Chapter 2 - The Silence of the OfficeThe party continued downstairs for another hour,
the sound of clinking glasses echoing through the vents,
but Marcus felt a sudden,
unexplained chill.
He walked away from the senator he was talking to,
ignoring the man's confused expression,
and climbed the stairs with heavy,
deliberate steps.
He entered the master bedroom,
expecting to see me hiding in the closet,
but the room was a hollow shell.
He walked to his desk,
the one place in the house where he felt most in control,
and saw the white envelope.
He sat down,
his movements mechanical,
and pulled out the thick stack of paper.
DIVORCE DECREE,
the words screamed at him from the top of the page.
He read my name,
he read his name,
and he saw the signature that looked so small against the legal jargon.
His jaw tightened,
his hand crumpling the edge of the paper,
as he realized I had planned this for months.
Then,
he saw the small,
plastic object lying beneath the documents.
He picked it up,
turning it over in the light of the fireplace,
and his heart stopped.
Two lines.
Bright,
unapologetic,
and life-changing.
"No,"
he whispered,
the word catching in his throat like a jagged stone.
He looked at the empty bed,
the empty room,
and the empty life he had built around himself.
He remembered the times I had tried to talk to him,
the times I had reached out in the dark,
only to be met with his back.
He realized that while he was out conquering the city,
he was losing the only thing that actually mattered.
The rage came first,
a roaring fire that made him want to break every window in the mansion.
He picked up his phone,
his fingers shaking with a mix of fury and fear.
"Find her,"
he barked into the receiver,
his voice cracking for the first time in a decade.
"I don't care what it costs,
I don't care how many laws you break,
find my wife."
He looked back at the pregnancy test,
the evidence of a miracle he didn't deserve.
He realized she hadn't just left him,
she had taken his legacy with her.
She was a thousand miles away,
carrying a heartbeat he had never heard,
fleeing a man she no longer recognized.
The King of Chicago sat in his dark office,
surrounded by money and secrets,
May you like
and for the first time in his life,
he felt completely and utterly powerless.
