Audrey's POV
They wheeled me out of the hospital like I was leaving a different life. Even the sunlight felt foreign — too bright, too sharp. My family hovered around me the way they always had: fierce, worried, relentless. Eden fussed with my hair while Andrew hefted my overnight bag as if it weighed nothing. My limbs felt hollow, as if I'd left a piece of myself under the fluorescent lights.
Pain wasn't the worst part. It was the odd, cold grief of losing something before you'd even had the chance to hold it. I'd lied to myself that it would be easier if I'd never bonded with that tiny heartbeat, but the truth was cleaner and crueller: I already loved what I lost.
"Can you breathe?" Eden asked, half-smiling, trying to make a joke out of everything like she always did. Her laugh was small but hopeful, and for a second it softened the rawness inside me.
Ahmed called while I was slipping into my coat. "It's official," he said, businesslike but clearly pleased. "The divorce is finalized. You're legally free, Audrey."
My chest tightened and then — unexpectedly — warmth pooled behind my ribs. Free. The word landed like a small, bright stone in a dark river. My family clapped each other on the back, voices buzzing with relief and plans for a celebration. For the first time in months, something in me unclenched.
Eden shoved her phone in my face, grinning. "Look," she said. She'd found a video — Adel's scandal splashed across every site, her face framed with cruel headlines. The sight of Adel humiliated triggered a tiny, sharp satisfaction I hadn't expected. It didn't erase what I'd lost, but it felt like justice, and for a woman who had been walked over for years, that mattered.
"I want to see her in jail," I admitted quietly, the words tasting like iron. The ache in my chest flared anew. "I want her to pay for this."
Eden's eyes widened. "Do you think—?" she started, glancing at Andrew.
He shrugged, that crooked half-smile I knew too well. "I won't stoop to cheap tricks," he said, but there was an edge in his voice that told me he knew how to make powerful people regret crossing us. "You know how the Andersons settle scores."
We rode home through the city as the sky softened into evening. The mansion greeted us with the same stately calm it always had; the scent of my mother's chicken soup drifted through the halls and into my bones like a promise. It felt like a benediction: ordinary, nourishing, real.
I stood in the doorway for a long moment, the title — Mrs. Gillian — already feeling like someone else's shadow. I had been swallowed up by that name for three years; now it sat behind me like an expired label.
I breathed in the smell of soup and family and possibility, and a small, stubborn smile curved my lips. I was wounded, yes. But I was also free.
"Goodbye, Mrs. Gillian," I whispered to the empty air, and meant it.