(Mira's POV)
I sat on the edge of the sofa, bare feet tucked under me, and let the quiet fill the room. Not the polite, comfortable quiet of a Sunday morning, but the kind that presses against your ears, your chest, your thoughts. It was deliberate. It was mine. And it was necessary.
The house—or what had felt like a home until recently—stretched around me, empty in ways I had never noticed before.
I traced the rim of my coffee mug absentmindedly. I thought about him. Ethan. Wolfe. Husband. Partner. Equal. And somehow, despite everything we had built together, he had failed me—not in the boardroom, not in a strategy meeting, not in the superficial ways the world might measure failure—but in the quiet ways that mattered most.
I remembered the boardroom yesterday, the way he had hesitated. It was a lack of alignment. A crack in the foundation of trust. And I had noticed. I always notice.
