Chapter 4

Natalie Smith POV

Over the following days, I began quietly working through everything I needed to do before leaving the country.

Ethan must have sensed the distance growing between us. He started overcompensating, gift after gift delivered to the apartment. Limited-edition bags. Custom-made jewelry. Even a sports car worth seven figures.

I didn't so much as glance at any of it. Everything ended up stacked in the storage room or the parking garage downstairs.

On Friday afternoon, I went to Finch Group's headquarters to drop off a document that needed Ethan's signature, a property co-ownership form we needed to finalize.

I didn't ask his assistant to announce me. I pushed open the door to the executive office myself.

What I saw stopped me cold in the doorway.

Vivian Lynn was standing in the middle of Ethan's office in a loose men's dress shirt, barefoot on his Persian rug. And in her hands were my private design sketches, the ones I kept locked in the safe, the ones I had never shown to anyone.

Those sketches were from my university years. Every single page carried something real, the rawest version of my love for architecture, drawn at a time when I still believed in things purely.

"Natalie, you're here." Vivian saw me and didn't flinch. She smiled, bright and guileless.

"Ethan said I'm opening my own design studio soon, so he told me to look through some blueprints for decoration inspiration. I saw these and thought they were so beautiful, so I took them out to look."

The warmth drained from my face.

I crossed the room in three steps and pulled the sketches from her hands, my voice dropping to something just above freezing. "Who gave you permission to touch my things?"

Vivian stumbled back a step, startled by the edge in my voice. Her eyes immediately filled with tears, spilling over one after another. "I'm sorry, Natalie, I didn't know I wasn't supposed to... I just loved them so much..."

"What's going on?"

The door to the private lounge swung open and Ethan walked out, toweling his hair dry.

The instant he saw Vivian crying, his expression darkened. He crossed to her quickly and stepped in front of her, shielding her, and turned to look at me with a furrowed brow. "What did you do? You just walked in here and started in on her?"

I raised the sketches. My knuckles had gone white. "Ethan, why did you give her access to my private work? Do you have any idea what these mean to me?"

Ethan glanced at the pages and his frown deepened. "They're just some old drafts you didn't use anymore. Vivian needed creative inspiration for her studio. What's the harm in letting her look? Was that worth scaring her like this?"

Old drafts.

It felt like something heavy had swung directly into my chest. I couldn't breathe right for a moment.

In those sketches, there was the first draft I ever drew of a tie clip, designed specifically for him. There were rooms I had imagined for children we hadn't had yet. Our children. A whole future, sketched out in graphite and hope.

Things that carried every precious memory I had stored inside me. And to him, they were just old drafts that hadn't been used.

"Ethan." My voice came out eerily steady. "Do you think that anything Vivian wants, you can just take from me and hand over to her?"

He caught something in my eyes and something shifted in him. His tone edged toward gentleness. "Natalie, calm down. She's just looking. She wasn't going to take them. Can't you just be the bigger person here?"

"Oh?" I let out a short, cold laugh. "Sure."

Right there, in front of both of them, I took the sketches and tore them apart. One by one.

The sound of tearing paper cut through the silence of the office like something final.

"Natalie,stop. What are you doing?" Ethan lurched forward but it was already too late.

I released the fragments into the air. They drifted down like snow, settling at Ethan's and Vivian's feet.

"If they're just trash," I said, looking at them both with cold, clear eyes, "then trash is where they belong. Ethan, my things, even destroyed, will never belong to someone else."

I dropped the document on his desk, turned around, and walked out.

Behind me, Ethan was shouting something, sharp with fury. Vivian was crying softly.

I stepped into the elevator and watched the floor numbers count down. My eyes were empty.

I already knew. Whatever had existed between Ethan and me, it was finished.