Hazel's POV
They arrested her at her hotel, not her apartment, which told me she'd already been planning to run. I wasn't there for it, but Reyes called that evening with the details, and later, when the story broke, I watched the footage more times than I should have, Penelope in a pale coat being walked to an unmarked car, her chin lifted, refusing to look at the cameras. I sat alone in the flat replaying that clip long after Julian had gone to bed, some part of me needing to see it enough times that it finally felt real, that the woman who had haunted five years of my marriage was actually, finally, being led away in handcuffs instead of laughing at me across a restaurant table.
I saw her once more before the arraignment, in a narrow hallway outside the courtroom where witnesses were
