I sat on the kitchen floor for twenty minutes before I moved.
The blood had slowed. I pressed a dish towel against my temple and held it there until the throbbing settled into something manageable. Then I got up, washed my face at the sink, and looked at myself in the mirror above the faucet.
There was a cut above my ear. Not deep enough for stitches, probably. My eye was already starting to swell.
I looked at it for a long time.
Then I went to my laptop.
I had a secondary email account. I'd made it two years ago, back when I still had a vague, half-formed sense that I might someday need a door Greyson didn't have a key to. I'd never used it for anything. I opened it now.
I had screenshots. I'd been collecting them without fully admitting to myself why—texts forwarded from his phone during one of the three nights he'd left it unlocked, a hotel receipt I'd found in his coat pocket, photographs from tabloid accounts that I'd saved and dated and filed away in a folder I never opened. I opened it now.
I built the thread carefully. Timestamps. Names. The receipt. A photograph of Sarahi leaving his building at six in the morning, her heels in her hand. A screenshot of him texting her at 2 a.m. on the night he told me he was in Chicago.
I captioned it simply: *Sarahi Mendez has been sleeping with my husband for fourteen months. Here is the evidence. I am his wife.*
I posted it from the secondary account, tagged three entertainment journalists I knew by reputation, and closed the laptop.
Within two hours, my phone—the one Greyson paid for, the one I'd stopped using—was lighting up on the counter like something on fire. I watched it from across the room. I didn't touch it.
By hour four, Sarahi's name was trending.
By hour five, Greyson was at the door.
He didn't knock. He had the code. He came through with Sarahi behind him, and the air in the room changed the way it does before a storm—pressure dropping, everything going still.
'What did you do.' It wasn't a question. His voice was low and flat, the quiet that meant he was past the point of performance.
'I told the truth,' I said.
Behind him, Sarahi had already started crying. It was impressive, actually—the speed of it, the way her face crumpled into something that looked like genuine distress. She pressed her fingers to her mouth. Her shoulders shook.
'She's been harassing me for months,' she said softly. 'Greyson, I told you she was unstable—'
'Don't,' I said.
Greyson stepped toward me. 'You want to blow up your own life? Fine. But you don't get to drag—'
'She took my mother's necklace off my neck and you watched her do it.' My voice didn't shake. I was surprised by that. 'You shoved me into a marble counter and you left me bleeding on the floor. You've been using me as a cover story for over a year. I don't have anything left to blow up.'
He stared at me. His jaw worked.
Behind him, Sarahi had gone quiet. She touched his arm once—a small, soft touch—and said, 'I need some air. I'll wait downstairs.'
He nodded without looking at her.
I watched her go. Something in me registered it—the way she moved, unhurried, straightening her sleeve as she walked out. But Greyson was still in front of me, and the room was loud with everything neither of us was saying, and I didn't follow the thought.
We stood there for another few minutes. He told me I was reckless. He told me I didn't understand what I'd done. He told me I would regret it.
I didn't say anything.
Eventually he left.
I waited five minutes. Then I picked up my keys. I needed air too. I needed to be somewhere that wasn't this apartment, this kitchen, this floor where I'd sat bleeding while my mother's necklace walked out the door.
I took the elevator down to the underground garage.
The lights were the usual yellow-white, humming faintly. My car was in the third row. I was halfway across the concrete when I heard an engine.
I turned.
The headlights were already on. Full beam, cutting straight at me. I had maybe two seconds to understand what I was seeing before the SUV hit me.
The impact was total. There was no pain at first—just force, enormous and absolute, and then the concrete rushing up, and then nothing for a while.
When I came back, I was on my side. The garage smelled like exhaust and cold concrete. Somewhere above me, a fluorescent tube was flickering.
I heard the SUV reverse. Park. A car door open and close.
Heels on concrete, moving away.
The elevator chimed.
Then silence.
I lay there and looked at the flickering light and breathed. In. Out. The pain was arriving now, slow and thorough, working through my ribs, my hip, my shoulder.
I pressed my cheek against the floor.
I thought about the crescent moon clasp. The weight of the pearls. My mother's hands fastening it at the back of my neck the morning of my first piano recital, her voice warm against my hair.
*There. Perfect.*
The parking attendant found me forty minutes later.
I was still conscious. I told him I was fine.
I wasn't.
