Chapter 2

Back in the Sterling penthouse, Tori was still in Monaco, presumably trying to woo Julian back.

The air felt thick with her absence, yet her presence was everywhere – in the opulent furniture, the priceless art, the silent, judging staff.

I had to act normal.

For now.

My real work began in the quiet hours, after the staff retired.

The shared tablet. Tori was careless. Explicit messages with Julian. Screenshots. Saved.

Her calls to her financial "fixers" regarding my parents. I'd installed a discreet recording app on the landline weeks ago, a desperate, hopeful measure. Transcripts. Saved.

Transaction records. Gifts for Julian. The penthouse he used. The sports car. All meticulously documented by her own accounting department, accessible with her easily guessed password – Julian's birthday.

I moved through the vast apartment, a ghost in my own gilded cage.

Each piece of evidence was a nail in the coffin of our marriage.

Then, the symbolic acts.

The collection of vintage jazz records, my solace. I didn't destroy them. I packed them carefully into nondescript boxes, addressed to a storage unit under a name Tori wouldn't know.

Her architectural models of my early, hopeful designs, once displayed with pride. Now, they felt like monuments to my naivety. I took them down, one by one. Some I packed. Others, the ones she'd "improved" with her own garish suggestions, I left for her to find.

There was a painting we'd bought together on a rare, happy trip to Italy. A serene landscape. It hung in our bedroom.

I took a box cutter from my drafting table.

One clean slash across the canvas.

It felt like severing a vital cord.

The staff would notice eventually. Let them.

I found the small, antique music box Tori had given me early on. It played a treacly tune she loved.

I walked to the balcony, overlooking the city that had once seemed so full of promise.

I opened the music box. Let the tune play out one last time.

Then, I hurled it over the railing.

It vanished into the chasm of the streets below. No sound of impact reached me.

A few days later, the wine cellar incident happened. It wasn't in the outline, but it was part of David's dossier later, something Tori was confronted with. It felt like it belonged here, in the litany of her cruelties before I finally acted against Julian.

Julian had returned from some short trip, not the Monaco one yet. This was earlier.

He'd appeared at the penthouse, Tori beaming at his side.

"Ethan, darling," Tori had said, her voice like silk hiding steel. "Julian has something to tell you. He feels you owe him an apology."

Julian, the master of feigned innocence, looked down, a picture of humility. "It's nothing, Tori, really. I'm sure Ethan didn't mean to... to push me so hard at the gallery opening."

A gallery opening I hadn't pushed him at. I'd merely ignored his peacocking.

Tori cooed, stroking Julian's arm. "There, there, darling. Ethan can be a brute sometimes. He doesn't understand our world."

She'd changed. Her professional boundaries, once so rigid, were non-existent for Julian. He lounged in her private study, used her personal accounts.

Later, Julian found me alone in the library.

"She adores me, you know," he smirked, adjusting the lapels of a new designer jacket, undoubtedly a gift from Tori. "Anything I want, she gives me."

"I don't care about Tori anymore," I said, my voice flat. It was the truest thing I'd said in months. It infuriated him.

His eyes narrowed. Then, a flicker of an idea.

He glanced around. We were alone.

With a sudden, theatrical cry, he stumbled backward, grabbing his arm. "Agh! My shoulder!"

He'd slammed his own arm against the edge of a heavy oak bookshelf.

Tori rushed in, alerted by his shout.

"Ethan! What did you do?" she shrieked, immediately going to Julian's side.

"I didn't touch him, Tori. He did it himself."

She didn't even look at me. "Don't lie! I trust Julian. He wouldn't make this up."

Her words, a familiar refrain. Her unwavering trust in him, her instant condemnation of me.

"You need to learn a lesson, Ethan." Her voice was cold. "You'll spend the weekend in the wine cellar. To reflect on your jealousy."

The wine cellar was vast, stone-walled, and freezing. No windows. A single bare bulb.

The heavy door thudded shut, the lock clicking with grim finality.

Darkness. Cold.

The chill seeped into my bones, but it was nothing compared to the ice in my heart.

I thought of the warmth of my parents' simple home, the genuine affection.

Here, in this empire of ashes, there was only cold. And a love that felt more like a vise.

That weekend in the cellar solidified my resolve. Julian had to go.