Chasing a Statue: Eight Years Lost

I spent eight years of my life trying to warm a statue. For six years, I chased Brooks Kane, the "Saint of Wall Street," and for two more, I lived in a hollow, unconsummated marriage, believing my love could melt his icy heart.

I was wrong. The truth wasn't another woman; it was a doll. I found my husband in a secret chapel, praying to a life-sized doll with the face of his adopted sister, Chastity. He confessed his forbidden love for her, calling our marriage a cage he had to endure.

When I tried to leave, Chastity smashed a bottle over my head. I woke up in the hospital with twelve stitches, but Brooks wasn't there. He was comforting her, tending to a scratch on her cheek while I bled. He even used his power to make my police report disappear, calling it an "unseemly family matter."

Chapter 1

Alexandra Hamilton had spent six years chasing Brooks Kane. It was an epic, all-consuming pursuit that became the stuff of New York legend. She, the vibrant, fiery heiress to a tech empire, had thrown all her energy into capturing the heart of a man dubbed the "Saint of Wall Street."

Then came two years of a hollow, unconsummated marriage, a period where the silence in their grand Fifth Avenue apartment grew louder than any argument.

Today, that silence was finally breaking.

Alex clutched her phone, her knuckles white. She was done. The decision felt less like a choice and more like a fever that had finally broken, leaving her weak but clear-headed.

Her brother, Hughes, picked up on the first ring.

"Alex? What's wrong?" His voice, usually calm and measured, was tight with concern. He was in London, but he always sounded like he was in the next room, ready to fight her battles.

"I'm divorcing him, Hughes." The words came out steady, surprising even her.

A long pause stretched across the Atlantic. "What happened? Did he do something?"

"He's always done something," Alex said, a bitter laugh escaping her lips. "He's always done nothing. That's the problem."

She didn't tell him the full story. Not yet. How could she explain that the final straw wasn't another woman, but a doll?

Just last night, a strange, faint chanting had drawn her to the west wing of the mansion, a section Brooks had always kept locked. The door was ajar. Inside was not an office or a gym, but a private chapel, cold and smelling of incense and old stone.

And in the center of it, kneeling before a small altar, was her husband.

Brooks, the man who flinched from her touch, the man who treated desire as a sin, was praying. But his prayers were not for God. They were for the life-sized, eerily realistic doll propped up on a velvet cushion.

The doll had the face of his adopted sister, Chastity Drake.

He was caressing its porcelain cheek, his voice a low, tormented whisper filled with a sick kind of reverence. He spoke of her purity, his forbidden desires, and how his marriage to Alex was a cage, a punishment he deserved for wanting what he couldn't have.

Alex had stood there, frozen, the six years of her fervent, one-sided love turning to ash in her mouth. The humiliation was a physical thing, a cold weight in her stomach. He wasn't a saint devoid of passion. His passion was just for someone else. Someone forbidden.

"He's a difficult man, Alex," Hughes said carefully, pulling her from the memory. "Cold. Detached. I told you he was like a marble statue. Beautiful to look at, but you'll freeze to death trying to hug him."

"You were right," she whispered. "I was an idiot. I spent six years trying to warm up a statue." She looked around the opulent bedroom, a room they had never shared as husband and wife. Every piece of furniture, every painting, was a testament to her failed effort. "I thought if I was just bright enough, loud enough, warm enough, I could spark something in him. I really thought he was just... self-controlled."

"He's not self-controlled, Alex. He's just not interested in you." Hughes's words were blunt, but not cruel. It was the truth she'd been avoiding for years.

"I know that now."

"Good," he said, his voice softening. "Then it's time to come home. Come to London. I'll have your old apartment ready. We'll get you the best lawyers. We'll erase him."

"London," she repeated. The word sounded like a lifeline. A place where she wasn't Mrs. Brooks Kane, the failed wife. A place where she could just be Alex Hamilton again.

"Elliott is here too," Hughes added casually. "He asks about you all the time."

Elliott Cotton. Her childhood friend. A successful novelist who had been Hughes's best friend for years. A man whose warm, steady gaze had always held a hint of something more, something she had been too blind, too obsessed with Brooks, to see.

"Okay," Alex said, her voice small. "I'll come."

She hung up, the resolve hardening in her chest. She remembered the first time she saw Brooks Kane, eight years ago at a charity gala. He stood apart from the crowd, a vision of quiet power in a black tuxedo. His eyes, a cool, indifferent gray, seemed to see through the glittering facade of the city's elite. While other men vied for attention, he exuded an aura of untouchable ascetism.

Hughes had warned her then, too. "Stay away from that one, Alex. The Kanes are a different breed. Old money, devoutly religious. They think pleasure is a sin and emotion is a weakness. He'll break your heart."

But Alex, who had always gotten everything she wanted, saw him as the ultimate challenge. She didn't believe anyone could be truly devoid of desire. She made it her mission to be the one to crack his saintly exterior.

What followed was a relentless, vibrant campaign. She'd show up at his office with lunch. She'd buy the art he was rumored to admire. She wore her brightest dresses, told her funniest jokes, and used every ounce of her charm to get a reaction.

Most of the time, she got nothing. Just a cool, polite dismissal.

Hughes had called her a fool. "He's not playing hard to get, Alex. He's just not playing."

"He's a man, Hughes," she'd argued. "He's not made of stone. He just needs someone to show him how to live."

After six years, he had shocked everyone, including her, by proposing. It wasn't romantic. It was a transaction. He'd shown up at her apartment with a pre-nuptial agreement and a ring box.

"This seems like the logical next step for both our families," he'd said, his tone as flat as if he were discussing a merger.

She, blinded by what she thought was victory, had ecstatically said yes. She believed that marriage would be the key, that behind closed doors, she would finally find the man behind the saint.

Instead, she found a colder, more distant version of him. The marriage was a sham. A shield. And now she knew what he was shielding himself from.

Her love for him had been a wildfire. And last night, in that cold, secret chapel, it had finally been extinguished. All that was left was the chilling realization that her entire marriage was built on his obsession with another woman.

The sound of his voice from the chapel echoed in her mind, a low, desperate plea to the Chastity doll. "Just a little longer, Chastity. I just have to endure it a little longer. Then I can be free."

Tears she didn't know she had left began to fall. She wiped them away angrily.

He wanted to be free. Fine. She would give him his freedom.

She walked to the closet and pulled out a suitcase.

The next morning, at the breakfast table, Brooks was the picture of detached elegance, reading the Wall Street Journal. He didn't look up as she sat down. That was normal.

"I have to go out for a bit today," Alex said, her voice casual. "I have an appointment."

He turned a page. "Fine."

"Will you be home for dinner?"

He finally lowered the paper, his gray eyes filled with a familiar impatience. He hated questions. He hated small talk. He saw her as a distraction, a noisy, colorful nuisance in his perfectly ordered life.

"Does it matter?" he asked, his voice cold.

In that moment, she saw him clearly. A man trapped by his own hypocrisy, using her as a tool for his self-flagellation.

A strange calm settled over her. She smiled, a genuine, bright smile that seemed to startle him. It was the kind of smile she used to give him when she was trying to win him over.

"No," she said cheerfully. "It doesn't matter at all. I was just wondering if I should pick up that bottle of wine you like."

He looked at her, a flicker of something-maybe curiosity-in his eyes. "Why?"

"No reason," she said, standing up. "Just feeling like a celebration."

He watched her walk away, a slight frown on his perfect face.

Alex paused at the door, her back to him.

"You'll get what you want, Brooks," she said softly, more to herself than to him. "You'll be free."

And for the first time in eight years, she walked away from him without looking back.