Chapter 4 - Exile and Answers
The hotel room was quiet, lit only by the amber glow of the bedside lamp. After getting Maya settled and asleep with a cartoon playing softly on mute, I sat on the edge of the queen mattress, staring at my phone. No calls from Shawn. No texts. Just deafening silence.
Around midnight, my phone finally buzzed against the nightstand.
It wasn't Shawn. It was Anthony.
“Can we meet?” the text read. “At the diner on 4th Street. Now.”
Ten minutes later, I slipped out of the hotel room, ensuring Maya was fast asleep, and drove through the empty, rain-slicked streets to the neon-lit diner. Anthony was sitting in a corner booth, nursing a cup of black coffee that looked untouched. He looked ten years older than he had that afternoon, his shoulders slumped and his eyes dark with exhaustion.
I slid into the vinyl booth across from him. "Anthony? What’s going on? Have you spoken to Olivia?"
"She’s gone," Anthony said flatly, staring into his coffee mug. "When I got back to the house, her closet was half-empty. All her designer bags, her passport, and the emergency cash box in our home office—gone. She cleared out our remaining credit lines before I could freeze them."
"I'm so sorry," I murmured genuinely.
"Don't be," he muttered, shaking his head. "You tried to warn me months ago, didn't you? Shawn told me you suspected something was off, but Olivia convinced me you were just jealous of her business."
"I never cared about her business, Anthony. I just cared about protecting my family from her toxicity," I replied. "What are you going to do now?"
May you like
"File for divorce and full financial audit," Anthony said, his voice hardening with a sudden, resolute strength. "She thinks she can run away with whatever cash she has left, but I’m freezing every asset she touches. And Aaron? I called Shawn before I came here. He’s still sitting in our empty house, refusing to pick a side."
My chest tightened. Even after walking out, he was still paralyzed by his sister's shadow.
