Elara’s POV
“You’re really going to do this?”
Mika, my best friend, sighed, her voice sharp, a whisper just short of shouting. She sat frozen at the edge of the bed, watching me slide the divorce papers into a plain red envelope.
“Today?” she added. “On your wedding anniversary?”
I nodded. “It’s poetic, isn’t it?”
I didn’t mean it to sound bitter. But the words tasted like ash.
Across the room, the anniversary dinner I’d spent two hours making sat untouched. The candles had burned out. The roast had gone cold. Even the champagne had gone flat. Everything I planned… for nothing.
Just like always.
“Elara,” Mika said carefully, “are you sure?”
My hands trembled slightly as I sealed the envelope shut. “I waited three years for him to choose me. Tonight, I finally realized, he never will.”
—
The penthouse was silent.
The rain outside clung to the windows. Each drop sounded like a clock ticking down.
I checked my phone.
No messages. No missed calls.
Then, finally, at 11:43 p.m., one message popped up.
Sierra: Don’t wait up. Thorne’s staying with me tonight.
No apology. No shame.
I locked my phone, set it facedown, and stood up.
My legs felt numb as I walked toward his home office. The one room I was never allowed to enter.
“Don’t touch anything in here,” he’d once said, months into our marriage. “It’s where I think.”
I guess I didn’t qualify as part of his thoughts.
I stepped in anyway.
The room smelled like him, leather, cologne, and polished ambition. It made my chest tighten.
On the desk, I laid down two envelopes.
A white one.
A red one.
Resignation.
Divorce.
I paused, then took a sticky note from the drawer and wrote one line:
Happy Anniversary. You won’t even notice I’m gone.
Then I left.
I made it halfway to the front door when I heard it open.
“Elara?”
Thorne’s voice echoed through the marble entryway. Calm. Dry. Unbothered.
I froze.
He walked in, shaking rain from his coat, his eyes landing on me like I was housekeeping, out of place, too quiet.
“What are you doing up?”
“I needed to talk to you,” I said. “Check your office.”
His brow furrowed. He walked past me without another word.
Moments later, he called.
“Elara, what the hell is this?”
I turned slowly. “Read them.”
His voice dipped. “You’re divorcing me?”
I nodded once.
“For what?” he scoffed. “Because I missed dinner?”
“Because I always miss you,” I whispered.
A sudden flashback popped in my mind. It was last year when I had the flu.
Burning fever. Couldn’t move.
I called him, barely able to speak. He picked up on the fifth ring and said, “I’m at dinner. Can’t this wait?”
It wasn’t a question. It was an order.
He didn’t come home that night. Sierra posted a story from the passenger seat of his car.
I laughed bitterly at the thought.
“I’ve done nothing but give you a home,” Thorne snapped, bringing me back to reality.
“You gave me a house,” I replied quietly. “Not a home. Not once.”
He scoffed, running a hand through his hair. “You’re being dramatic. I married you. I’ve provided for you. No one else would’ve done that for—”
He stopped.
But I already knew what he meant.
For a maid’s daughter.
That’s what I was to them. A charity case the Vances adopted out of pity. The girl who grew up in hand-me-downs, who never got her name on the family Christmas cards.
I was never their daughter.
Just a problem they cleaned up with marriage papers.
He then showed the resignation letter next.
“You’re leaving the company too?”
“You don’t want me there,” I said. “You never did. I overheard you once, remember?”
His face flicked.
I continued. “You told Mr. Kim I was ’a placeholder secretary the Vances forced on you.’ And you were right. I was.”
He was quiet now.
“You’ve humiliated me in front of investors. You’ve taken Sierra to business trips I was scheduled to attend. You made me ride separately to our wedding.”
“I had meetings—”
“You left me alone at the altar for forty-five minutes, Thorne.”
That stopped him.
But he didn’t apologize.
He never did.
He just crossed his arms. “So what? You’re going to walk away with nothing? Where will you go?”
“I don’t know.”
That was the truth.
“I don’t have a plan. I don’t have a name. I’m not Sierra. I’m not a Vance. I’m nothing.”
My voice cracked then and I hated it. I hated that he heard me break. That he saw even one thread of weakness left in me.
“But I’d rather be nothing than this.”
He stepped closer.
His voice lowered. “You leave tonight, Elara… don’t expect to come back.”
My hands were shaking, but I lifted my chin.
“I’m counting on that.”
I walked out into the rain, no umbrella, no coat.
I stood on the curb, blinking against the storm, clutching my bag like it was the only thing tethering me to reality. I couldn’t go back to the Vance house. I couldn’t stay in the penthouse. I didn’t even know if I wanted to keep breathing through tomorrow.
But then, my fingers moved to a number I hadn’t dialed in three years.
I stared at it for a long time before pressing the call.
The phone rang once.
Then twice.
Then—
“Elara?”
That voice. Low. Rough. Familiar.
I swallowed. My throat was tight.
“Aiden,” I said. My voice cracked. “Can you…”
I closed my eyes. My pride crumbled.
“Can you come get me?”
