Chapter 3

The next day, I went back to the penthouse to pack the last of my things. The space was filled with ghosts. Every corner held a memory, now tainted. I moved through the rooms methodically, boxing up five years of my life. My clothes, my books, the architectural models I' d built at the large oak desk. It was an act of exorcism.

As my movers were carrying the last box out, the elevator doors opened and Liam stepped out. He must have seen the moving truck downstairs.

My friend, Maya, who had come to help me, immediately stepped in front of me.

"You need to leave, Liam," she said, her voice firm. "You have no right to be here."

He ignored her, his eyes fixed on me. "What are you doing, Ava?"

"What does it look like?" I said, taping up a final box. "I' m moving out."

"You don' t have to do this," he said. He took a step closer. "We can talk about this."

"There' s nothing to talk about," I said.

"I have a child, Ava," he said, his voice laced with a frustration that bordered on self-pity. "She' s my daughter. What was I supposed to do? What would you have me do?"

His words were meant to sound like a justification, a plea for understanding. But all I heard was a selfish excuse. He wasn't asking for my forgiveness; he was asking for my absolution. He wanted me to tell him he had done the right thing, so he could live with himself. He wanted to keep both his supposed integrity and the life he'd built with my help.

Something inside me snapped. The carefully constructed wall of calm I had built around myself shattered into a million pieces.

I dropped the tape dispenser and walked right up to him. My hand flew up and connected with his cheek. The sound of the slap was sharp and loud in the empty apartment.

"Don' t you dare," I hissed, my voice shaking with a rage I hadn' t known I possessed. "Don' t you dare try to make this my fault. You had a choice. You could have told me months ago. You could have been a man about it. But you didn' t. You stood there and you lied to my face, and you let me plan a wedding, and you left me at the altar in front of everyone I have ever known. That was your choice, Liam. Own it."

He stared at me, his hand on his cheek, shock warring with anger in his eyes. He reached for me, grabbing my arm.

"Ava, stop."

"Get off of me!" I tried to pull away, but his grip was like iron. We struggled for a moment, a clumsy, ugly dance of anger and pain. It wasn't a fight, it was something worse. It was the final, physical severing of a bond that had once defined me. His touch, which I had once craved, now felt like a violation.

I shoved him back with all my strength. He stumbled, catching himself on the doorframe.

We stood there, breathing heavily, the space between us charged with five years of love and a few months of hate.

I looked him dead in the eye. The hurt was gone, replaced by a cold, hard resolve.

"You wanted to build something on your own, Liam? Fine," I said, my voice low and steady. "Let' s see how you do. You took the most important thing in my life from me. Now, I' m going to enjoy taking the most important thing in your life from you. And it' s not your daughter. It' s your company. I' m going to burn it to the ground."