Chapter 4

I packed a small overnight bag with essentials and my work laptop, the silence in the townhouse thick with unspoken resentment. Ryan watched my every move, a mixture of fury and confusion on his face. He didn't try to stop me. He just stood there, leaning against the doorframe, as if waiting for me to break down and admit I was wrong.

I didn't give him the satisfaction. I walked out the door without a backward glance and checked into the first decent hotel I could find. The anonymity of the clean, impersonal room was a relief. I turned my phone off, unwilling to deal with the inevitable fallout just yet. I needed a few hours of peace.

The next morning, I turned my phone back on. It immediately buzzed with a dozen missed calls and a string of angry text messages. Most were from Ryan, oscillating between begging and blaming. But two were from his mother. I opened her texts first.

"Stella, what is wrong with you? Ryan is a wreck. You can't just throw away nine years. You need to learn what family values mean. Nicole needs that house. You are being incredibly selfish and ungrateful."

Ungrateful. The word stung. I had given nine years of my life, my love, and my financial security to her son, only to be called ungrateful for finally drawing a line. I deleted the message without replying.

I forced myself to get ready and go to work. I needed the structure, the normalcy of my job at the architectural firm. Mr. Hughes, my boss, was a stern but fair man. He valued precision and hard work, things I could focus on instead of the mess my personal life had become.

I was deep into a set of blueprints when the receptionist buzzed my desk. "Stella, there's a Nicole Lester here to see you. She says she's your sister-in-law."

My blood ran cold. Future sister-in-law, and not for much longer. "I'm busy," I said into the intercom.

"She's brought you lunch," the receptionist added, her voice apologetic.

Before I could refuse again, Nicole appeared at the entrance to our open-plan office, holding a large casserole dish wrapped in a tea towel. She scanned the room, her eyes landing on me. She immediately arranged her face into an expression of deep, sorrowful concern.

Several of my colleagues looked up from their desks, their curiosity piqued.

Nicole walked directly to my workstation, placing the casserole dish on the edge of my desk, right next to a sensitive site plan. "Stella," she said, her voice just loud enough for everyone in the vicinity to hear. "I am so, so sorry. I don't know what I did, but please, you have to talk to Ryan. He's devastated."

Her eyes welled up with perfectly timed tears. "He told me... he told me you want to take the house away. Stella, please. Jayden and I... we have nowhere else to go. How could you be so cruel as to try and evict a widow and her child?"

The performance was masterful. In the space of thirty seconds, she had painted me as a greedy, heartless monster. My colleagues were now openly staring, their faces a mixture of pity for Nicole and judgment for me. I could feel their silent accusations. I was the cruel fiancée, kicking a poor widow and her little boy out onto the street.

I stood up slowly, my hands clenched into fists at my sides. "Nicole," I said, my voice low and steady. "This is my place of work. This conversation is wildly inappropriate."

"But where else could I talk to you?" she cried, dabbing at her eyes. "You're not answering your phone! I had to do something! I thought if I brought you some of my homemade lasagna, maybe you'd remember that we're family."

She was laying it on so thick it was suffocating. She was trying to corner me, to use public shame as a weapon. And judging by the looks on my coworkers' faces, it was working.