CHAPTER 004
1063 Words
꧁ Callista
༺༺༒༻༻
I could not move.
I stood in that hallway with both hands pressed over my mouth and I could not move, could not breathe, could not do anything except stand there while Isolde's voice played on a loop inside my head.
I wouldn't want to have to kill her the way you killed that woman just to be done with her.
My mother.
They had killed my mother.
They had taken her — the woman who had loved Edmund Ashford so completely that she had handed him her entire world, who had folded herself smaller and smaller trying to keep a family together that had already been sold out from under her — and they had killed her.
And then they had called it suicide. Called it a crazy woman who took her own life.
I had no idea how I made it back to the guest room.
My legs carried me there on their own while the rest of me stayed somewhere back in that hallway, frozen. I sat down on the edge of the bed and the shaking started — deep, full body shaking, the kind that comes from somewhere below grief, below anger, from a place that doesn't have a name yet.
I pressed both hands against my chest because even breathing hurt.
It was them.
It had always been them.
All those years I had lain awake telling myself there had to be more to it, that my mother would never have chosen to leave me, that the woman I knew — warm and stubborn and so full of love it spilled out of her — would never have decided I wasn't worth staying for.
I had carried that quietly for ten years.
The doubt, the guilt, the desperate need to believe she hadn't chosen to go.
She hadn't.
They had taken her.
And then — then — the rest of it hit me.
All the years of cooking and cleaning and being invisible in my own home.
All the years of watching Edmund look through me like I was glass while he lavished Petra with the warmth that should have belonged to my mother.
All the years of Isolde wearing the Ashford name like a crown she had been born into.
All of it — every single humiliation, every cold shoulder, every morning I woke up in that house feeling like an inconvenience — had been funded by my mother's money.
Her empire.
Her legacy.
The wealth she had loved a man enough to sign over without a second thought.
They had used my mother's own resources to erase her.
And then they had used what was left of those same resources to keep me small.
I wiped my face slowly.
Not anymore.
I sat in the dark for a long time with that thought.
Not anymore.
They would pay for this.
Every single one of them.
For my mother's empire.
For my mother's life.
For every year they had spent making me believe I was nothing while standing on everything that was mine by right.
I would make sure of it.
I just needed to get out first.
I was up before sunrise.
I moved quietly and quickly, folding clothes into my bag with the focused calm of someone who had already done all their falling apart and was now simply moving forward. I didn't take much. I didn't need much.
I just needed to be gone — out of this house, out of this city, far enough away that I could build what I needed to build without anyone watching.
By the time I came downstairs the morning light was just starting to come through the windows, pale and thin, and I had already called the cab.
I heard them before I reached the bottom of the stairs.
Isolde's laugh — bright and unbothered, completely at home — and then the low rumble of Stellan's voice saying something I couldn't make out, and then her laugh again. I walked into the sitting room and there they were. Isolde curled up on Stellan's lap like she had been there every morning for years, his arm loose around her waist, both of them looking up at me with the mild surprise of people who had already forgotten I lived there.
Stellan's eyes dropped to my bag.
"Where the hell are you going?"
I looked at him for a moment. This man I had loved quietly for years before he ever looked at me. This man I had stood at an altar with and believed — truly believed — had chosen me.
I looked at him and felt something I hadn't expected to feel.
Nothing. Just a clean, quiet nothing.
"I think we both know I have no place here anymore," I said. My voice came out steady. I was almost surprised. "So it's time for me to go." I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone. "My lawyer will be in contact with you about the divorce."
Stellan was on his feet before the last word left my mouth, Isolde sliding off his lap as he stood, his expression cycling from stunned to furious in the space of a second.
"How dare you." His voice was low and tight. "How dare you stand there and— what is this? What are you doing right now?" He took a step toward me, jaw set. "You think this is some kind of game? You think pulling out theatrics and playing the wounded wife is going to get you what, exactly? My attention?" He let out a short, disbelieving laugh. "Is that what this is?"
"No," I said simply. "I have absolutely no interest in your attention, Stellan. I'm done."
I walked to the coffee table.
I slid the ring off my finger — slowly, deliberately — and set it down on the surface with a small, quiet click. Then I straightened up, rolled my shoulders back, and looked at him one last time.
"Goodbye."
I didn't wait for a response. I gripped the handle of my luggage, walked to the front door, pulled it open, and stepped out into the morning air without looking back.
The cab was already waiting at the gate.
I climbed in, closed the door, and exhaled — long and slow — as the house disappeared behind me in the window.
- Writer
