Winning Her Back のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 81 - チャプター 90

Click. Click. Click.Then, a voice. Smooth as aged whiskey, cultured, carrying effortlessly up the grand staircase to where I stood rooted, trembling, behind my bedroom door. A voice that coiled around my spine like a venomous serpent."Ethan, darling. This is... an unexpected tableau."Claire.Her name detonated inside my skull, a silent scream echoing the one trapped in my throat. Cassandra was wrong. It was Claire. Ethan’s ghost, his unfinished symphony, the woman whose shadow had stretched over our marriage since the beginning. And she was here, again. Now. In the aftermath of that.Humiliation, fresh and scalding, washed over the raw ache Ethan’s touch, his words, his abandonment had left. It warred with a sudden, blinding fury that turned my vision red at the edges. He’d left me reeling from his cruelty, from the intimacy twisted into rejection, only to welcome her? Had he planned this? Was she the reason he’d pulled away, called me a mistake? The white-hot coal of anger Naomi h

Dawn crept into the room like a hesitant intruder, painting pale grey streaks across the ceiling. I hadn’t truly slept. Hours had passed in a strange, suspended state between the icy numbness that had descended last night and a new, sharp-edged awareness. My body ached, a deep, bone-weary ache that had little to do with physical exertion and everything to do with the emotional evisceration of the past twelve hours. My eyes felt gritty, swollen from the silent storm of tears that had finally ceased, leaving behind a desert of resolve.I lay perfectly still for a long moment, listening. The mansion was unnervingly silent. No muffled voices through the wall. No footsteps in the hall. No low hum of Ethan’s presence elsewhere in the vast, cold space. Just the heavy, oppressive quiet of aftermath. The quiet of abandonment. Again. The thought flickered, but the icy shield around my heart snuffed it out before it could ignite fresh pain.Enough.The word resonated within the hollow space wher

Ethan's POVThe divorce papers lay on my desk like an accusation. I hadn’t moved them. Couldn’t. They dominated the polished mahogany, a stark, white monument to my supposed liberation. Petition for Dissolution of Marriage. Lila Blackwell v. Ethan Blackwell. Her neat, final signature. That note. I'm finally giving you the divorce you badly wanted. Consider yourself free.Free. The word echoed in the suffocating silence of the study. It tasted like dust. Like the ashes of something I hadn’t realized was burning until it was gone. The vast emptiness of the house pressed in, a physical weight. It wasn't just quiet, it was dead. The life, the tentative, hopeful presence I'd barely acknowledged, had been extinguished. By me.The cold fury hit first. A familiar, icy wave. Control. I needed control. I snatched my phone, fingers stabbing at the screen. My lawyeranswered on the first ring, his voice smooth, professional."Ethan. I saw the filing come through. Standard petition for irreconci

Six months. Half a year painted in the stark, beautiful contrasts of Finnish light and shadow. Six months since I walked out of Ethan Blackwell’s gilded cage and learned to breathe air that didn’t taste like judgment and disappointment. Standing in my sun-drenched studio, the scent of turpentine and linseed oil thick and comforting in the air, I finally felt it: the deep, unburdened expansion of my lungs. Freedom wasn’t just a location; it was the absence of constantly bracing for impact, of feeling perpetually less than.The large canvas before me was alive with colour, bold strokes of cerulean and emerald capturing the wild spirit of a Lapland forest under the summer’s midnight sun. This was my lifeblood now. My art. The passion I’d carefully packed away, like fragile china, when I became Mrs. Ethan Blackwell, because serious wives of serious men didn't dabble in such frivolities. Or so the unspoken rule, reinforced by Ethan’s dismissive glances and the subtle pressure to conform, h

"Drink," she commands, her eyes scanning the crowd like a hawk. "Smile. Breathe. And for the love of all things sacred, try not to vomit on the serious collectors. They have very expensive shoes." She positions herself slightly in front of me, a vibrant, talkative human shield against the onslaught of attention. "Just point and nod if they ask about technique. I’ll handle the existential angst."The reactions are a kaleidoscope. Stoic Finns in impeccably tailored suits and minimalist dresses linger longest before my paintings. Their faces give little away, but their stillness speaks volumes. One silver-haired man, his gaze fixed on the central gold gash, murmurs to his companion, just loud enough for me to catch: "This is beautiful.”A woman with hair like spun moonlight, draped in flowing silvery linen, approaches the gallery owner, Anu, near "Aino’s Crown". She points, they speak briefly, and one of the gallery attendant beams, placing a discreet red dot beside the title card. The