Chapter 5
*(Luca's POV)*
The penthouse was silent.
Not the comfortable silence of late nights and soft breathing — the hollow silence of a place where someone used to exist and no longer did.
I'd come home from the gala expecting to find Evelyn asleep. I'd been prepared to argue — about the seating arrangements, about Bianca, about whatever small grievance she'd built up this time.
What I found instead: a bare closet. An empty bathroom counter. And on the dining table, three objects arranged with surgical precision.
Divorce papers. Signed.
Her wedding ring.
And a note that burned itself into my skull.
*My mother's name was Helen. She was 63.*
I called her seventeen times that night. Straight to voicemail. I called Margaret — she'd already left, ma'am said she wouldn't be returning. I called the building security — she'd walked out with one suitcase at 6:42 AM.
One suitcase. Three years of marriage. One suitcase.
By morning, I was tearing through the city. Her old apartment — cleared out months ago. Her mother's house — dark, a foreclosure notice on the door. The hospital where Helen had—
The hospital.
I walked into that general ward corridor and felt something crawl up my throat. It was cramped, chaotic, reeking of antiseptic and despair. The corner where they'd placed her mother's gurney still had a stain on the floor where a coffee had been spilled.
This is where Helen died.
While I was upstairs in the VIP ward with Bianca, eating room service sushi, Helen Ward was dying twenty feet below us.
I leaned against the wall, my breathing ragged.
"Mr. Castellano?" A nurse approached me, cautious. "Can I help you?"
"The woman who was here — Helen Ward. Her daughter. Where did her daughter go?"
The nurse's expression shuttered. "Mrs. Castellano? She sat with the body for three hours before anyone came to process the paperwork. She handled everything alone." A pause. "Sir, she was covered in blood. She'd been doing CPR herself. For almost twenty minutes after the heart stopped."
The floor tilted beneath me.
I thought of Evelyn's calls. Sixteen missed calls. And the seventeenth — answered by Bianca.
Bianca, who told me that Evelyn had "just wanted to chat about the seating plan" and that it "wasn't urgent."
A cold fury began to build behind my eyes — the kind that preceded my episodes. My blood heated; my vision narrowed.
But for the first time in years, there was no one to bring me back.
I gripped the wall until my knuckles went white, fighting it down alone. The episode passed in ugly waves — ten, fifteen, twenty minutes of shaking, sweating, barely controlled violence.
When it finally receded, I was on the floor of that hospital corridor, and a janitor was staring at me from ten feet away.
I pulled myself upright.
I needed to find her.
But "Evelyn Ward" had vanished. No credit card activity. No phone signal. No social media. No apartment lease. Nothing.
It was as if the woman I'd been married to for three years had never existed at all.
A week passed. Two. I hired private investigators — the best. They found nothing.
And then, exactly one month after she disappeared, my CFO walked into my office with a tablet showing a Forbes cover.
"Sir, we have a problem. Ashford Medical Group just acquired a majority stake in our European pharmaceutical partner. They're blocking the merger."
I barely heard him. My eyes were locked on the photograph.
A woman with sharp, dark eyes. Perfect posture. An expression like cut glass.
She was wearing a tailored white suit, standing in front of the Ashford Medical building, looking like she owned the world.
The caption read: *Evelyn Ashford, VP of Ashford Medical Group, leads $4.2B acquisition.*
Evelyn.
My Evelyn.
My hands went numb.
"Sir?" My CFO's voice seemed very far away. "Do you know her?"
I couldn't speak. I was staring at my wife — my ex-wife — and she looked like a completely different woman. Powerful. Untouchable. And wearing an expression I'd never seen on her face before.
She looked like she'd forgotten I existed.
The penthouse was silent.
Not the comfortable silence of late nights and soft breathing — the hollow silence of a place where someone used to exist and no longer did.
I'd come home from the gala expecting to find Evelyn asleep. I'd been prepared to argue — about the seating arrangements, about Bianca, about whatever small grievance she'd built up this time.
What I found instead: a bare closet. An empty bathroom counter. And on the dining table, three objects arranged with surgical precision.
Divorce papers. Signed.
Her wedding ring.
And a note that burned itself into my skull.
*My mother's name was Helen. She was 63.*
I called her seventeen times that night. Straight to voicemail. I called Margaret — she'd already left, ma'am said she wouldn't be returning. I called the building security — she'd walked out with one suitcase at 6:42 AM.
One suitcase. Three years of marriage. One suitcase.
By morning, I was tearing through the city. Her old apartment — cleared out months ago. Her mother's house — dark, a foreclosure notice on the door. The hospital where Helen had—
The hospital.
I walked into that general ward corridor and felt something crawl up my throat. It was cramped, chaotic, reeking of antiseptic and despair. The corner where they'd placed her mother's gurney still had a stain on the floor where a coffee had been spilled.
This is where Helen died.
While I was upstairs in the VIP ward with Bianca, eating room service sushi, Helen Ward was dying twenty feet below us.
I leaned against the wall, my breathing ragged.
"Mr. Castellano?" A nurse approached me, cautious. "Can I help you?"
"The woman who was here — Helen Ward. Her daughter. Where did her daughter go?"
The nurse's expression shuttered. "Mrs. Castellano? She sat with the body for three hours before anyone came to process the paperwork. She handled everything alone." A pause. "Sir, she was covered in blood. She'd been doing CPR herself. For almost twenty minutes after the heart stopped."
The floor tilted beneath me.
I thought of Evelyn's calls. Sixteen missed calls. And the seventeenth — answered by Bianca.
Bianca, who told me that Evelyn had "just wanted to chat about the seating plan" and that it "wasn't urgent."
A cold fury began to build behind my eyes — the kind that preceded my episodes. My blood heated; my vision narrowed.
But for the first time in years, there was no one to bring me back.
I gripped the wall until my knuckles went white, fighting it down alone. The episode passed in ugly waves — ten, fifteen, twenty minutes of shaking, sweating, barely controlled violence.
When it finally receded, I was on the floor of that hospital corridor, and a janitor was staring at me from ten feet away.
I pulled myself upright.
I needed to find her.
But "Evelyn Ward" had vanished. No credit card activity. No phone signal. No social media. No apartment lease. Nothing.
It was as if the woman I'd been married to for three years had never existed at all.
A week passed. Two. I hired private investigators — the best. They found nothing.
And then, exactly one month after she disappeared, my CFO walked into my office with a tablet showing a Forbes cover.
"Sir, we have a problem. Ashford Medical Group just acquired a majority stake in our European pharmaceutical partner. They're blocking the merger."
I barely heard him. My eyes were locked on the photograph.
A woman with sharp, dark eyes. Perfect posture. An expression like cut glass.
She was wearing a tailored white suit, standing in front of the Ashford Medical building, looking like she owned the world.
The caption read: *Evelyn Ashford, VP of Ashford Medical Group, leads $4.2B acquisition.*
Evelyn.
My Evelyn.
My hands went numb.
"Sir?" My CFO's voice seemed very far away. "Do you know her?"
I couldn't speak. I was staring at my wife — my ex-wife — and she looked like a completely different woman. Powerful. Untouchable. And wearing an expression I'd never seen on her face before.
She looked like she'd forgotten I existed.