By the last page, his knuckles were bone-white, and his chest rose and fell with sharp, clipped breaths.
“Divorce?” His voice was a low growl, dangerous, as though the very walls had offended him. “She thinks she can walk away from me?”
He slammed the papers back onto the table. The sound echoed like a gunshot through the empty house.
“Evelyn!” His shout thundered down the hallway. He stormed into the bedroom, yanked open the closet. Empty. He pulled out drawers, one after another. Clothes—gone. Jewelry—gone. Even the faint scent of my perfume was already fading, replaced by the sterile emptiness of absence.
A low, humorless laugh escaped him, cold and sharp. “So that’s how you want to play it.”
Yet beneath the rage was something he didn’t want to name: disbelief. For three years, he had molded me, broken me down until obedience was my second nature. He had never imagined I could walk away without permission, without fear.
But the silence of the house mocked him. For the first time in our marriage, Matthew Lennox realized he was alone.
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