Caroline POV
The taxi ride home was a blur of streetlights and throbbing pain.
My leg felt like a concrete anchor encased in fiberglass, heavy and impossibly awkward. My shoulder burned with a sharp, rhythmic fire under the bandages.
The penthouse was dark when I keyed in the code.
It smelled of stale air and expensive misery.
I shouldn't have come back. Logic dictated that I should have gone straight to a hotel.
But I needed the book.
I hobbled down the hallway, the rubber tip of my crutches squeaking obnoxiously against the hardwood floors, echoing in the silence.
The door to the study was ajar.
A sliver of amber light spilled onto the floor, cutting through the shadows.
I pushed the door open.
Blake was there.
He wasn't working. He wasn't planning the next takeover for the Outfit, nor was he brooding over spreadsheets.
He was sprawled on the leather chesterfield, his tie undone, his shirt unbuttoned at the collar to reveal the hollow of his throat.
An empty bottle of Macallan 25 lay on its side on the Persian rug.
He was asleep.
Or passed out.
I moved closer, the pain in my tibia shooting up my thigh with every jarring step.
He looked younger when he slept. The lines of cruelty that usually bracketed his mouth had smoothed out.
For a second, my heart did that traitorous thing. It remembered the man who used to bring me coffee in bed during our first year, before the silence took over.
Then he shifted.
His brow furrowed in distress.
"Ari..." he mumbled.
I froze.
He turned his head into the cushion, seeking comfort in the cool leather.
"I've got you," he whispered, his voice slurred and thick with drink. "Don't go."
I stood over him, balancing precariously on my good leg.
"I'm here," I whispered.
It was a test. A stupid, masochistic test.
He didn't open his eyes.
"Caroline?" he muttered.
"Yes," I said.
He let out a long, heavy sigh. It sounded like pure disappointment.
"Five years," he groaned into the silence of the room. "Nothing. Just... empty."
The words hit me harder than the ceiling beam had at the gallery.
Empty.
That's what I was to him.
I wasn't a partner. I wasn't a wife. I was a vacancy he was forced to occupy.
He rolled over, turning his broad back to me.
I stared at the expanse of his shoulders, watching the slow rise and fall of his breath.
The tether snapped.
It wasn't a loud noise. It wasn't an explosion like the one at the gallery.
It was a quiet, internal severance. Like a balloon string being cut, letting the helium escape into the cold atmosphere.
I didn't feel angry anymore.
I didn't feel sad.
I felt nothing.
I limped to the desk.
I opened the top drawer and pulled out the black leather ledger.
I flipped to the last page.
My hand didn't shake. My handwriting was surgical.
Minus five points.
Called our life empty.
Score: 0.
I closed the book.
I picked up the secure burner phone I had taped under the bottom of the drawer three years ago.
I dialed the number.
"This is Caroline Rossi," I said, my voice steady as steel. "Initiate the extraction. I'm done."
