The Maybach smelled of leather and Branson's cologne, the same combination that had filled their bedroom for years. Faith sat by the left window, her shoulder pressed to the cold glass, and watched Manhattan slide past in gray and brown and the occasional desperate green of winter-dead trees.

Branson occupied the opposite corner. They'd left the center seat empty, the wide armrest between them like a border wall. He'd loosened his tie-silk, Hermès, the pattern she'd selected for his birthday three years ago. His collar gaped to show the hollow of his throat.

Neither spoke.

Traffic thickened as they approached the courthousel. Faith watched a cyclist weave between delivery trucks, puffs of breath visible in the cold air. The cyclist wore a backpack with a patch she couldn't read, heading somewhere with purpose, belonging to himself alone.

"I never crossed that line with her."

Branson's voice cut through the engine's hum. Faith didn't turn.

"The Kent situation. It's-" He stopped. Started again. "There's an arrangement. Her career, certain protections. I can't explain the details, but it wasn't-"

"Wasn't what?" Faith finally looked at him. " Wasn't betrayal? Wasn't another way to remind me that I exist only when you choose to notice me?"

Branson's jaw tightened. "You're being irrational. This is exactly why I never-" He caught himself. "There are considerations you don't understand. Business considerations."

"I understand that you spent three years coming home at three in the morning. That you stopped touching me after the second miscarriage. That when I found another woman's jewelry in your desk, you didn't even bother to lie convincingly." Faith turned back to the window. "I understand perfectly, Branson. I just stopped caring."

The car stopped at a light. Branson's reflection ghosted in the glass beside her-handsome still, always handsome, the face that had launched a thousand magazine covers and investor presentations.

"You're making a mistake." His voice had dropped, almost intimate, the tone he'd used in the early years when they'd still shared a bed. "You have no money, no connections, no skills that translate to-"

"To what? Real life?" Faith laughed. "I managed your mother's foundation for eight years. I sat on boards you couldn't be bothered to attend. I learned to read financial statements because you refused to explain where our money came from." She met his eyes in the glass. "I'm not the girl you found in that studio, Branson. You just never bothered to notice."

The light changed. The car moved forward.

Branson leaned across the armrest. His hand closed on her wrist-hard, sudden, the grip of a man accustomed to holding things that tried to escape.

"Who is he?"

"Who?"

"The man you're leaving me for." His fingers tightened. She could feel her pulse against his thumb, rabbit-fast. "There's someone. There has to be. You wouldn't-" He stopped, throat working. "You wouldn't just go. Not after everything I've given you."

Faith looked at his hand. At the signet ring pressing into her skin, the family crest she'd once traced in idle moments, imagining it meant she belonged somewhere.

"Let go."

"Tell me his name."

"There's no one." She pulled against his grip, feeling skin stretch and protest. "There never was. That was your mistake, Branson. You thought I needed someone else to want me before I could leave you. You never understood that wanting myself was enough."

His fingers spasmed. For a moment, she thought he might hold on, might force this confrontation into physical territory where he had every advantage. Then his hand opened. Released.

She pulled her wrist back, cradling it against her chest. No marks, she saw. Not yet. But they'd bloom later, purple and yellow, the last gifts of their marriage.

"You're pathetic." The words came soft, almost wondering. "All this power, all this money, and you're terrified of being alone. Of being unwanted." Faith shook her head. "I pity you, Branson. I really do."

The car slowed. Through the windshield, the courthouse rose in wedding-cake grandeur, columns and steps and the constant flow of people entering to begin or end their most important legal bonds.

"We're here," the driver announced.

Faith gathered her bag. She didn't look at Branson again-couldn't, not without risking something she didn't have words for. She pushed open her door and stepped into winter light, into the next chapter, into whatever came after being Mrs. Jarvis.

The contrast hit her immediately.

To her left, a young couple in matching sweaters held hands and giggled, clutching a paper number for the marriage license line. The woman's ring was small, practical, nothing like the stone Faith had abandoned on her vanity. The man kept touching her hair, tucking it behind her ear, as if he couldn't believe his luck.

