Chapter 2

The car merged into traffic. Lily sat in the back playing with the plush rabbit Maya had brought, babbling away as she made up her own little story. Maya turned the music down and looked over at me.

"Claire, you really didn't take a single thing?" Maya asked.

I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes.

"No."

"That was an 8 million-dollar condo," Maya said, her voice jumping up half an octave. "And with a guy like him, you're still helping him save money?"

"I'm not helping him save money."

"Then what is it?"

"What I owed him, I paid back. From now on, we don't owe each other a thing."

Maya bit her lower lip and after a long pause finally said, "Then our company..."

"Business as usual." I opened my eyes. "We have a topic meeting at three this afternoon, and dinner with Horizon Capital at six. Nothing gets pushed."

Maya froze for a second. "You got divorced today. You're not taking even one day off?"

"Why would I?"

I pulled out my phone and unlocked it. WhatsApp was quiet. I opened my chat with Andrew and hit block. Then I changed my social feed settings to last-three-days-only and wiped everything else clean.

"Claire," Maya said, watching me through the rearview mirror.

"Yeah?"

"You're way harder than I thought."

I said nothing. Hard? I'd just finally figured things out.

When I married Andrew three years ago, everyone said I'd hit the jackpot. I had married a finance golden boy making over 300 thousand dollars a year, lived in a luxury condo at Central One Residence, drove a high-end car, and gotten the dream gig of being a stay-at-home wife who was "taken care of."

And Andrew? He left early and came home late. If he got back early, he'd sit on the couch staring at his phone. I'd tell him Lily had called him Daddy or that I'd been reading about content operations, and he'd only say, "Just take care of the kid." Later, even an "Mm" was too much for him.

Later, it became this: "Claire Bennett, I don't think we have anything in common." He said it at the dinner table, by the bed, on the phone, his tone getting colder each time, as if I were a failing asset and he was calculating where to cut his losses.

Last month, he finally laid it all out. "Let's get divorced. You can have the condo and the car. Think of it as compensation." He said it so calmly that I knew he'd probably rehearsed it in his head a hundred times.

His math was simple. Leave me one condo and one car, and in everyone else's eyes he'd be generous and classy to the end. A stay-at-home mom with no job and no income like me was supposed to panic, cry, and beg for one more chance.

Too bad. I disappointed him. I didn't cry, didn't make a scene, and didn't ask why. I only said four words: "Okay. I agree."

By the time I got back, it was already noon. No, not back home—back to the two-bedroom apartment I rented. The moment the divorce was set last month, I started getting ready.

Lily's clothes, toys, picture books, my personal things, my work files—I moved every single thing that mattered. Little by little, every trace of Lily and me was erased from Central One Residence, until it became what it had always been: expensive, cold, and not really mine.

Maya helped settle Lily in, then ran to the kitchen to warm her some milk. "Claire, this two-bedroom place is tiny."

"It's just temporary. Once the Series A money comes through, we'll move."

"Series A... what's Horizon's attitude right now?"

"We'll know after dinner tonight." I sat down on the couch and opened my laptop. "Show me Monday's topic plan."

Maya handed Lily the milk, came back, and passed me the tablet. "The first draft of the 'Her Battlefield' Season 3 Pitch came in from the writers last night. Also, the rough cut for the 'Moms Back to Work' documentary special is done."

"Let's watch the rough cut first." Maya hit play.

The footage was clean and the pacing was solid. It followed three real stay-at-home moms as they talked about the struggles of leaving the workforce and starting over. One shot stood out: a woman at her kitchen table late at night, her child's bottle still unwashed, a proposal deck glowing on her laptop as she rubbed her eyes and kept typing. I stared at it without speaking.

Maya understood my silence. "That scene feels a little too much like you, doesn't it?"

"Whether it's like me isn't the point." I pulled my eyes away from the screen. "The point is whether the people watching can see themselves in it."

"They can," Maya said, flopping down beside me. "The comments section is already blowing up. Everyone's asking when episode two is coming, and a ton of people said they cried." She showed me the numbers on her phone: seven million views, one hundred twenty thousand shares, more than thirty thousand comments, and eighty thousand new followers for Sunspire Media.

"When can episode two go live?"

"The producer said next Wednesday."

"Move it up to Monday. While the heat's still there."

"Got it."

Maya stood up, took two steps, then looked back. "Claire."

"Yeah."

"You do realize he's probably standing in that empty apartment right now, seeing you left absolutely nothing behind, and totally losing his mind, right?"

I didn't answer. Not because I cared what kind of reaction Andrew had. I was just thinking that the opening hook on Monday's batch of edited videos still wasn't sharp enough and needed work.

"Let's go. Office." I closed the laptop.

"You're seriously not resting?" Maya's eyes went wide.

"What's there to rest from?"

I looked down at Lily, fast asleep, tucked the little blanket around her, and quietly asked the nanny to keep an eye on her. When I stepped out, the sun was still blazing, but inside, I felt as still as deep water. From now on, the label "Andrew Grant's wife" was dead. Claire Bennett belonged only to me.