Chapter 4 4

Beth dropped the letter opener onto the vanity. It landed with a sharp clatter.

She walked over to the bed and picked up the vibrating phone. The screen was completely filled with breaking news alerts from Twitter and TMZ.

She tapped the top notification.

The headline screamed in bold, black letters: LANGLEY HEIR LACHLAN CAUGHT IN MIDNIGHT RENDEZVOUS WITH HOLLYWOOD STARLET ZARA VANCE.

Below the text was a high-definition paparazzi photograph. It was brutally clear. Lachlan was standing on the moonlit balcony of a Beverly Hills hotel suite. He was intimately draping his own suit jacket over Zara Vance's bare shoulders. Zara was looking up at him with wide, innocent eyes.

Beth felt a cold knot form in her stomach.

She swiped down to the trending topics.

The number one trend wasn't Lachlan's infidelity. It was `BethBuckleyMentalIllness`.

She clicked the hashtag. Her feed was instantly flooded with "leaked" photos of her walking into Dr. Finch's psychiatric clinic earlier that day. There was even a blurry, zoomed-in shot through the clinic window, showing the exact moment she knocked over the water glass.

The captions were vicious. Crazy wife. Violent breakdown. No wonder he's seeking comfort elsewhere.

K. Holloway's crisis PR strategy was flawless. They were using her forced psychiatric evaluation to completely bury Lachlan's cheating scandal, painting him as the tragic victim of an unstable wife.

Beth stared at Zara Vance's pure, angelic face on the screen.

A sudden, agonizing spike of pain drove straight through Beth's temples. It was so intense her knees buckled.

She dropped the phone and grabbed her head, a high-pitched ringing deafening her ears.

The heavy crystal chandelier above her seemed to sway, the light bulbs popping and buzzing in time with her erratic heartbeat. The temperature in the room felt like it plummeted, and a sharp, metallic wave of nausea washed over her. It was the sedatives. Finch's pills were finally digging their chemical claws into her prefrontal cortex, warping her reality.

She gasped for breath, sinking to the floor. Her vision blurred, and for a terrifying second, she thought she saw cascades of glowing green digital code pouring from the ceiling, swirling like a tornado. It was a violent hallucination, a manifestation of the invisible cage the Langley family had built around her mind.

Beth forced her hands flat against the floorboards. Her muscles screamed in protest, but she pushed herself up. She stood swaying, her chest heaving as she glared at the empty space in front of her. There was no system AI. There was no supernatural entity. There was only the crushing, suffocating reality of her impending ruin.

She looked at the glowing screen of her phone, still displaying Zara's innocent face. This was their grand design. A cheap, trashy soap opera script where the husband cheats and the wife gets locked in a madhouse.

The fear that had been suffocating her suddenly burned away, leaving nothing but pure, unadulterated rage. She refused to be the quiet, crazy wife they needed her to be. If they wanted a breakdown, she would give them a spectacle.

Beth turned her back on the bed. She marched over to her vanity. Her eyes locked onto the row of heavy, expensive crystal perfume bottles lining the mirrored surface. Gifts from Lachlan. Apology gifts for every time he had belittled her, every time he had stayed out late.

With a guttural cry, she swept her arm across the vanity. The bottles flew through the air and slammed into the hardwood floor with explosive force.

Glass shattered everywhere. The overwhelming, suffocating stench of concentrated floral perfume choked the air. Shards of glass bounced against Beth's ankles, slicing tiny cuts into her skin, but she didn't feel the sting. The physical destruction grounded her, cutting through the chemical fog in her brain.

She marched straight into her massive walk-in closet. She reached the back wall and grabbed the protective garment bag hanging there.

With a violent yank, she ripped the zipper down.

Inside was her wedding dress. A custom-made, million-dollar gown encrusted with thousands of Swarovski crystals.

Beth dragged the heavy dress out of the closet, the train dragging over the broken glass on the floor.

Beth picked up her phone from the bed. She opened the camera and snapped three quick, harsh photos of the dress lying in a heap amidst the shattered perfume bottles.

She opened the app for TheRealReal, the luxury consignment platform.

Her fingers flew across the screen. She uploaded the photos. She set the starting bid at exactly $1.00.

In the description box, she typed furiously:

Selling off the cheating bastard's garbage. Perfect fit for any Hollywood actress looking to play the mistress.

She hit publish.

Within three seconds, her phone froze. The app crashed. The server traffic was so massive it caused a temporary blackout on the platform. The internet had just exploded.

Beth threw her phone onto the bed. She stepped forward, her bare feet crunching on the broken glass. She looked at her reflection in the full-length mirror, her chest rising and falling rapidly.

"I am not a pawn," Beth snarled to her own reflection, her voice vibrating with absolute defiance. "If you want me off the board, you're going to have to bleed for it. Because I am flipping the whole damn table."

Right at that second, the phone on the bed began to ring.

It was a loud, obnoxious, persistent ringtone.

The screen lit up.

Lachlan Langley.

The billionaire heir had seen the auction. And he was panicking.