Jenna Jarvis POV

The movers left a trail of sawdust and scratches on the hardwood floor, jagged scars that mirrored the ones inside me.

I stood at the top of the stairs, gripping the banister as I watched the heavy oak desk disappear into the freight elevator.

Ivana stood at the bottom, wearing a smirk that could cut glass.

She caught my eye and winked.

It wasn't about the room. It wasn't about the light.

It was about taking.

She wanted to hollow me out until I was nothing but a shell, a husk, just so she could step inside and wear my life like a coat.

Corbett wouldn't look at me. He turned his back, feigning intense interest in a painting on the wall, his shoulders slumped in that familiar posture of cowardice.

That night, he came into our bed.

He lay on the edge, his back to me. The distance between us was only inches, but it felt like an ocean of ice.

"She's happy now," he whispered into the dark, his voice strained. "This is the last thing, Jenna. I promise. Once she settles in, things will go back to normal."

I didn't answer.

Normal was a myth. Normal was dead.

The next morning, I found them in the dining room.

Ivana was spreading sketches across the table, deliberately covering my breakfast setting.

"I'm thinking of painting the walls black," she said, biting into a piece of toast that had been on my plate. "To reflect my inner turmoil."

She saw me and smiled, though the expression didn't reach her eyes. "Oh, Jenna. Good morning. I have something to tell you."

My blood ran cold. "What?"

"I was moving some of those old boxes you left in the closet," she said breezily. "To make room for my easels."

"I moved all my boxes," I said.

"Not the small one," she said. "The one with the little crystal bottle. It was wrapped in velvet."

My heart stopped.

The 1928 Guerlain Djedi. My father's most prized possession. The last sealed bottle in existence. He had saved it for my wedding day, but I had never opened it because marrying Corbett felt like a funeral.

"Where is it?" I asked, my voice trembling.

"Oops," she said.

I didn't wait.

I sprinted to the guest room-my old studio.

The smell hit me before I even crossed the threshold.

Dry, animalic, somber. The scent of ancient grief.

The bottle lay shattered on the floor near the window. The dark amber liquid was soaking into the pristine white carpet, a stain that looked like dried blood.

"No," I whimpered.

I fell to my knees.

I reached for the shards, desperate to scoop up the liquid, to save even a drop of my father's memory.

The glass sliced into my palms.

I didn't feel the pain. I only felt the loss.

"It slipped," Ivana said from the doorway. Her voice was flat, bored.

I turned on her, my hands dripping with blood and perfume.

"You threw it!" I screamed. "You did this on purpose! You monster!"

Corbett stepped in front of her, shielding her from me.

"Jenna! Look at yourself!" he shouted. "You're bleeding all over the carpet!"

"She broke it!" I sobbed, holding up my lacerated hands. "It was my father's! She knew!"

"It was an accident!" Corbett yelled back. "Why do you always have to villainize her? She was trying to clean up!"

He looked at my bleeding hands with disgust, not concern.

"You're hysterical," he said. "Go clean yourself up. You're scaring her."

I looked at him.

He was standing over the wreckage of my father's legacy, protecting the woman who destroyed it.

He wasn't just weak. He was complicit.

I stood up.

I wiped my bloody hands on my jeans, leaving dark, crimson streaks against the denim.

The scent of Djedi was overwhelming, a funeral shroud wrapping around us.

"You're right," I said, my voice suddenly calm, terrifyingly steady. "I am scaring her. But not nearly enough."

Jenna Jarvis POV

Corbett tried to buy my forgiveness with a diamond bracelet.

He left it on my pillow the next day. It was a thick, heavy slab of platinum and ice, utterly tasteless.

I left it there.

He tried to buy me a new perfume next. Chanel No. 5.

"It's a classic," he said, smiling anxiously, his eyes darting over my face for a reaction. "Better than that old stuff that smelled like dirt."

I didn't tell him that Djedi was a masterpiece of dry woods and leather, and that Chanel on me smelled like battery acid.

I just nodded. The silent wife. The obedient doll.

Inside, I was screaming.

But I had a secret. I had accepted Kain Solomon's offer. The extraction team was in place.

I just needed one window of opportunity.

That window opened at the St. Jude's Charity Gala.

It was the biggest event of the season. The Commission would be there. The heads of the Five Families.

And Ivana was the guest of honor.

Corbett insisted I wear a red dress. "To show we are a united front," he said.

I felt less like a wife and more like a sacrificial lamb, draped in crimson for the slaughter.

The ballroom was suffocating. It was a cage of crystal chandeliers, predatory smiles, and the cloying scent of expensive desperation.

We sat at the head table. Ivana sat on Corbett's right. I sat on his left.

The hierarchy was clear.

After dinner, the lights dimmed.

"And now," the announcer boomed, "a special unveiling by our patron, Ms. Ivana Manning."

Ivana walked onto the stage. She looked radiant in a silver gown that shimmered like cold fish scales.

"This piece," she said into the microphone, her voice trembling with practiced emotion, "is inspired by the complex emotional landscape of my family. Specifically, the raw, unfiltered grief of my sister-in-law."

Corbett squeezed my hand under the table. "She's honoring you," he whispered.

I felt sick.

The curtain dropped.

The painting was massive.

It was a grotesque, distorted image of a woman on her knees, clawing at a broken bottle, her hands bloody, her face twisted into a mask of ugly, animalistic sobbing.

The title was painted in bold red letters at the bottom: SHATTERED MEMORIES.

It wasn't art. It was a violation.

She had taken my most vulnerable moment, the moment my heart broke for my father, and turned it into a spectacle for the elite to gawk at.

A ripple of murmurs went through the crowd. Some looked shocked. Others looked amused.

