The billionaires maniac ex-wife

Elena’s POV The rain in Ironvale never used to feel this cold. It drizzled steadily, a grey curtain over cracked sidewalks and rusting rooftops. Elena Lawson stood just beyond the gates of St. Aldren Psychiatric Facility, her hair soaked, her breath fogging in the early morning chill. The guard who signed her out hadn’t said a word. Maybe he was too afraid. Maybe he remembered her. The woman once labeled unhinged. Dangerous. A threat to herself and others. She had been none of those things. She was simply inconvenient. The escort van they had arranged for her, a standard black vehicle with tinted windows—still waited at the end of the drive, engine grinding . But Elena didn’t walk toward the van1. She turned in the opposite direction, slipping into the shadows cast by the iron fence. No one stopped her. They’d followed protocol, signed the discharge, and done all that was necessary to do . They assumed she had nowhere else to go. But Elena had spent four years preparing for this day. Four years studying escape. Four years reading people. Learning silence. Perfecting smiles that hid rage. And when the time came, she didn’t run. She walked out through the front gate with forged paperwork and a doctor’s ID badge—courtesy to the doctor that handled her treatment. Her boots splashed into a puddle as she stepped off the curb, heading into a world that had moved on without her. But now… she was back. **** She took the back alleys through Ironvale, navigating by memory. Her only coat—shiny and three sizes too big—soaked through in minutes. It didn’t matter. Elena had once known this place like the lines on her palm, the corner store where her mother bought groceries on credit, the pharmacy where her sister spent hours testing lip gloss, the broken fountain in Community Square where they had scattered her mother’s ashes. Every step echoed with ghosts. But Ironvale had changed. The shops were boarded up. Businesses shut down. Hospitals overwhelmed. The cancer rates had tripled. Entire blocks felt deserted. There were still people here, but they moved like shadows, quiet, sick, and afraid. Every block whispered a memory, and every memory whispered a name: Cruz. She clenched her jaw as she walked past a rusting billboard. It was a smiling ad for Cruz Ventures’ latest “green” fertilizer. The irony made her laugh. A bitter taste rushed down her throat . Four years ago, she had confronted her husband—then the man she trusted most in the world. She’d shown him the research, the test results, the proof. The pesticides his company sold had leached into Ironvale’s groundwater. They were carcinogenic. Her mother and sister weren’t the only ones. Children. Elderly. Entire neighborhoods. All poisoned, all disposable. He had listened. And then he had smiled that careful, corporate smile and said, “You need help, Elena. You are not well.” Then came the psychiatric facility. The doctors. The drugs. The silence. **** Her old house sat like a ghost at the edge of Ember Street. The windows were boarded. The lawn was dead. The garden,her mother’s pride, was now dry soil and dead vines. Elena climbed over the chain-link fence with practiced ease, her fingers brushing against rust. She ignored the sting when it sliced her palm open. Blood didn’t scare her anymore. The back door gave with a sharp creak. Inside, it smelled of mildew and time. The furniture was still there—dust-covered, moth-eaten. The photo frames had been knocked to the floor, glass shattered. Her sister’s stuffed bear, moldy now, lay in a corner, half-buried in debris. She stood in the center of the living room, letting the memories come. This was where they sat after her mother’s chemo treatments. This was where they laughed over stupid sitcoms. Where Cruz first held her hand. Where he kissed her and said they’d build a future together. Lies!. She walked to the kitchen and knelt beside the loose tile under the sink. It took a knife to pry it open. Beneath it was a tin box, still there. Still cold. She opened it and exhaled for the first time in years. The flash drive inside was dry. Wrapped in foil. Untouched. This was what started it all. Elena had found documents—emails, chemical reports, internal memos. All pointing to Cruz Ventures. All pointing to him. They called it Project VELCRO: a cost-cutting experiment on pesticide formulas. Unregulated. Distributed quietly in low-income districts where no one would look twice. Ironvale was ground zero. Her mother. Her sister. Hundreds of others. She had tried to stop it. Cruz had silenced her. Elena held the flash drive like a relic. “You buried me,” she whispered, “but I learned how to dig.” *** By nightfall, she had made it to an old laundromat across from a housing project. The back was locked with two padlocks. She slipped the key from her pocket, one of the last things Dr. Gustavo had sent her, and clicked them open. Inside was a safehouse: a steel-reinforced storage room converted into a bunker. Bunk beds, bottled water, laptops. Maps. Plans. He wasn't there yet . She stripped off her coat and dropped onto the lower bunk. The mirror nailed to the opposite wall showed a woman she barely recognized. Hollow cheeks. Eyes like green fire. Hair long and tangled, once glossy, now soaked and limp. She hadn’t worn makeup in years. But her expression was painted in something better: purpose. The door clicked open behind her. “Elena,” said a warm voice. She turned sharply. Dr. Gustavo stood in the doorway with a tired smile and a fresh scar across his cheek. “You made it.” “Barely.” He handed her a manila envelope and dropped into the chair across from her. “Here’s what I found. A new paper trail. Shell companies. Off-the-books testing sites. It’s deeper than we thought.” “Of course it is,” she murmured, flipping through the documents. Her eyes scanned names and numbers like a machine. “He never does anything halfway.” Gustavo rubbed his face. “You're really going through with this?” “I didn’t crawl out of hell just to hesitate now.” “You know what happens when you poke the devil.” “I was married to him. I know exactly what happens.” He exhaled. “He’ll come after you.” “He already is,” she said flatly. “Let him.” *** Across the city, in a steel-and-glass penthouse that rose above the skyline like a blade, Cruz Lawson stared at a flickering screen. A single message scrolled across a black interface in blinking red letters: "WE REMEMBER IRONVALE." His jaw tightened. He tapped his desk twice. A security panel slid open. His fingers hovered above a row of names. “Elena,” he muttered.