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“Stop,” I say to the retreating backs of my stepsister and stepmother. They still instantly and turn back my way.

Reina is frozen in shock, but it’s her mother who bows first, then pulls Reina’s arm swiftly to make her bow as well. They go down so low, as if the gesture will take back years of torment they both caused me.

Not going to happen.

“Natalie, daughter, so good to see—”

I shake my head at Michiko, and her mouth closes quickly. Words I wished to hear as a child are nothing to me now. But I get it. She’s trying to weasel her way onto my good side, afraid I’ll kill her like I did her husband. While I might want to make her life less comfortable, I have no need to kill her. She isn’t worth it.

I look away from her and would turn away completely, but Reina captures my attention.

“Your hair” is all I can say. It’s a pink bob. Something that’s so uncommon for her, it begs the question of why she would do that to hair she once compared to Helen of Troy’s. Reina wasn’t a scholar, so the fact that the most beautiful woman written about to start a war over had blonde hair was lost on her.

“A fashion trend,” Michiko says with a laugh that gets cut off when Gina steps closer.

“Is it?” I look at Gina after she speaks with a curious expression, realizing she knows something I don’t from the smirk on her lips. A second later, she snatches the pink wig off Reina’s head. Her mother gasps, and I say nothing.

I can’t. There are no words.

Her hair is gone. Well, not gone, but barely an inch off her head.

“What happened?” I ask no one in particular, but with the expectation that someone should answer.

“Your husband,” Reina spits out. Her voice is no longer frozen from seeing me, and her vile anger is back. The anger I know so well. But it’s kept in check enough that she doesn’t call me names or take a step toward me.

It also helps that Gina moves in front of me. Not much, just a shoulder as she starts to twirl that damn knife again.

Reina eyes the weapon and sneers at it before choking on her words as tears fall from her face. “He shaved off my hair.”

Her glare is strong through the tears. A weaker woman might flinch, but all I see is her hair. A prize possession for her, cut shorter than a boy’s. Hidden by trendy wigs as it grows out.

It hits me then. Everything leading to this moment. All the pain and misery she put me through comes to this. I can’t catch the giggle that bursts from my mouth in time, and it floats between us. It snaps something in me, and I howl with laughter.

This woman, this beast of a tormentor, had her head shaved because of me. A woman who cut her own hair short despite her past.

The irony is too much for me to bear, and I hold my stomach as I laugh in her face.

Her mother seems appalled, but Gina joins in my mirth. Just a snicker compared to me, half keeled over with fits of laughter.

Then I walk away, not sparing them another glance. Doubt I’ll even give them a thought again. Unless I want a good laugh.

Once again, Atom took a part of me that I thought was broken and mended it before I even knew it needed to be done. He did what was needed for me, and I can now just… be. Reina and her mother, my life before, it’s in the past. None of it will touch me again. All because of him.

I sink back onto the couch and shake my head at all of it. All that is my life. The dress from before is across the back of the couch, and I finger the silk sleeves. It’s a nice cut. Slimming and bunched in the stomach for if I’m having a bad day and need to eat five cakes to feel good. The neckline is scooped with straps that are thick on the shoulders but narrow in the back as they crisscross. A gold shimmer, like an afternoon sun ray.

Realization feels like a slap in the face. He chose me. Always. Even before the negotiation of me being his old lady, he picked me.

And now it’s time I did the same.

“Book me a flight,” I say quietly.

“Where to?” Gina is playing with that damn knife again, this time tossing it between her hands as she twirls it.

“Kansas.”

She misses the knife, and it falls to the couch, landing straight up between her thighs that are only half an inch apart.

“About damn time.”