I froze.

I waited for Corbett to stand up. To shout. To demand they take it down. To defend his wife's dignity.

Corbett stood up.

And he began to clap.

He clapped loudly, nodding at Ivana, a proud smile on his face.

"Bravo!" he called out. "Bravo!"

The room followed his lead. The applause grew, a thunderous wave of approval for my humiliation.

I looked at Corbett's profile.

He was clapping for my pain.

He was celebrating the monetization of my trauma.

The tether finally snapped.

Not with a bang, but with a whisper.

I stood up.

Corbett grabbed my wrist. "Sit down," he hissed through his teeth, his grip bruising. "Don't make a scene."

I looked down at his hand. The wedding ring on his finger caught the light.

"Let go," I said.

"Jenna, everyone is watching."

"Let them watch," I said.

I ripped my hand from his grip.

I didn't run. I didn't cry.

I turned and walked through the center of the ballroom.

The applause faltered as people watched me leave.

I walked past the tables of Dons and Capos. I walked past the security guards.

I walked out the double doors and into the cool New York night.

I stripped the diamond bracelet from my wrist and dropped it into a silver champagne bucket with a hollow clink on my way out.

My phone buzzed in my clutch.

Extraction team at the north exit. You have 3 minutes.

I didn't look back at the hotel.

I looked at the black SUV idling at the curb.

The window rolled down.

Kain Solomon was sitting in the back seat.

He was darkness personified. Sharp angles, cold eyes, and a power that made the air around him vibrate.

He didn't smile. He just opened the door.

"Get in, Jenna," he said, his voice a low rumble. "It's time to breathe."

I stepped into the car.

The door slammed shut, sealing out the noise, the applause, and the man who had been my husband.

I wasn't Mrs. Ewing anymore.

I was free.

Jenna Jarvis POV

The night air outside the hotel was biting, a sharp, frigid shock against my skin, but it felt like the first breath of real oxygen I had inhaled in three years.

I didn't look back at the gilded doors of the ballroom, where the echoes of my husband's applause for my humiliation still lingered.

Instead, I looked at the black SUV idling at the curb.

The window rolled down, revealing a face hewn from granite and shadows.

Kain Solomon.

He didn't ask if I was sure. He didn't ask if I was okay.

He just opened the door.

"Get in," he said.

His voice was a low rumble, the kind that vibrated deep in your chest.

I climbed inside.

The leather seat was cool against my legs. The car smelled of expensive scotch, rich leather, and gun oil.

"Drive," Kain ordered the driver.

As the car pulled away, merging into the arterial chaos of New York traffic, my phone began to buzz.

It wasn't Corbett.

It was Ivana.

I stared at the screen, her name flashing like a warning sign in the dim cabin.

I answered. I needed to hear it one last time. I needed the sting of it to make sure I wasn't dreaming.

"You really are pathetic, running away like that," Ivana's voice slithered through the speaker, dripping with venomous triumph. "Corbett is furious. He says you're making us look unstable."

"I'm not running, Ivana," I said, my voice surprisingly steady. "I'm leaving."

"He'll never come for you," she laughed, a brittle, jagged sound. "He chose me tonight. He chose Elenor. You're just the placeholder that got too loud."

"You're right," I said, feeling a strange, cold calm settle over me. "He did choose you. And you deserve each other."

I hung up.

I didn't just end the call.

I opened the settings and blocked her number. Then I blocked Corbett's. Then the house line.

It felt like cutting an anchor loose from a drowning ankle.

"Done?" Kain asked.

He was watching me from the other side of the seat. He hadn't touched me, yet his presence filled the entire car.

"Done," I whispered.

"Good." He handed me a folder. "Your new identity for the flight. We are going to a private airstrip in Teterboro. By morning, you will be in France."

I took the folder, my fingers trembling slightly. "Why are you doing this, Kain? You're risking a war."

He looked out the window at the passing city lights, his profile stark against the glass.

"I don't start wars, Jenna," he said, turning his gaze back to me. "I finish them. And I hate seeing a masterpiece used as a doormat."

We flew through the night.

When we landed in Nice, the air was different.

It smelled of salt and pine and possibilities.

We took a car up into the hills, toward Grasse, the perfume capital of the world.

Kain brought me to a stone cottage on the edge of a vast estate.

It was secluded, surrounded by fields of jasmine that were just beginning to close for the night.

"This is yours," he said as we stood on the gravel driveway. "No guards inside. No cameras. Just you."

He pointed to a building adjacent to the cottage. "And that is your lab. Fully stocked. Everything you lost, I replaced. And more."

My throat tightened.

"I don't know how to repay you."

"Create," he said. "That is all I ask. Make something that doesn't smell like fear."

I went inside.

I didn't sleep. I went straight to the lab.

I worked for forty-eight hours straight, blending, smelling, crying, and blending again. I poured every ounce of pain into the vials, distilling my grief until there was nothing left but essence.

Two days later, Kain came to the door.

He held a tablet.

"You should see this," he said.

I wiped my hands on my apron. "What is it?"

"My legal team sent over some paperwork to Corbett's office disguised as a land acquisition deal for the docks," Kain said, a dark amusement dancing in his eyes. "He was so distracted by the fallout from the gala and his stock prices dropping that he didn't read the fine print."

He handed me the tablet.

It was a digital copy of a document.

"He signed it," Kain said. "He thought he was signing a union concession contract buried in the merger files. He signed the divorce papers, Jenna. Uncontested."

I stared at the signature.

Corbett Ewing.

He had signed me away without even looking, too busy trying to save his money to save his wife.

I looked up at Kain.

"I'm free," I whispered.

"Legally," Kain said. "Now we make sure you stay that way."