Chapter 4

I started pulling clothes from the closet, stuffing them haphazardly into a suitcase I found. My hands were shaking.

Their voices drifted from the living room, low and intimate.

I tried to block them out, but then I heard Eleanor' s voice, clear and cutting.

"Don't worry about him, David. He's just a means to an end. Being with the Thompson family, it gives me an 'in' with city planning, the zoning board. It secures funding. My projects, the ones you and I are going to build, they need that kind of backing."

A means to an end.

My heart, already bruised, seemed to crack.

All those years, all those plans we' d made. All a transaction for her.

David murmured something I couldn' t catch, then Eleanor laughed, a light, dismissive sound.

"He' ll get over it. Or he won' t. It doesn' t really matter to our future, does it?"

I leaned against the doorframe, the fight draining out of me, replaced by a hollow ache.

I finished packing what I could from the bedroom, then moved to the study to get my laptop and some papers.

That' s when I saw it.

The master bedroom door was ajar.

Curiosity, or maybe a morbid need to see the full extent of the wreckage, pulled me closer.

I pushed it open.

The room was different.

Our bed, the one we' d picked out together, had a new, sleek, modern headboard I' d never seen. New linens, a dark, masculine color.

A man' s clothes were draped over the chair in the corner. Not mine. David' s.

My side of the closet was empty. My dresser drawers, when I pulled one open, were bare.

They hadn't just moved in together. They' d erased me.

I felt a sudden, desperate need to get out.

As I walked back through the living room, my suitcases bumping against my legs, David looked up from his phone.

He had that smug, pitying look on his face.

"Oh, Mike," he said, feigning concern. "Eleanor was just saying, some of your older things, the ones that didn't quite fit the new aesthetic, she had them moved to a storage unit. For safekeeping, of course."

"How thoughtful," I managed, my voice dripping with sarcasm.

Then my phone buzzed. A new message. From David.

An attachment. A video.

My stomach clenched. I knew, even before I opened it, that it would be bad.

I stepped into the hallway, my back to them, and tapped it open.

It was them. Eleanor and David. In our condo, on our sofa.

Intimate. Very intimate.

And then Eleanor' s voice, clear as a bell, laced with contempt.

"He's just so... unambitious, you know? Sweet, I guess, in a boring, predictable way. But no fire. Not like you, David. You have that raw talent, that drive."

Raw talent. The talent she' d cultivated, probably stealing his best ideas and passing them off as her own mentoring.

The video ended.

I felt sick. Humiliated.

This wasn't just betrayal. This was a deliberate, cruel twisting of the knife.

I looked up. Eleanor was watching me, a faint, knowing smile on her lips.

She knew he' d sent it. She wanted me to see it.

I turned and walked out, not saying another word.

The door slammed shut behind me, a period on a chapter of my life I wanted to burn.