Dragging my tired body back to the Whitestone estate, I stopped at the gates longer than I should have.
Iron bars. Armed guards. The faint smell of gun oil mixed with pine from the surrounding hills.
Home.
It used to feel like one.
Now it felt like a place I was already leaving behind.
Seven years lived inside those walls.
Dominic Hale’s voice in quiet rooms. His footsteps in the halls at ungodly hours. His shadow beside mine during late-night meetings and long drives through territory lines.
All of it had once meant something.
Now it just… didn’t.
I stepped inside anyway.
The main hall was silent. Too clean. Too untouched.
Every corner held pieces of us—things that shouldn’t have mattered, but did.
Custom pieces I made for him. A silver lighter engraved with both our initials. The matching communication pins we used during operations. Small, stupid things that were supposed to mean we were on the same side.
Proof, I once thought, that I belonged beside him.
I pulled out a storage crate from the back room.
And started packing.
One by one.
The coat he threw over my shoulders one winter night when a deal went bad.
The whiskey glasses we used during quiet evenings when the world wasn’t on fire.
Encrypted drives, burner phones, small coded tokens tied to operations we handled together.
Even the first knife he ever gave me—balanced perfectly for my hand.
At some point, I stopped thinking.
I just moved.
Like someone clearing out a place that was never really theirs.
**
Dominic didn’t come back.
Not the next day.
Not the day after.
Not even after a week.
The estate stayed the same—quiet, controlled, untouched by his absence.
But it wasn’t new.
The difference was… now I noticed.
I spent my nights stripping the place of anything that carried his presence.
The curtains I chose. Gone.
The rugs. Gone.
The chair by the window where he used to sit while I worked—watching, saying nothing.
Gone.
Piece by piece, the house returned to what it had been before me.
Cold. Structured. Impersonal.
A place that belonged to power.
Not to people.
And definitely not to me.
**
The night before I left, I finally called him.
I stood in his study—one of the few rooms I’d never been allowed to enter before—and dialed his private line.
It rang longer than usual.
Then—
“What is it, Celeste?”
His voice was flat. Distant. Like I’d interrupted something.
I tightened my grip on the phone.
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” I said. “Just thought you should know.”
A pause.
Then—
“If you’re still refusing to take responsibility for what you did to Adeline,” he said coldly, “and you’re not ready to apologize properly, then there’s nothing left to talk about.”
The line went dead.
Just like that.
I stood there for a long moment, staring at the screen.
Then I let out a quiet laugh.
Short. Bitter.
“I see,” I murmured.
And that was it.
**
Dawn came pale over the hills.
I left with one suitcase and a sealed case of my designs. No escorts. No convoy.
Nothing tied me there anymore.
At the gate, I paused once.
Looked back.
The Whitestone estate stood behind me—silent, guarded, unchanged.
Like nothing had ever happened inside it.
For the first time—
I didn’t feel anything pulling me back.
Just… relief.
**
By the time I reached the lower roads, my phone started lighting up.
Messages poured in.
Birthday greetings.
Safe travels.
Contacts from old networks. Clients. People who owed me favors.
Wishes for success.
For a good marriage.
For a future that made sense.
I read every single one.
Replied where it mattered.
Then powered the phone off.
The screen went black in my hand.
The city stretched ahead—different territory, different rules.
No Dominic.
No past to answer to.
I exhaled slowly.
Then stepped forward.
“I’ll be fine,” I said under my breath.
Not a promise.
Not hope.
Just a decision I was finally ready to make.
