Chapter 6

The city lights blurred as I walked, my heels clicking a frantic rhythm on the cold pavement. The applause from the ballroom still rang in my ears, a mocking chorus to my humiliation. Corbett' s words echoed in my head: "She transforms pain into beauty." He hadn' t just failed to defend me; he had praised my abuser for her artistry in torturing me.

I remembered a time, early in our marriage, when a rival developer had made a snide remark about my family' s modest background at a cocktail party. Corbett had, without a moment' s hesitation, calmly and icily dismantled the man' s reputation in front of his peers, defending my honor with a ferocity that had left me breathless. That man was a stranger to me now.

When I finally reached the street, a wave of nausea and fury washed over me. I ducked into a dark alleyway and leaned against the cold brick, gasping for air, finally letting the tears I had refused to shed in front of them fall.

My phone buzzed. It was Corbett. I ignored it. It buzzed again. And again.

Then a text came through. "The driver is waiting for you out front. Please don' t make a scene."

He wasn' t worried about me. He was worried about his image.

I walked out of the alley and saw the black town car idling by the curb. The driver, a man who had worked for the Ewings for twenty years, looked at me with pity in his eyes.

I got in, but not to go home.

"Take me to JFK," I said, my voice hoarse. "International departures."

The driver looked surprised but didn' t question me.

As the car sped through the city, my phone buzzed again. It was Ivana. I answered, my hand shaking with rage.

"Leaving so soon, Jenna?" she purred. "The party is just getting started. Corbett is about to make a very generous donation in my name."

"Enjoy it," I said, my voice cold. "It' s the last thing you' ll ever get from him."

She laughed, a high, tinkling sound that grated on my nerves. "Oh, I don' t think so. He' ll always choose me. He has to. You' re just the temporary wife. I' m the permanent responsibility."

I hung up and blocked her number. Then I blocked Corbett' s.

I spent the night in an airport hotel, a ghost in a transient world. The next morning, I was on the first flight to Paris. From there, I would take a train to Grasse, to my new life. To Kain Solomon.

I landed in France feeling like I had shed a heavy, suffocating skin. The air smelled different-of rain and earth and distant flowers, not the sterile, recycled air of my penthouse prison.

My new life began in a small, sun-drenched stone cottage on the grounds of the Solomon Perfume House. It was simple, rustic, and more beautiful than any mansion I had ever lived in.

Kain Solomon greeted me himself. He was older than I remembered, with kind eyes and a warmth that seemed to radiate from him. He didn' t pity me. He respected me.

"Welcome, Jenna," he said, his voice a gentle baritone. "We are so honored to have you."

He showed me my new studio. It was a perfumer' s dream, filled with light and stocked with the rarest and most exquisite ingredients in the world. He had even managed to procure a small amount of a rare orchid absolute I had mentioned in my application, a feat that must have cost a fortune.

"I believe an artist needs the finest tools," he said with a simple smile.

For the first time in years, I felt a spark of my old self return. The passion, the excitement, the love for my craft. Here, I wasn' t Corbett Ewing' s broken wife. I was Jenna Jarvis, perfumer.

Days turned into weeks. I lost myself in my work, creating scents that were born not of pain, but of hope. I created a perfume that smelled of the sun on warm stone, of the wild lavender that grew on the hillsides, of the clean, fresh air of my newfound freedom. I called it "Rebirth."

Meanwhile, back in New York, Corbett was losing his mind. My assistant, a woman I had hired and who was loyal only to me, kept me updated. He had torn the penthouse apart looking for me. He had hired a dozen private investigators. He had offered a million-dollar reward for any information on my whereabouts. But I had vanished. I had erased myself from his world as completely as he and Ivana had tried to erase me from my own life.

The final piece of my plan fell into place a month after I left. My lawyer in New York served him with the divorce papers. They were delivered to him in the middle of a board meeting.

According to my assistant, he didn' t even look at them at first. He thought they were just more legal documents for one of his deals. He signed them without reading, his mind clearly elsewhere.

His secretary, a man he trusted implicitly but who had grown to despise Ivana' s influence, pointed to the signature line. "Sir, perhaps you should read this one."

Corbett glanced down. He saw my signature. And then he saw the words: "Petition for Dissolution of Marriage."

He went white. He stared at the papers, his hand trembling. He looked up at his secretary, his eyes wide with disbelief and a dawning, sickening horror.

"What is this?" he whispered.

"It appears to be a legally executed divorce agreement, sir," the secretary replied, his voice flat. "Signed by you. It' s ironclad."

Corbett slowly sank into his chair, the signed papers fluttering from his hand to the floor. He had signed away his own marriage, carelessly, thoughtlessly, just as he had signed away my happiness for years. The perfect, poetic justice of it was not lost on me.

He had freed me. And he didn' t even know he was doing it.