At 3:17 p.m., Rebecca sat in her modest Honda Civic in the parking garage of St. Anony’s Memorial Hospital and watched a man fall in love with his own reflection.
Or maybe he wasn’t falling in love. Maybe he was rehearsing.
James Mitchell stood beside his black Mercedes, the one she’d “helped him afford” with the quiet kind of money that never asked for applause. His white coat was folded neatly over his arm like a flag, his tie perfectly centered, his smile set to the bright setting he used for donors and cameras.
And pressed against him, laughing into his neck, was Elena Vasquez.
She wore scrubs, but they were the fashionable kind, fitted in places hospital fabric had no business being fitted. Her hair was pulled back in a sleek knot. Her hand rested on his chest like she’d purchased the right.
James leaned down and kissed her, slow and public, right there between the concrete pillars and the fluorescent lights. Like the hospital was a stage and everyone else was just… unpaid extras.
Rebecca didn’t flinch.
The divorce papers lay on her passenger seat like a dead bird. Signed that morning. Finalized with crisp stamps and a judge who never once looked up long enough to see the bruises that weren’t purple, the ones that lived under the skin. The ones made by words.
She should have been crying. People expected that of women like her. They expected sobs and mascara and shaking hands.
But she’d already cried six months ago, alone in a downtown penthouse James had never seen.
Six months ago, her private investigator slid a folder across her marble kitchen island and said, “I’m sorry.”
Inside were photos of James and Elena leaving the Riverside Hotel. Not entering. Leaving. Hair mussed. Confidence relaxed. His wedding ring absent like it was something he’d set down to wash his hands.
