Chapter 4

His words didn' t hurt anymore. They were just data. Information confirming a conclusion I had already reached. He was Olivia' s puppet, and his strings were made of money and malice.

I left his apartment without a backward glance. The city was waking up, the streets filling with people on their way to real jobs, real lives. I felt disconnected from all of it, like I was watching a movie of someone else' s life.

Instead of taking the bus to the orphanage, I walked. The morning air was crisp and cool against my skin. The steady rhythm of my feet on the pavement was grounding. With every step, I felt the fog of the last two years begin to lift.

My first stop was a small toy store. Using the last twenty dollars from my own bank account-not the blood money I' d left for Ethan-I bought a plush teddy bear and a set of colorful building blocks. My second stop was a bookstore, where I picked out a collection of fairy tales with beautiful illustrations.

These were for the kids at the orphanage. It was a small gesture, but it felt important. It was a way of reconnecting with the person I was before Ethan Miller-the girl who found joy in giving, not in sacrificing.

Carrying the bags, I decided to take a shortcut through a part of town I usually avoided: the high-end shopping district. Rows of gleaming storefronts with names like Chanel, Gucci, and Cartier lined the street. It was a world so far removed from my own that it felt like another planet.

And that' s when I saw them.

Through the polished glass window of a jewelry store that probably had its own armed security, I saw Ethan and Olivia.

He wasn' t in his struggling-artist uniform of ripped jeans and a faded t-shirt. He was wearing a dark, impeccably tailored cashmere coat. Olivia was beside him, a vibrant silk scarf wrapped around her neck. She was laughing as a jeweler fastened a dazzling diamond necklace around her throat.

Ethan wasn' t looking at the necklace. He was looking at her, a look of genuine adoration on his face. The same look he used to give me when I' d bring him a warm meal after a long shift at the hospital.

My stomach clenched.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a black credit card. The Centurion Card. The mythical "black card" reserved for the world' s wealthiest individuals. He handed it to the jeweler without a second thought.

I thought of the gift he had given me for our one-year anniversary. A small, heart-shaped locket from a flea market. He' d told me it was all he could afford, and he' d polished it for hours to make it shine for me. I had worn it every single day since. Now, the memory felt like swallowing shards of glass. That cheap, tarnished piece of metal versus a river of diamonds for Olivia.

I had to get out of there. I turned to leave, to melt back into the anonymity of the crowd, but my movements were clumsy. My shoulder bumped into a street vendor' s cart laden with cheap souvenirs. A dozen little snow globes depicting the city skyline crashed to the pavement, shattering into a thousand tiny pieces.

The sound was shockingly loud in the quiet, reverent atmosphere of the street.

Heads turned. Including theirs.

Through the window, I saw Ethan' s eyes widen in horror as they locked with mine. Olivia' s smile vanished, replaced by a contemptuous sneer.

Panic seized him. I saw it clearly on his face-the frantic, cornered look of a man whose two carefully separated worlds had just collided. He dropped the shopping bags he was holding, their expensive contents spilling onto the plush carpet of the store.

He was caught. And for a fleeting, satisfying moment, I saw the master manipulator, the heir to a tech fortune, look just as lost and terrified as I had felt hours earlier.