Faith walked past them toward the separate entrance Julian had described. The divorce filing office. The end of things.

Branson caught up to her on the steps. He moved differently now, she noticed-less certainty in his stride, as if the ground itself had become unstable. His hand went to his pocket, emerged with his phone, checked it, returned it. A gesture she'd seen him perform a thousand times in meetings, now stripped of its power.

Julian waited inside the lobby, briefcase in hand, a folder of prepared documents ready for submission. He'd arranged for a private judge, expedited processing, all the privileges that money could buy even in the dissolution of marriage.

"Mrs. Jarvis. Mr. Jarvis." He nodded to each of them with perfect neutrality. "This way, please."

The private chamber was small, wood-paneled, dominated by a raised desk where a white-haired woman in judicial robes reviewed their paperwork. Judge Harriet Warren had handled celebrity divorces, political scandals, the dissolution of fortunes that made the Jarvis holdings look modest. She read through Faith's waiver of property rights with eyebrows raised, pen making occasional notes in the margin.

"Ms. McKenzie." The judge looked up, glasses catching light, using Faith's maiden name with pointed precision. "You understand that by signing these documents, you relinquish all claims to marital assets, including real property, investment accounts, trust distributions, and future support? This is irrevocable. Even if you later discover assets your husband concealed, you will have no legal recourse."

"I understand."

"And you execute this waiver freely, without coercion or duress?"

Faith felt Branson's eyes on her, hot and urgent, willing her to hesitate. To reconsider. To prove this had all been performance, a bid for attention she'd never intended to complete.

"I do."

Judge Warren turned to Branson. "Mr. Jarvis, do you confirm that you enter this agreement freely, and that you have made full disclosure of all marital assets to your satisfaction?"

Branson's throat moved. "I do."

"Very well." The judge lifted a wooden gavel, small and worn with use. "By the authority vested in me by the State of New York, I hereby declare the marriage between Branson Anthony Jarvis and Faith Margaret McKenzie dissolved. You are each restored to single status, effective immediately."

The gavel fell.

The sound was less dramatic than Faith had expected-a soft thud, final but not violent. She waited for something to happen. For grief to arrive, or regret, or the panic Branson had predicted.

Instead, she felt light. Unmoored, certainly. Terrifyingly free. But light.

Judge Warren was speaking about certificates, about filing timelines, about the legal formalities that remained. Julian stepped forward to handle details, his voice low and professional.

Faith took her copy of the decree. The paper was thin, official, stamped with a seal that meant nothing and everything. She folded it carefully and slipped it into her bag.

When she looked up, Branson was watching her. His face was gray, she saw. The color of men who'd received terminal diagnoses or margin calls that destroyed fortunes.

She smiled at him. She couldn't help it. The expression felt strange on her face, unpracticed, stretching muscles that had learned permanent neutrality.

"Don't," he said. The word was barely audible.

"Don't what?"

"Don't look like that. Like you're-" He stopped. Swallowed. "Like you're happy."

"I am happy, Branson." She said it simply, as fact. "I'm sorry that hurts you. But I am."

She turned and walked toward the door. Behind her, she heard Julian's voice, something about collecting remaining documents, and Branson's rough response cutting him off.

Outside, the winter sun had broken through clouds. Faith stood on the steps and breathed-deeply, fully, feeling cold air fill lungs that had operated on shallow sips for years.

Branson emerged behind her. She heard his footsteps stop, felt his presence like a shadow she was finally learning to step out of.

"The car-" he started.

"I'll take the service vehicle." She didn't turn. "Holly arranged for one of the security team to drive me back to the apartment. To collect my things."

"Faith-"

"Goodbye, Branson."

She walked down the steps, toward the black SUV waiting at the curb, toward the empty apartment and the empty future and the terrifying, exhilarating project of discovering who she'd been before they made her into someone else.