Chapter 2

The hospital morgue was even colder than I had imagined. I went through all the procedures alone—signing the papers, paying the fees, and contacting the funeral home.

By the time Leo's body was reduced to a small urn—one that felt so suffocatingly heavy I could barely breathe—I clutched it tightly to my chest and made my way back to the mansion.

The silence inside the sprawling estate was suffocating.

Every inch of the place screamed top-tier luxury: priceless Persian rugs, hand-blown crystal chandeliers, authentic Renaissance paintings on the walls. Yet, looking around, not a single thing in this house truly belonged to me.

From the day I said "I do," my life had been reduced to one long, humiliating approval process.

Buying groceries required submitting an itemized list in the system three days in advance. Getting nutritional supplements for Leo meant I had to upload prescription proofs from three different specialized hospitals.

Once, my period came early, and I desperately needed money to buy a pack of sanitary pads. Chloe stalled the request in the system for a full twenty-four hours, citing it as an "unplanned expense."

That night, I sat on a toilet in a supermarket restroom for an entire night, until a kind cleaning lady finally slipped a pad under the stall door.

I had once printed out those absurd rejection emails and slammed them onto Rowan's desk, demanding answers.

But Rowan didn't even bother lifting his eyes from his computer screen. "Chloe graduated from a top-tier business school. Her management is flawless. Sienna, stop projecting your own unreasonable tantrums onto others. She stalls your requests because you refuse to learn the rules."

Rules. There were no rules. In this man's eyes, I was never his wife. I was just a canary he kept caged, surviving on his draconian handouts just to ensure I could never fly away.

The only reason I was willing to swallow all the blood and tears, playing along with their sick show like a puppet devoid of dignity and voice, was because Rowan held the keys to the top medical network in the country. And he was the only one who could afford Leo's monthly medical bills.

I carefully placed Leo's urn on the nightstand. Just then, my phone lit up with an Instagram notification. Chloe had just posted a new update.

The photo showed an open M&A file, weighted down by an open velvet box. Inside rested a dazzling, latest-season diamond bracelet.

The caption read: "A late-night overtime surprise from the boss. As his risk-management assistant, not only do I have to keep his books in perfect order, but I also have to know how to graciously accept his 'special favoritism.' Makes all the hard work worth it. 💼✨"

Without a shred of hesitation, I typed out a comment right under her public post:

"The bracelet is stunning. No wonder you nickel-and-dime my budget for basic daily necessities under the guise of 'risk control.' It turns out all the money you 'saved' for my husband magically turned into the 'favoritism' on your wrist."

I hit send. I didn't stick around to watch the internet explode, nor did I care how this explosive comment would spiral out of control.

I stood up and dragged out a battered suitcase.

Yanking the closet door open, I realized that in three years of marriage, I never even had the right to buy myself a simple T-shirt. In this massive walk-in closet, I couldn't piece together even three decent outfits that actually belonged to me.

I only packed a few faded jeans and oversized sweaters I had brought with me before the wedding, along with a few yellowed archaeology textbooks. The suitcase was pitifully light—just like the sense of self that had been entirely erased over the past three years.

Just as I zipped the suitcase shut, the electronic chime of the front door's keypad echoing through the hall signaled someone's arrival.

Heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs before the bedroom door was shoved open with brute force.

Rowan stood in the doorway, his tie yanked loose, his face flushed with fury. He was gripping his phone so tightly it looked like a weapon in his hand.

I wasn't the least bit surprised that he had rushed back so quickly to interrogate me. After all, over the last three years, his response time was always astonishingly fast whenever Chloe allegedly suffered the slightest grievance.

Standing there, Rowan didn't even glance at the glaringly obvious urn on the nightstand. He didn't ask where I had been all morning, nor did he ask what I had just been through.

"Are you fucking out of your mind?" he roared. "Do you have any idea what you've done? Chloe is having a panic attack in her office! Her DMs are flooded with death threats! The PR department is scrambling to clean up this psychotic stunt you pulled on social media!"

He took a menacing step toward me, jabbing a finger in my direction. "You are going to log back into your account right now and delete that comment! Then you're going to post a public apology claiming you were hacked. Do you hear me?"

I looked at him. I stared at the man I had begged, compromised for, and destroyed myself over. In this exact moment, he looked so incredibly small to me.

I grabbed the handle of my suitcase with one hand, and with the other, I gently picked up Leo's urn.

"Sienna, are you even listening to me?" Rowan snapped.

When he finally noticed my luggage, a flash of utter disbelief crossed his eyes. "Where the hell do you think you're going with that suitcase?"

"I heard you," I finally spoke. The absolute deadpan emptiness in my tone seemed to catch him off guard, making him freeze.

I bypassed him without a second glance, stopping only when I reached the bedroom doorway. I didn't look back.

"Rowan, I want a divorce."