shifted color.

I recognized the silence. It was the kind Lily held onto when she was furious but choosing carefully what to do with it.

"She heard it on the phone." I said finally. My voice sounded strange to my own ears. “Sophia was on the other line with Damian when I was signing. That's how she knew so fast."

Lily's jaw shifted. "She was on the phone with him while you were standing right there?"

"He stepped away." I paused. "Or maybe he didn't even bother."

Lily exhaled sharply through her nose. "I heard her voice, Amelia. The whole car heard her voice. That woman called you to rub it in your face before you even made it out of the driveway." She shook her head slowly. "That is not a woman who just came back to reconnect with an old flame. That is a woman who has been orchestrating this."

I didn't respond because I was thinking the same thing.

The anonymous message. The photograph was taken four days ago. The timing of Damian presenting the divorce papers on our anniversary of all nights. And now the phone call, arriving within minutes, almost like Sophia had been sitting somewhere with her phone in hand, waiting.

"She planned all of it." I said quietly.

"Obviously." Lily said without hesitation.

"The message, the photo, tonight." I stared at the road ahead. "She wanted me to see it. She wanted me to feel it before I signed so that when I did sign, it would feel like I had no choice."

Lily glanced at me sideways. "And do you feel like you had no choice?"

I thought about it honestly. "No." I said. "I feel like I finally made one."

Lily looked at me for a moment longer before returning her eyes to the road. Something in her expression shifted. The fury was still there but something quieter had moved beneath it. Something that looked almost like relief.

"Good." She said softly.

The city moved. A traffic light turned red and Lily slowed to a stop. The car idled. Outside, a couple walked past on the pavement, laughing at something between themselves, completely unbothered by the world.

I watched them until the light changed.

Then I looked down at my hands.

The ring caught the glow of a passing streetlight. Platinum band,single diamond. Cold and perfect and completely without warmth, exactly like the man who had placed it there.

I remembered our wedding day. How I told myself that the blankness in his eyes was nerves. How I convinced myself that with time, with patience, with enough love on my part, things would change.

What a story I had told myself,my fingers moved to the ring slowly.

"Amelia." Lily's voice was barely a murmur.

I didn't look up. I just began to turn it, working the band carefully over my knuckle. The metal resisted for just a moment, as if even the ring wasn't ready to let go. Then it slid free.

I held it in my palm,such a small, quiet thing.

Three years of my life sitting in the center of my hand, glinting under the passing lights like it meant nothing. Like it had always meant nothing.

My throat tightened but I didn't cry. I was done crying tonight.

I reached forward and opened the small compartment between our seats. I set the ring inside.

Just the soft click of the compartment closing.

Lily said nothing. She kept her eyes on the road but I saw her swallow hard.

I leaned back against the seat and let out a breath that had been sitting in my chest.

The city stretched ahead and behind us, in a house full of candlelight and cold marble and secrets I was only beginning to understand, my phone buzzed once inside my coat pocket.

I pulled it out,the screen lit up with a message from the same unknown number.

'You should have left sooner.' I read.

“Oh..come on..!" I said slowly.