Elena's Pov:
Is Adrian seriously telling me to leave if I wanted to? Oh my God.
I stood in that doorway and let his words settle over me and I thought about Ethan. That was the only thought that made me not to leave, my son who was somewhere in this house, who needed his mother. If I was walking out of this marriage, I was not walking out alone.
“I’m not leaving without my son.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened slightly but he said nothing. Victoria, on the other hand, smiled. It was small and private, and it was the kind of smile that told me she had already thought about this moment. She stood up from the bed, unhurried, and reached for her dress that was folded neatly over the armchair by the window.
She dressed without a word and I watched her, not because I wanted to but because I could not look at Adrian anymore without feeling something crack open in my chest.
When she was done, I finally tore away my gaze from her and quickly dabbed at my face.
“Ethan, Ethan baby Mommy is home”, I called out from the doorway.
I heard his feet shuffling towards my direction. It was small and quick on the hallway tiles, the sound I knew better than any sound in the world. I stepped back from the doorway as he came into view.
There he was, my son who would be turning five years old tomorrow, still round-cheeked, still small enough that I could lift him without effort.
He came running down the hall in his pajamas with a toy car in one hand and his hair sticking up on one side.
I dropped to my knees right there in the hallway.
“Ethan.” I opened my arms. “Come here, baby. Come to Mummy.” I smiled at him, expecting his usual hug.
He slowed down when he saw me. His eyes moved from my face to somewhere behind me, and then he walked forward, not toward me, but past me. He walked straight past my open arms and into the bedroom, and I turned on my knees and watched him run to Victoria and press his face against her waist.
“Mommy.” he called, hugging Victoria tightly.
The word hit me like a physical blow. I stayed on my knees on the hallway floor and I could not move. I could not breathe. I just stared at my son holding onto another woman and calling her the name that belonged to me.
“Ethan.” My voice sounded wrong, too thin and too unsteady. “Ethan, look at me. It’s Mummy. Come here.”
He turned his head just enough to look at me over his shoulder. His expression was not confused. It was not uncertain. He looked at me the way a child usually looks at a stranger who is making things uncomfortable.
“I don’t want to go with you,” he said. “I want to stay with my mommy.”
Victoria’s hand moved to the back of his head, stroking his hair slowly, and she looked at me over him with this smug expression as though this was a competition and she'd won.
It made me think of the several nights she'd babysat my son while I worked my butts off, thinking my best friend got my back.
“Look at me Ethan baby,” I pointed at the cake that was all over the floor. “I got you a birthday cake, chocolate your favorite” I smiled, expecting it to melt his heart, but it didn't. Instead, he stood behind Victoria slightly, looking afraid.
“He knows where he belongs,” Victoria said quietly.
I got to my feet. I felt cold, like my heart had been replaced with a stone and I had nothing more to lose.
I looked at Ethan one more time, he was playing by himself now, still standing next to Victoria.
My own son had rejected me, talk about some really bad genes.
Victoria squatted to his level and kissed his cheek.
“You've been a good boy Ethan, Mommy is going to get you sweets, you love vanilla cake, don't you?”
Ah of course, he liked vanilla.
Ethan nodded with a big smile. I took a deep breath and brushed off the chocolate cream smudge on my pants.
“ I want a divorce Adrian”.
The room went quiet. Even Victoria stopped moving.
Adrian pushed off the wall slowly. Something shifted in his expression for the first time, it was not guilt or regret, but surprise. Genuine surprise, like the word had caught him somewhere he did not expect.
“What?” he said.
“You heard me.” I kept my voice level. “I want a divorce, Adrian.”
He stared at me for a moment and then something settled in his eyes and he almost smiled.
“You’re not serious.”
“I am and I'm not going to repeat myself”
“Elena.” He said my name like I was overreacting. Like I had walked in on something minor and was blowing it out of proportion. “You’ve been through worse than this. You’re not going anywhere.”
“Really?” I asked, a smile tugging at the end of my lips.
Victoria laughed gently which made it worse. “Oh, Elena.” She tilted her head. “You were so busy trying to hold on to a man who never wanted you, and now even your own son rejected you. I understand how nuts it can make one go.”
Something inside me went completely still.
I crossed the room in three steps and slapped her across the face.
The sound was sharp in the quiet room. Victoria’s head turned with it. Ethan pulled back and looked up at me with wide, horrified eyes, and then he did the thing that undid me entirely.
He stepped between us. My five-year-old son stepped between me and the woman who had stolen my life, and he pressed both small hands against my stomach and pushed.
“Stop it!” he cried. “Don’t touch my mommy! Stay away from her! You're evil!!”
I stumbled back. I looked down at his face, at the anger and the fear in it, all of it directed at me, and I understood with a cold and devastating clarity what had been happening in this house while I was away saving Adrian’s company. Every day I was gone. Every late night. Every trip. They had been here, the three of them, building something I was never supposed to be part of.
He had replaced me quietly, deliberately, and completely.
I looked at Adrian for a long time. At the face I had loved for eight years. At the man I had nearly died, whose secret I had carried in my body for months while he never once asked if I was alright. At the husband who had just watched his son push me away and had not flinched.
“Get the papers ready if you want,” he said. He turned away from me and walked back toward the bed, like the conversation was already over. “But we both know you won’t sign them.”
“Everything in this house,” I said, “was built with my money. My work. My name.”
He stopped moving.
“Your company came back because of me. Your deals, your contracts, your reputation — I rebuilt all of it while you were here doing this.” I said gesturing at Victoria who still held her face, stunned.
He turned around. The calm expression on his face had disappeared.
Good for him
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I'm getting back what's mine”
His jaw set and his eyes were slowly filling with fury.
“Elena, you wouldn't dare…”
I turned and headed towards the door. I stopped in the doorway, exhaled and looked over my shoulder just very lightly.
“Watch me”.
