I made roasted chicken with rosemary tonight. The kind Drew used to like before he stopped coming home for dinner. Before Giselle Rose came back into his life and every warm thing between us went cold.

I carry the covered dish through the lobby of his building—our building, technically, though I haven't lived here in months. The doorman nods without smiling. Everyone in this place knows. They've watched me arrive with hope and leave with less of it, over and over, for three years.

The elevator is mirrored on all sides. I see myself holding the dish: dark hair pulled back, simple dress, the gold band still on my finger. I look like someone playing the role of wife. I wonder if I ever looked like anything else.

The penthouse is on the fortieth floor. I have a key, but I knock anyway. It's a habit now—entering Drew's space feels like trespassing even when I'm invited. Which I'm not, tonight. But it's our anniversary. Three years since the wedding neither of us wanted. I thought maybe if I showed up, if I tried one more time, something might shift.

The door swings open before I finish knocking.

Drew stands there in shirtsleeves, tie loosened, looking past me like I'm blocking his view of something more important. "What are you doing here?"

"I brought dinner." I lift the dish slightly. "It's our anniversary."

His face doesn't change. "I'm busy, Elina."

"I know. I just thought—"

"You thought wrong."

He steps aside, not to let me in, but because someone is walking up behind him. Giselle Rose appears in the hallway, barefoot, wearing one of Drew's shirts over her dress. Her coat is draped over the back of the sofa. Her heels are by the door, settled in like they belong.

She sees me and smiles. It's a soft smile, almost apologetic. "Oh. Elina. I didn't know you were coming by."

Drew's hand is still on the doorframe. He doesn't move away from her. Doesn't explain. His jaw is tight, but not with guilt—with irritation, like I'm a problem he's tired of solving.

I look at Giselle. At the shirt. At Drew's hand, so close to her shoulder. At the way she stands in his space without hesitation, without the constant second-guessing that has defined every moment I've spent in this apartment.

I set the dish down on the entry table. My hands are steady. That surprises me.

"I'll go," I say quietly.

Drew exhales through his nose. "Wait."

He walks past me into the living room, and I hear a drawer open. When he comes back, he's holding a manila envelope. He holds it out without meeting my eyes.

"What is this?"

"Divorce papers," he says. "Sign them."

The air goes thin. I take the envelope because my hands do it automatically, before my brain catches up. I pull out the document. It's thick. Professional. Every page flagged with a little yellow tab where my signature is required.

"You already signed," I say. His name is there at the bottom of the first page, black ink, dated two days ago.

"I had them drawn up last week," Drew says. His voice is flat, businesslike. "You'll keep the settlement we agreed on when we married. No alimony. Clean break."

Giselle shifts her weight behind him. She's watching me carefully now, and I realize she's waiting for something. Tears, maybe. Begging. Some visible crack she can carry away as proof that she won.

I look at Drew. At the man I tried so hard to reach for three years. The man who looked at me on our wedding day like I was a debt being paid. Who flinched when I touched him. Who never once asked what I wanted, what I felt, whether I was all right.

"Do you have a pen?" I ask.

Something flickers across his face. Surprise, maybe. But he reaches into his pocket and hands me one.

I don't read the document. I flip to each tab and sign my name. Elina Patterson. Elina Patterson. Elina Patterson. It takes less than two minutes. When I'm done, I close the folder, slide it back into the envelope, and hand it to him.

"There," I say. "Clean break."

I turn and walk to the elevator. My thumb presses hard into the inside of my left wrist, a habit I've had since I was a child. It's the only part of me that's shaking.

The elevator doors close. I watch Drew's floor number drop away: 40, 39, 38. My reflection stares back at me from the mirrored walls, and I don't recognize the woman I see. She looks calm. Composed.

I don't cry until I'm outside. The cold hits my face and something breaks open in my chest, but I keep walking. I don't look back at the building. I don't let myself stop.

I made it three years. I can make it to my car.

The hospital room is too bright. Fluorescent lights hum overhead, the kind that make everything look washed out and unreal. I sit in the donation chair with my sleeve rolled up, watching the needle slide into the crook of my arm. The nurse tapes it down and adjusts the line. She's efficient. Kind, in the distant way hospital staff are kind when they've seen too much.

"You're doing great," she says. "Just relax."

I nod. My thumb presses into the inside of my left wrist, hidden beneath the armrest. It's the only part of me that's moving.

