The drive from his office to the penthouse was a blur of honking horns and strobing traffic lights, a chaotic symphony that matched the white-noise scream in Alex's head. The truth Ethan had delivered wasn't a set of facts. It was a demolition charge detonated at the core of his being.

Every memory, every interaction from the past three months, played back in brutal, unforgiving high-definition. Her silent flinch in the Sterling kitchen. The hollow "I do" in the courthouse. The way she'd shrunk from his touch at the gala. The dead, flat look in her eyes that he'd mistaken for guilt. It was the look of a soul being slowly extinguished.