When I woke up in the hospital, the silence felt wrong—heavy, unnatural. Pain pulsed through my ribs with every breath, and my memory flickered like a damaged screen. But the moment Daniel walked in with that irritated, superior expression, the fog in my mind sharpened into something cold.
The nurse adjusting my pillows told him that family should show gentleness. He ignored her. When she left, I asked what happened. He shrugged and muttered something about fainting or a car accident. The lie was effortless. Slowly, the truth returned: the folder on his laptop, the messages with Mia—my assistant—proving their affair and the studio funds they’d used to enjoy it.
I remembered grabbing my keys, driving through tears, the crash, the darkness. Now here I was, bruised and broken, and Daniel still managed to drop divorce papers onto my lap. “Let’s not drag this out,” he said. “You’re not getting anything.” But his confidence shattered the moment my phone buzzed with a call from Jonathan, my aunt’s estate lawyer. He calmly informed me I was inheriting forty-seven million. Daniel froze.
When I told him to get out, he finally looked afraid. Later, when I came home, Mia was in my kitchen. She repeated his lies until I asked why standing there felt like fear. She left without a word. In my studio—the “hobby” Daniel dismissed—I touched the fabrics he never cared about. He also didn’t know I owned 70% of his company through a contract he signed without reading.
Jonathan and I prepared everything. In court, the affair, the stolen funds, the contract—all of it ended Daniel’s arrogance. My life began expanding as his collapsed. Then Samuel, my aunt’s longtime attorney, arrived with a second inheritance: her private atelier in Santa Barbara.
When I unlocked it, sunlight spilled across her unfinished designs. One was titled The Phoenix. I finished it, restored the atelier, and launched a collection in her honor. When it finally walked the runway, I felt myself rise from everything that tried to bury me.
Daniel never got to write my ending.
I did.