Chapter 5

When consciousness returned, it was not to light or sound, but to an absence. The faint, warm pull deep within her abdomen, a subtle anchor she had carried for weeks, had vanished. In its place was a chilling, scooped-out numbness, an internal void that felt both cavernous and absolute. The room was empty.

A nurse came in. "You're very lucky, Mrs. Santos. You have a concussion, a broken arm, and multiple lacerations. But you're alive."

Caroline looked at the empty chair beside her bed. She reached for her purse and the black journal inside. Her hand ached, but she wrote with grim determination.

-15 Points: He watched a chandelier fall on me and didn't even try to help. He chose her.

The arithmetic was simple. A mere five points now stood between her and the end.

Just then, the door opened, and Blake walked in. He looked tired and disheveled.

He did not apologize. He offered a fact, as if it were a sufficient explanation. "Ariana was distressed. A panic attack after the... incident. I had to see she was settled."

He had prioritized a panic attack over his wife's brush with death.

"Why are you here now, Blake?" she asked, her voice a flat, barren thing.

His explanation for being there now was delivered with the same dispassionate air. "Her therapist has rooms on the third floor. I was waiting for her session to conclude."

He was here by virtue of proximity. An afterthought. His phone vibrated against the silence. A text from Ariana. His attention shifted, absolute and instantaneous. "I have to go," he said, already turning toward the door. "She needs me." He left.

Caroline stared at the empty doorway. Later, drifting in the grey ether between sleep and wakefulness, she became aware of his voice from the corridor-not the muted tone of a concerned husband, but the clipped, decisive cadence he used with his brokers. The words floated through the half-open door, each one a small, sharp-edged stone.

"...liquidate the portfolio... No, the entire research grant... The beneficiary is Whitfield, Ariana... It is to secure her constitution, which is the immediate priority."

Caroline closed her eyes. It was a revelation devoid of heat or fury. The truth settled not like a blow, but like a fine, cold dust, covering every memory she had of him. He was not incapable of devotion; he was, in fact, capable of a monumental, all-consuming love that could realign careers and liquidate fortunes. She was simply not its object. She never had been. She never would be.

The last filament of hope within her did not wither; it was surgically excised. It was time to end this. It was time to finally, completely, set herself free.