I stared at the shredded fabric on the ground and almost laughed.
Five years. For five years, I'd skipped buying skincare products just so I could afford his art supplies. My hands were covered in calluses and tiny scars from years of authentication work.
And he'd been living a life of luxury I couldn't even imagine.
Amy walked up to me, looking down her nose like I was something stuck to the bottom of her shoe.
"Did you hear him? Dirk told you to get lost."
"That dress was eighteen thousand dollars. It's coming out of your paycheck."
I lifted my head and locked my eyes on Dirk's retreating back.
"Dirk, you don't think you owe me an explanation?"
He stopped.
He turned around, his eyes full of mockery.
"Explain what?"
"Explain why I never told you I'm the sole heir to Harding Group?"
"Or explain that these past five years were just a little role-playing game called 'the struggling couple'?"
He walked up to me, pulled a stack of cash from his pocket, and flung it in my face.
Bills scattered across the floor.
"Isabella, five years is long enough. Time to call it quits."
"That's enough to buy you, what, a dozen knockoff handbags?"
"Take the money and disappear."
I didn't pick up a single bill.
I just looked at him, my heart splitting open like someone had taken a blade to it.
"Dirk, when you were in the hospital, I sold the only piece of jewelry my mother ever left me."
"You told me the thing you hated most in this world was rich people. You said they had no souls."
"So I worked myself to the bone, terrified you might ever feel like you were going without."
Dirk looked at me like I'd just told the funniest joke he'd ever heard. He pulled Amy against him by the waist, his whole body shaking with laughter.
"Isabella, you really are painfully naive."
"That hospital stay? I was dodging an arranged marriage my family set up. Checked in for a few quiet days, that's all."
"Those few thousand dollars you scraped together didn't even cover my private nurse."
Amy nestled into his chest, giggling so hard she could barely stand.
"Dirk, your old taste was really something."
"A woman who reeks of bargain bins, and you put up with her for five years?"
Dirk kissed Amy's forehead.
"Exactly. That's why I appreciate you so much more now."
He waved his hand, and several bodyguards closed in immediately.
"Throw her out."
"And make sure everyone in the industry knows: anyone who hires her is making an enemy of me."
I was shoved out of the mansion.
Outside, rain was coming down in sheets.
I walked through the downpour, unable to tell whether it was water or tears running down my face.
I made it back to our basement apartment. Less than three hundred square feet.
His sketches still hung on the walls.
He'd told me I was his muse.
He'd told me that once he made it big, he'd buy me the biggest diamond ring money could buy.
I tore every single painting off the wall like a woman possessed. Paper flew through the air in ragged pieces, and through the chaos, I spotted an elegant gift box tucked inside a drawer.
I'd saved for six months to buy it. A birthday present for him.
A top-of-the-line handcrafted brush.
Now it was clear that to someone like him, it probably wasn't even worth polishing his shoes with.
My phone rang.
It was Professor Whitfield.
"Isabella, what happened? Harding Group just put out an industry blacklist."
"Who on earth did you cross?"
Before I could get a word out, heavy footsteps thundered outside the door.
Several men kicked it open.
It was Amy.
She stood there in designer rain boots, tracking mud across my spotless floor.
"Isabella, Dirk said you left some things at his place."
She flicked her wrist, and a bodyguard tossed a black garbage bag onto the floor.
Inside were every piece of clothing I'd bought him over the past five years.
Every last one, cut to ribbons.
