Chapter 2

The lawyer, a man named Mr. Harrison, called back the next morning. His voice was all business. "The papers are drafted, Ethan. The divorce petition, the request to sever ties with the Reed family. Everything you asked for weeks ago. I just need your final word."

"Do it," Ethan said, no hesitation in his voice. "File everything today."

A sense of relief washed over him, so powerful it almost made him dizzy. It was real. He was doing it.

After hanging up, he checked himself out of the hospital against medical advice. He didn't belong there. He needed to keep moving.

His first stop wasn't the cold, empty house he apparently shared with Olivia, but a sterile, government building downtown. The immigration office.

He had found an email confirmation on his phone for an appointment. His past self had been planning this escape for a while.

The air inside was stale, thick with the quiet desperation of people waiting for their lives to change. He sat on a hard plastic chair, filling out forms, the methodical act of printing his name, his date of birth, a way of reclaiming his own identity, separate from the Reeds. This bureaucratic anonymity felt more freeing than any grand gesture.

As he was leaving, a young woman hurried toward him. He recognized her vaguely as Olivia's assistant, Chloe.

"Mr. Miller," she said, out of breath. She handed him a folder. "Ms. Reed asked me to give you these. They're some of your personal documents from the office."

She looked at him with a pity he was starting to get used to. "Listen," she said, lowering her voice. "Ms. Reed... she was really angry. She said she never wanted to see you in the office, or anywhere near her company, ever again."

"Thank you, Chloe," Ethan said, his tone even. "That's good to know." It wasn't an insult, it was a confirmation. He was making the right choice.

He finally drove to the house. It was a minimalist masterpiece, all glass and steel and cold white walls. He remembered reading in a magazine that Olivia had designed it herself to be an "oasis of calm productivity." It had never been a home.

He walked through the silent rooms, seeing them with fresh eyes. He saw the empty spaces on the walls where his paintings must have once hung. He saw the single, perfect chair in the living room, angled toward a massive screen, not toward a second chair for conversation.

In what was apparently his studio, a small, dark room in the basement, he found a locked trunk. The key was taped to the bottom. Inside, there was a single leather-bound journal.

He opened it. The handwriting was his, but the words felt like they belonged to a stranger. It was a chronicle of a slow death, a ten-year litany of pain.

October 3rd. Olivia said my new painting was a waste of expensive canvas. She suggested I take up a more 'useful' hobby. I moved it to the basement tonight. It's better if she doesn't have to see it.

December 25th. I spent all day making her favorite dish for Christmas dinner, the one her mother used to make. She came home late, with Liam. They had already eaten at the club. She didn't even look at the table.

May 12th. I tried to talk to Mom and Dad Reed about my art gallery proposal. They listened for five minutes, then Dad changed the subject to Liam's latest tech venture. He said, 'Now that's a real legacy, son.' He called Liam 'son.' He never calls me that.

Ethan read page after page, his heart aching for the man who wrote them. He saw the desperate, clawing need for a scrap of affection, the constant, grinding humiliation, the way this man had slowly erased himself to make room for others.

He closed the journal, the leather cool against his skin. The pain he was reading about felt distant, an echo from another life. But the injustice of it was sharp and clear.

He sat there in the dark, the words of the diary burning in his mind. Tears he didn't understand began to fall down his cheeks, mourning a person he never knew, a person he was glad was gone.

He looked out the small basement window at the sliver of the moon. "I won't be you," he whispered to the ghost of his past. "I will live for myself now."

His phone buzzed, shattering the quiet resolve. It was Mrs. Reed. Her voice was sharp, commanding.

"Ethan, I don't care what state you're in. Your father's birthday party is tomorrow night at the mansion. We're announcing that Liam is taking over the new AI division. You will be there. You will smile, and you will show your brother the support he deserves. Do you understand me?"

It wasn't a question. It was an order. One last performance in a play he was determined to quit.