All Chapters of The Perfect Wife Walked Away: Chapter 211 - Chapter 215

[Alice's POV]I drove straight to the university campus, near the center of downtown Zurich.It was a Tuesday morning, so the parking lot near the Computer Science building was nearly full. I had to circle twice before finding a spot near the far end, next to a row of dormant cherry trees. I killed the engine, sat for a moment, and stared at the brick facade of the building through the windshield.Noelle Chen.We'd met during my second year of medical school, in circumstances that were anything but ordinary. She had been a first-year graduate student in Computer Science at the time — brilliant, eccentric, and socially awkward in that way that made most people uncomfortable but made me feel right at home.We crossed paths because of a campus emergency: a routine appendectomy had gone sideways, and Noelle had been the patient. I wasn't even supposed to be in that operating room — I was just a second-year student observing from the gallery — but the lead surgeon stepped out for a moment,

[Lily's POV]The conference room had emptied out, but I could still hear the echo of David's voice in my head."No. I vote against the motion. Dr. McCutchen stays."Nine words. Nine words that had undone weeks of careful planning. I sat in the rear passenger seat of the car, my hands clenched in my lap so tightly that my nails left crescent-shaped indentations in my palms. Up front, my driver hadn't said a word — he knew better than to speak to me right now.I stared out the window without seeing anything. The city blurred past in a smear of gray and concrete.He chose her. Again. In front of everyone there, in front of me, sitting right beside him with his child in my belly, he chose her. He looked at her with those eyes. Those same damn eyes I'd seen him directing at my sister for years.That conflicted, pained, "I know I shouldn't but I can't help it," look.I had been sitting right there at his side. And he still looked at her.My phone buzzed. I pulled it out. A notification from

[Lily's POV]"They're going to find you," I said. "Maybe not today. Maybe not this week. But they will find you. And when they do, they will not be interested in your explanations about 'plausible deniability' or 'standard operating procedure.' They will want a name. They will want to know who hired you. And under the kind of pressure those two men are capable of... you will give them one."Silence.Then, in a voice I barely recognized, Zorro whispered, "What are you saying?"I looked at him — really looked at him — and for a moment, I felt something that surprised me. Not pity. Not guilt. Something closer to... clarity. The kind of clarity that comes when you finally accept the true nature of a person you've been relying on.He was weak. He had always been weak. I'm seeing it now in his hesitation, in his caveats, in his endless hedging and risk-aversion dressed up as ‘professionalism.’ He wasn't a wolf in sheep's clothing — he was a sheep in wolf's clothing. All bark, no bite. All p