Across the room, Giselle lies in her hospital bed, propped up on pillows, IV in her arm. She looks pale and delicate, exactly the way she needs to look. Her eyes find mine and she smiles—small, grateful, the smile of someone who's been saved. I look away.

The blood moves through the tube. Dark red, steady. I watch it fill the bag and think about nothing. That's the trick I've learned over three years: how to be present in my body without actually being there. How to float just above the pain so it can't quite reach me.

"You okay, honey?" The nurse is back, checking the flow. She's looking at me more closely now. "You seem a little out of it."

"I'm fine," I say.

She doesn't look convinced, but she doesn't push. She just pats my free hand and moves on to check Giselle's vitals. I hear them talking in low voices. Giselle's laugh is soft and breathy. She's good at this. She's always been good at this.

The donation takes twenty minutes. When it's done, the nurse removes the needle, tapes gauze over the puncture site, and brings me a juice box and crackers. "Sit for a bit," she says. "Make sure you're steady before you go."

I sip the juice. It's too sweet. My head feels light and hollow, like something has been scooped out and not replaced. I stare at the clock on the wall and count the seconds. Sixty. One hundred twenty. I just need to get through this. I just need to get out.

Then I hear the crash.

I turn in time to see Giselle on the floor beside her bed, one hand clutching the IV stand, the other pressed to her arm. She's gasping, eyes wide, face twisted in shock and pain. Two nurses rush over.

"She pushed me!" Giselle's voice breaks on the words. She's looking at me, tears streaming down her face. "She—she grabbed my arm and shoved me off the bed—"

"What?" I stand up too fast. The room tilts. "I didn't—"

"Look!" Giselle holds out her arm. There's a bruise there, dark and ugly, wrapping around her bicep like fingerprints. "She did this! She came in here and—"

One of the nurses is already on the phone. I hear her say Drew's name. I hear her say security. The other nurse helps Giselle back onto the bed, murmuring reassurances. Giselle is sobbing now, full-body shaking, the kind of crying that looks like trauma.

I take a step toward her. "I didn't touch you. I've been sitting in the chair the entire time—"

"She's lying!" Giselle's voice is raw. "She's been harassing me for months—she can't stand that Drew loves me—"

The room is spinning. I press my hand against the wall to steady myself. My mouth is dry. I try to find words, but they won't come. It doesn't matter. No one is looking at me like they want an explanation. They're looking at me like I'm dangerous.

The door slams open.

Drew strides in, still in his suit from the office, his face a mask of cold fury. He doesn't look at the nurses. He doesn't look at Giselle. He looks at me.

"What did you do?"

I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.

He crosses the room in three strides and grabs my right arm just above the elbow. His grip is iron. "I asked you a question."

"Drew, I didn't—"

He yanks me toward the door. The force of it sends me stumbling, and then there's a sound—a wet pop deep in my shoulder, loud enough that I hear it before I feel it. Then the pain hits. White-hot, total, radiating down my arm and into my chest. I can't breathe. I can't see. My knees buckle.

Drew is still holding me. His hand is still clamped around my arm, right above the joint that just came apart. I make a sound I don't recognize—something between a gasp and a scream.

"Security's calling the police," one of the nurses says. Her voice sounds far away.

Drew lets go. I collapse against the wall, cradling my right arm with my left. The shoulder is hanging wrong. I can feel it, the bone out of place, the socket empty. Every breath makes it worse.

"Good," Drew says. His voice is flat. "She assaulted someone in a hospital. She can explain it to them."

I look up at him. At the man I gave three years to. The man I just gave my blood to save his first love. He's staring down at me like I'm something he scraped off his shoe.

Giselle is still crying in the background. The sound is soft and broken and perfectly timed.

I close my eyes. My shoulder is on fire. My head is still light from the donation. I press my thumb into my wrist and count.

One. Two. Three.

I can make it through this.

I have to.

The holding cell smells like bleach and old sweat. I sit on the concrete bench with my back against the wall, my right arm cradled against my chest. The shoulder is swollen now. Tight and hot. Every small movement sends lightning down to my fingertips.

A woman across from me is asleep on the floor, curled around her shoes like they might get stolen. Another one paces near the bars, muttering to herself. The fluorescent lights never turn off. I don't know what time it is. I don't know how long I've been here.

The woman on the bench next to me shifts closer. She's older, maybe fifty, with tired eyes and a scar across her jaw. She looks at my arm.

"What happened?" she asks.

I swallow. My throat is dry. "I fell."

