1

EVERLY’S POV

"Sign it. Now."

The sound of the fountain pen hitting the marble desk was like a gunshot in the silent room. I stared at the thick stack of papers, then up at the man I had called my husband for three years.

Spencer Knox looked at me as if I were a smudge of dirt on his bespoke Italian suit. He didn't look like the man who had promised to protect me at our wedding. He looked like a predator who had finally finished playing with its prey.

"Spencer, it’s our anniversary," I whispered, my voice trembling. "I cooked your favorite dinner. I thought—"

"I don't care what you thought, Everly," he interrupted, his voice like ice. "The Sterling-Knox merger is final. Hailey is the woman the world expects to see by my side. Not a mousy, pathetic little housewife who smells like onions and desperation."

He stood up, towering over me. The power in the room shifted, suffocating me. "You were a placeholder. A three-year charity project that I’m officially bored with. You’re getting nothing. No alimony, no settlement, not even the jewelry I bought you. Leave it all on the dresser."

My heart didn't just break; it shattered. "Nothing? Spencer, I gave up everything for you! I left my life, my dreams—"

"What life?" Spencer laughed, a harsh, jagged sound. "You were a nobody. A girl with a deadbeat father and a suitcase full of rags. I gave you a gilded cage, and you should be grateful I didn't throw you out sooner."

He reached into his pocket and flicked a rusted, old key across the desk. It skittered toward me, stopping right at the edge of the divorce papers.

"That’s the key to your father’s old shack in the outskirts," he sneered. "I bought the land out of pity years ago. Consider it my final gift. Go back to the trash where you belong, Everly. You’re lucky I’m even giving you a roof over your head."

I picked up the key. It was cold, biting into my palm. Behind him, the door opened, and Hailey Sterling walked in. She was wearing a dress that cost more than my life, her eyes gleaming with a victory she hadn't earned.

"Is the trash gone yet, Spencer?" she asked, sliding her hand possessively into his.

"Just leaving," Spencer murmured, kissing her forehead right in front of me. "She was just realizing that some things are too broken to ever be fixed."

I turned and walked out of the mansion, carrying nothing but that rusted key and the crushing weight of three wasted years.

The rain was a literal wall as I stepped onto the sidewalk. No car. No umbrella. Spencer had even canceled my ride-share account. I walked for hours, the cold seeping into my bones, until I reached the outskirts.

The shack was exactly as I remembered—a rotting, wooden skeleton of a house that looked like it would collapse if I breathed on it too hard. I struggled with the lock, my fingers numb, until the door finally groaned open.

"Welcome home, Everly," I choked out, the darkness of the house swallowing me.

I fell to the floor, the sobs finally breaking through. I was alone. I was broke. I was the joke of the city.

But as my hand hit the floorboards in the darkness, it didn't hit wood. It hit something cold. Metal.

I crawled toward it, my breath hitching. Under a loose board in my father’s old study sat a fireproof box. It was sleek, modern, and completely out of place in this ruin.

I wiped my eyes and touched the keypad. My birthday. 09-14.

Click.

The lid popped open. There were no old photos. No sentimental trinkets. Inside sat a black titanium card with a name embossed in silver: EVERLY CHANDLER. And beneath it, a smartphone that began to glow the moment I touched it. A single message was displayed on the screen:

'Ten years of hiding is enough, Princess. The world thinks the Chandlers are gone. Show them they were wrong. - A.V.'

Suddenly, the headlights of a dozen black SUVs pierced through the rain outside, illuminating the shack like it was center stage.

The front door, which I had just struggled to close, was kicked open. A man in a tailored black trench coat stepped in, his presence so commanding it felt like the very air bowed to him.

It was Arthur Vance, the man the media called 'The Kingmaker.' The man Spencer had spent three years trying—and failing—to get a meeting with.

Arthur stepped into the mud-stained room, looked at me on the floor, and did something that would have made Spencer’s heart stop.

He knelt.

"Miss Chandler," Arthur said, his voice echoing with absolute authority. "The board is assembled. The assets are unfrozen. We’ve been waiting for you to come home."

I looked at the black card in my hand, then out at the fleet of cars waiting for me. The pain in my chest didn't vanish, but it turned into a sharp, lethal blade.

"Arthur," I said, my voice no longer trembling. "I want Spencer Knox to lose everything. And I want it to start tonight."

Arthur bowed his head. "As you wish, Ma'am. Shall we begin the liquidation?"