"Show me what he hides," I whispered to the empty room.

I untied the faded silk cord around my velvet pouch. For five years before meeting George, I read tarot cards for strangers in a downtown parlor, spotting lies before people even took off their coats.

After we exchanged vows, I tucked the deck into the bottom of my cedar chest. I told myself trust meant never looking beneath the surface.

I cut the deck three times on the glass coffee table.

"George first," I said aloud.

I flipped three cards in a row.

The Moon. The Devil. The Eight of Cups reversed.

Deception. Carnal entanglement. An inability to walk away from an old bond.

My fingers chilled. I reached back into the deck, drawing a separate trio for Becky.

"Show me her tether."

I laid her cards directly beneath his.

The Three of Swords. The Lovers reversed. The King of Cups.

The patterns matched with terrifying accuracy. The orientation, the hidden ties, the shared current of an ancient flame burning through rotten wood. The exact positions mirrored George's spread. It wasn't a sudden relapse. It was an ongoing, calculated continuation.

I stared at the painted cardboard.

A laugh ripped out of my chest—dry, sharp, and sudden.

A tear escaped my lash, tracking hot down my jaw, but the laughter didn't stop.

"Turns out I wasn't stupid," I told the silent living room. "I just refused to believe the answer."

I stood up, kicked the wooden coffee table back, and didn't bother packing the cards.

I pulled my single hard-shell suitcase from the master closet. I left the jewelry George bought me. I left the silk dresses, the designer handbags, the anniversary gifts. I packed four sweaters, two pairs of jeans, my passport, and my laptop.

Then I sat at his walnut desk and pulled a fresh document template onto my screen.

*Petition for Dissolution of Marriage.*

I typed without stopping. Under asset distribution, I checked every box waiving claim to the property.

*Petitioner requests zero spousal support.*

*Petitioner surrenders all claim to shared real estate, vehicles, and equity.*

I printed three copies, scribbled my signature in black ink across the bottom of each page, and pressed the papers flat against the granite kitchen island beneath my silver house key.

Ten minutes later, I hauled my suitcase into the trunk of my sedan.

I plugged my destination into the navigation screen: *Metropolitan Airport - Terminal 2.*

The digital clock on the dashboard read 3:42 AM. The suburbs were dead quiet, shrouded in gray mist.

I turned onto the two-lane perimeter parkway that wrapped around the outer edge of the county. The road stretched empty ahead, bordered by dense pine groves and drainage ditches.

My phone buzzed through the car speakers.

*Incoming Call: Becky.*

I hit the red button on the steering wheel.

It rang again two seconds later.

I tapped the screen to reject it.

A third buzz shook the dashboard. This time, a text flashed across the display:

*Look behind you, bitch.*

My eyes snapped to the rearview mirror.

A pair of high beams crested the dark hill behind me, accelerating with terrifying speed.

The phone rang again. I struck the green answer button.

"What do you want, Becky?" I demanded, gripping the wheel.

"Pull over, Nicole!" Becky’s voice shrieked through the speakers, wild and ragged. "Pull the fucking car over right now!"

"Are you insane?" I glanced at the speedometer. I was doing fifty-five. The high beams behind me were closing the gap by twenty miles an hour. "Stay away from me!"

"I saw what you left on the counter!" Becky screamed. Wind whipped through her background audio. She was driving with her windows down. "I went to your house to talk to George! I found your papers!"

"Then congratulations," I said, cold disgust hardening my voice. "You won. Take him. Take the house. Take everything."

"You think you're noble, don't you?!" Becky’s voice cracked into a crazed, breathless sob. "You think you can just sign some paper, walk away like a saint, and leave him pining after you for the rest of his life?!"

"I don't give a damn what George does," I said, watching her front bumper loom within feet of my trunk. "Back off!"

"He showed up at my apartment an hour ago!" she shouted. "He sat on my floor and cried your name! He begged me to tell him how to get you back! He touched me for three years while pretending I was you, and the second you walk out, he forgets I exist!"

"That sounds like your problem, Becky."

"It's your fault!" she shrieked. "You stole my life! He proposed to you with the exact ring style I showed him in high school! He bought you the house we picked out on Zillow when we were nineteen! You're living in my skin!"

"He's all yours now," I yelled back, checking the ditch on my right. "Back the fuck off!"

"If you disappear, he'll build a shrine to you!" Becky roared. "He'll spend thirty years mourning the perfect wife who walked away clean! I won't let you be his martyr!"

"Becky, stop—"

*BANG.*

Her heavy front grille slammed into my rear bumper.

My seatbelt snapped tight across my chest, knocking the air straight from my lungs. The sedan fish-tailed toward the shoulder, tires squealing over gravel.

"Have you lost your fucking mind?!" I fought the steering wheel, wrestling the tires back onto the asphalt.

"I'm taking back what was mine!" Becky’s laughter blasted through the speakers, shrill and frantic. "He was mine first!"

Her headlights flared brighter in the mirror as she pulled into the oncoming lane, pulling up alongside my driver's side.

Through the tinted glass, I saw her face. Her blonde hair whipped wildly in the wind, her eyes wide, manic, completely unhinged.

"Becky, don't do this!" I screamed.

She didn't answer.

Becky wrenched her steering wheel hard to the right.

Her SUV smashed directly into my front quarter panel.

Metal crumpled with a deafening screech.

The impact tore the steering wheel out of my grip. My sedan spun clockwise, tires losing traction on the wet pavement.

"Nicole!" Becky’s scream echoed from the phone, but it was swallowed by the violent roar of shattering safety glass.

The sedan slammed sideways into the ditch embankment.

The world tilted upside down.

The roof caved in.

A brutal blow struck the left side of my skull.

The car rolled once, twice, three times, tossing me like a rag doll against the deployed airbags. Glass rained over my neck, sharp and freezing cold.

The vehicle landed on its crushed roof with a sickening crunch.

Silence descended.

Smoke hissed from the crumpled hood, carrying the sharp stink of ruptured coolant.

My phone lay shattered three feet away in the dirt, the screen flickering weakly against a pine trunk.

I couldn't move my arms. Warm blood poured down my cheek, pooling into the corner of my eye.

Above the ditch, the hum of an idling engine paused on the asphalt.

Car doors didn't open.

Tires screeched once, spinning over loose gravel, and then the sound of the SUV accelerated rapidly into the distance, leaving me alone in the dark.

My vision narrowed to a pinprick of gray light.

*George...*

The name scraped across my fading thoughts, cold and bitter.

Then the light went out, and the world vanished into total black.