Chapter 4

Two days passed in a blur of legal consultations and sleepless nights. On the third morning, there was a soft knock on my hotel room door. My heart hammered against my ribs, thinking it was a process server or, worse, Eleanor.

I opened the door to find Chloe standing there, alone. She looked tired, the perfect makeup not quite hiding the shadows under her eyes. In her hands, she held a mug.

"I brought you honey water," she said softly. "You always drink it when you're stressed. Your throat must be raw from... everything."

For a split second, the gesture threw me. It was so familiar, so... normal. It was a painful echo of the woman I thought I had married, the woman who would rub my shoulders after a long day and listen to my work frustrations. A part of me, a weak, foolish part, wanted to let her in, to believe that this small act of kindness meant she was sorry.

My mind drifted back to the very beginning, before the fame and the lies. We were in our tiny first apartment, the one with the leaky faucet and the paper-thin walls. I was working 80-hour weeks trying to get my tech startup off the ground, living off instant noodles and sheer will. She was going to endless auditions, facing constant rejection. We didn't have anything, but we had each other. We'd sit on the floor, sharing a cheap pizza, and dream about the future.

"One day," I had told her, "I'm going to build an empire, and you're going to be the biggest star in the world."

She had laughed and kissed me. "As long as I have you, I don't need anything else."

The memory was so vivid it hurt. The hope and love in that tiny apartment felt a million miles away from the cold reality of this hotel room.

I looked at her standing in the hallway, at the mug in her hands. The weakness in me, the part that longed for the past, spoke before I could stop it.

"Chloe, is there any part of you that still loves me?" My voice was barely a whisper. "Forget the money, the houses, the career. Just tell me that what we had wasn't all a lie. We can... we can still fix this. I can forgive you. We can move away, start over. Just us. Please."

It was a pathetic, desperate plea, and I hated myself for it the moment the words left my mouth. I was offering her an escape hatch, a path to redemption, a final chance to choose me.

She looked at me, and for a moment, I saw a flicker of something in her eyes. Was it regret? Sadness? But it was gone as quickly as it appeared, replaced by that familiar, frustratingly calm pragmatism.

She didn't answer my question. She just looked past me, into the room, her expression hardening.

"You can't forgive this, Ethan," she said, her voice flat. "And we can't start over."

Her words were a final slam of the door in my face. The last ember of hope I had been foolishly guarding was extinguished.

And then, the moment got infinitely worse.

The elevator at the end of the hall dinged open. Alex Reed stepped out, holding Noah's hand. He was dressed in a sharp, casual blazer, looking confident and relaxed, as if he owned the place. As if he belonged here more than I did.

I stood there in my wrinkled t-shirt and sweatpants from the day before, my hair a mess, my face pale. I saw myself through his eyes: the jilted husband, the pathetic fool who was being discarded. The shame was a physical weight, pressing down on me.

Noah, the little boy I was supposed to "make the best of," looked at me with an unnerving intensity. He had Chloe's eyes.

Alex led him forward, stopping a few feet away. He smiled, a smug, triumphant smile that didn't reach his eyes.

"Chloe, darling," he said, his voice smooth as silk. "I thought you might need some support."

He put a hand on Chloe' s back, a clear gesture of ownership. Noah pressed himself against Chloe's leg, staring at me with what looked like open hostility. He was a miniature version of his father, a tiny victor in a war I didn't even know I was fighting.