“She likes you,” Marko presses. “And you like her. Very much—”
“I don’t,” I snap. The word comes out like a growl. “This is over.”
The phone stops ringing. Then starts again.
Marko folds his arms. “What if she retracts the review?”
I laugh—cold, sharp. “She won’t.”
“People turn when they feel used.”
“It’s already live,” I reply evenly. “If she retracts it, the internet will crucify her. Critics don’t get mercy. She knows that.”
The phone vibrates again.
Marko’s voice softens. “You don’t have to do this.”
I take the phone and swipe the screen to decline the call. Then I block the number. Delete the message thread. Every laugh. Every late-night text. Gone.
The silence afterward is deafening.
I ignore the ache spreading in my chest, the strange pressure behind my ribs. It’s irrelevant. It means nothing.
I look up at Marko, jaw set.
“Now she knows,” I say flatly, “never to put her mouth in my business.”
Marko doesn’t smile.
But I do.
Revenge done.
Chapter 6 – Sienna
Present Day
I stand at my bedroom window, staring down at Chicago.
The city is beautiful—steel and light and ambition layered into the sky—but tonight it feels ornamental, distant, like a painting I’ve stared at too long to be moved by.
I turn away from the glass.
Several documents are spread across my bed, arranged with deliberate neatness. I reach for the first one.
A wedding contract.
It feels heavier than any legal document I’ve ever signed. Not because of its thickness, but because of what it represents. Pages of ornate clauses. Carefully worded obligations. Inked seals pressed deep and final. Signatures meant to bind futures and families, promises forged in power rather than affection.
I’ve read it twice already.
The first time with cold precision, pen in hand, identifying leverage points and exit strategies.
The second time with a slow, controlled rage I’ve been carrying for five years without letting it show.
My name sits beside his on the final page.
Sienna Roth.
