Chapter 3

The kitchen confrontation still burned fresh in my mind as I made my way to the master bedroom. My bedroom. The room where I'd spent countless nights planning our future together—a future that now seemed like a cruel illusion.

I pushed open the double doors to my walk-in closet, expecting the familiar sight of my carefully organized designer collection. Instead, I stumbled into a foreign territory.

My breath caught in my throat.

Persephone's clothes hung everywhere—cheap dresses in garish colors, jeans with deliberate tears, crop tops that would never see the inside of my professional wardrobe. They occupied the prime real estate of my custom closet system, draped over the Italian leather hangers I'd imported specifically to match the penthouse's aesthetic.

"My things," I whispered, pushing through the unfamiliar garments to find my own collection.

They were there, but barely recognizable. My carefully curated designer pieces had been shoved into corners, crammed into spaces too small to accommodate them properly. A Chanel suit—worth more than most people's monthly salary—was wrinkled beyond salvation, stuffed between a pair of denim shorts and what looked like a Halloween costume.

"This is impossible," I murmured, pulling out a Valentino gown with a visible wine stain spreading across the bodice. "I had these dry-cleaned before I left."

"Those are mine," Persephone's voice came from behind me, casual and unapologetic.

I turned to find her leaning against the doorframe, watching me with that same amused expression she'd worn since I arrived.

"These are my clothes," I said, my voice dangerously quiet as I held up the stained Valentino. "My closet. My home."

Persephone shrugged, the gesture so dismissive it made my blood boil. "I borrowed a few pieces for dates with Dexter. He said you wouldn't mind."

"Dates?" The word felt like acid on my tongue.

"Well, we couldn't exactly go out in public looking like we were playing dress-up in someone else's clothes, could we?" She stepped into the closet, running her fingers over a row of her own clothes with pride. "Dexter loves this red number. Says it brings out my eyes."

I watched her caress the cheap fabric of a dress that probably cost less than my monthly skincare regimen, feeling something inside me crack.

"These are ruined," I said, gesturing to my damaged clothes. "Do you have any idea what these cost?"

Another shrug. "They were just hanging there. What was I supposed to do? Leave them collecting dust while you were gallivanting around Europe?"

The casual cruelty of her words stole my breath. I pushed past her, needing to escape the suffocating reality of my violated closet.

The study was my sanctuary—the one place in the penthouse that had always been exclusively mine. My home office, where I'd managed my investments and built my business empire while Dexter was busy playing at running his family company.

I needed that space now. Needed something that was still mine.

But when I opened the door, the world stopped spinning.

"No," I whispered, the word barely audible even to my own ears.

My mother's Ming dynasty vases—irreplaceable treasures she'd left me in her will—lay in shards across the hardwood floor. The delicate porcelain glinted cruelly in the afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows.

And there, curled up on a bed made from the torn fragments of my family photographs, was a cream-colored Persian cat. It blinked lazily at me, completely unbothered by the destruction surrounding it.

"Princess!" Persephone called from behind me. "There you are, sweet girl!"

The cat stretched languidly, not bothering to move from its nest of shattered memories.

My eyes moved to the antique jewelry box on the desk—my mother's final gift to me before she died. It lay open, its velvet interior exposed and empty.

"What happened here?" I asked, my voice hollow as I moved toward the desk.

Persephone followed me in, scooping up the cat with practiced ease. "Oh, Princess got a little excited one day. Knocked things over. These old things are so fragile anyway."

My mother's pearl necklace—the one she'd worn on her wedding day, the one she'd wanted me to wear at mine—lay carelessly tossed among scattered papers.

"Where did you put the rest of it?" I demanded, snatching up the necklace and clutching it to my chest.

"The rest of what?" Persephone asked, stroking her cat with deliberate slowness.

"The jewelry. My mother's jewelry."

"Oh, that stuff?" She waved vaguely toward the trash can in the corner. "I might have thrown some of it away. It was just cluttering up the space anyway."

I stared at her, unable to process the casual destruction of my most precious possessions.

"Cluttering up the space?" I repeated, my voice trembling with barely contained fury.

"Accidents happen when you leave valuable things lying around," she said with a shrug. "If they were so important, you should have put them somewhere safer."

I looked down at the broken pieces of my mother's vases, at the torn remnants of photographs that could never be replaced, at this woman who had so callously destroyed the last tangible connections to my mother.

And in that moment, something inside me hardened into resolve.