Chapter 5 - The Final Horizon
Two weeks later,
I sat in the back of a black car,
driving past the building that used to be Ethan’s headquarters.
The sign was already gone.
In its place was a simple,
elegant logo:
The Evans Group.
I had heard that Ethan was living in a small studio apartment in the outskirts of the city,
unable to find work because no one wanted to touch a man who had been blacklisted by my father.
Miranda had left him the day his bank accounts were frozen.
She had tried to sue him for the jewelry he had given her,
only to find out that it had been purchased with company funds and was now property of the Evans Group.
She was last seen trying to sell her designer handbags to pay for a lawyer.
I didn't feel joy at their suffering,
but I felt a profound sense of justice.
The car pulled up to the airport,
where my father’s private jet was waiting.
I was leaving for a month-long trip to our estate in Italy.
I needed the sun.
I needed the silence.
I needed to remember who Olivia Evans was before she became Olivia Caldwell.
As I stepped onto the tarmac,
my phone buzzed.
It was a text from an unknown number.
'Olivia,
please.
I'm starving.
I have nothing.
Just give me one more chance to explain.'
I didn't even hesitate.
I blocked the number.
I didn't need explanations.
I didn't need apologies.
I had the one thing Ethan could never take from me,
and the one thing he would never understand.
My dignity.
I climbed the stairs to the jet,
where Marcus was waiting at the door.
“Ready,
Miss Evans?”
he asked.
I looked back at the skyline of New York,
a city that my family had helped build,
a city that now knew exactly who I was.
“Ready,”
I said.
As the jet took off,
soaring above the clouds and the drama of the world below,
I realized that the five thousand dollars Ethan had offered me was the best investment he never made.
Because it had cost him everything,
and it had given me back my life.
The "broke parasite" was now the most powerful woman in the room,
and for the first time in a long time,
I wasn't hiding in the shadows.
I was the light.
May you like
I was the empire.
And I was finally free.