She studies me for a long moment. Then she nods and looks away. She doesn't believe me. But she doesn't push.

I press my thumb into my left wrist and count. One. Two. Three. The shoulder throbs with my heartbeat. I can feel the bone sitting wrong, pressing into places it shouldn't be. I try to breathe shallow so it won't move.

Sometime later—hours, maybe—a guard comes and takes me to a medical station. It's just a desk with a blood pressure cuff and a scale. A man in scrubs who looks half asleep tells me to sit. He touches my shoulder and I bite down on my lip so hard I taste copper.

"How long's it been like this?" he asks.

"Since yesterday."

He writes something on a clipboard. "You need an orthopedic consult. Probable nerve damage. I'm flagging this for follow-up."

He doesn't say when the follow-up will be. He doesn't give me anything for the pain. He just sends me back to the cell.

I sit on the bench and watch the lights hum. I think about Drew's hand on my arm. The sound my shoulder made. The way he looked at me after, like I deserved it.

I close my eyes. I don't sleep.

Morning comes with a guard calling my name. Someone posted bail. I stand up too fast and the room tilts. My shoulder screams. I follow the guard down a hallway that smells like industrial cleaner and out into a processing area where I sign papers I don't read.

Joshua Bell is waiting in the lobby.

He's standing near the window with his hands in his pockets, and when he sees me he doesn't smile or rush forward. He just walks over, steady and unhurried, and says, "Let's go."

I follow him to his car. It's clean inside. Quiet. He doesn't ask what happened. He doesn't ask if I'm okay. He starts the engine and pulls into traffic, and after a long silence he says, "Where do you need to go?"

My voice comes out rough. "The cemetery. I need to see my father."

He nods. He doesn't ask why. He just drives.

The ride is long. I watch the city pass outside the window—buildings, billboards, people going to work like the world is still normal. My shoulder pulses with every bump in the road. I cradle it with my left hand and press my thumb into my wrist. One. Two. Three.

Joshua doesn't fill the silence. He just drives, calm and deliberate, like there's nowhere else he needs to be.

When we pull into the cemetery, I see them immediately.

Workers. Three of them, with shovels and crowbars, tearing apart my father's grave. The headstone is tipped on its side. Memorial flowers are scattered across churned mud. One man is prying up the stone border. Another is digging.

I'm out of the car before it fully stops.

My legs are shaking. My shoulder is on fire. I stumble across the grass toward the grave, and that's when I see her.

Giselle.

She's standing near the edge of the plot, arms crossed, watching the workers like she's supervising a home renovation. She's dressed in a soft cream coat, hair perfect, face calm. She looks up when I approach, and for a moment something flickers across her expression—surprise, maybe, or annoyance that I'm here.

One of the workers straightens up, wiping his forehead. "This the right plot?" he asks Giselle.

"Yes," she says. Her voice is light. Casual. "Just make sure you get all of it. The family wants it cleared."

The worker grunts and goes back to digging. Another one laughs—low and ugly. "Old man probably didn't even see it coming," he says. "Driver said he barely had to swerve."

Giselle's mouth curves. "He nearly botched it," she says. "The whole point was to make it look clean. Not some sloppy accident."

The words land like a fist to my chest.

I stop walking. The ground tilts under me. My father's grave is being torn apart in front of me, and Giselle just confessed—casually, carelessly—that his death was never an accident at all.

She hired the driver. She killed him.

I don't think. I just move.

I lunge at her, my good arm reaching, my voice ripping out of my throat in something that isn't words. I don't know what I'm trying to do. Hit her. Hurt her. Make her feel a fraction of what she's taken from me.

I don't reach her.

Hands catch me from behind—strong, familiar. Drew.

He yanks me backward, his arm across my chest, and I scream. My shoulder tears apart all over again. The pain is total. Blinding.

"Let her go," Joshua's voice cuts through, sharp and close.

But Drew doesn't let go. He's holding me like I'm the threat. Like I'm the one who needs to be restrained.

One of the workers spits into the dirt near my feet. "Crazy bitch," he mutters.

Drew's grip tightens. Then his hand moves—fast, brutal—and he strikes me across the face.

The world goes white.

I'm on the ground. Mud under my knees. Blood in my mouth. My father's overturned headstone two feet from my face.

I hear Joshua shouting. I hear Drew's voice, cold and distant. I hear Giselle laughing softly.

I press my forehead into the dirt and close my eyes.

I'm done.