Chapter 2 — “You’re Not Leaving”

I went back the next morning.

Not because I wanted to see him. Because I wanted to leave clean. I wanted my passport, my personal documents, the few things in that house that were actually mine.

I packed fast. A suitcase doesn’t take long when you realize you never owned much to begin with.

The front door opened while I was zipping it shut.

Dante walked in like my silence had personally offended him.

He looked at me—my pale face, my flat shoes, the way I stood too still—and his mouth curled.

“What are you pretending this time?” he asked.

My grip tightened on the suitcase handle.

“I was in the hospital,” I said. “I miscarried. I almost died.”

He blinked once, slow. Then he scoffed.

“Don’t start,” he said. “You love drama when you want attention.”

The words hit hard anyway. Not because I believed him, but because he could say them after everything and still feel entitled to be right.

“I want a divorce,” I said, clear and flat.

Dante laughed, short and sharp, like I’d asked for the moon.

“You’re not leaving,” he said. “You’re throwing a fit.”

His eyes slid to the suitcase and hardened.

“So this is your threat?” he said. “Walking out to make me chase you?”

He stepped closer. “You’re that desperate for money?”

I didn’t answer immediately, because something ugly rose in my chest.

He wasn’t wrong about one thing: everyone had always assumed that about me.

Before I married him, people said I was a gold digger just because I was broke. I spent years trying to prove the opposite. I worked extra shifts. I skipped meals. I told myself I’d rather collapse than ask for help.

Even after I married Dante, I kept doing it—refusing allowances, refusing gifts, taking small jobs under different names because I wanted to be able to say, I’m not here for your money.

All it did was ruin my body.

In the hospital, the doctor had looked at my labs and frowned.

“You’re malnourished,” he’d said. “We could have tried more aggressive intervention earlier, but your body didn’t have reserves. Sometimes there’s nothing to hold onto.”

Nothing to hold onto.

I looked at Dante now and felt my anger sharpen into something useful.

He kept talking, voice cold and pleased with itself.

“If you walk out that door,” he said, “you walk out with nothing. No money. No protection. No safety.”

He waited for fear.

I gave him a small, controlled nod. “Maybe,” I said.

His brow creased. “Maybe?”

I picked up the folder I’d prepared and set it on the counter between us. Thick, boring paperwork: household expenses, security authorizations, maintenance approvals. The kind of things he signed without reading because he considered them beneath him.

And buried inside—quietly, neatly—was the divorce petition.

I met his eyes and let my voice go soft in a way I knew he interpreted as weakness.

“You’re right,” I said. “I’m poor. I’m selfish. I’m exactly what you think.”

Dante’s face relaxed with satisfaction. He loved being confirmed.

“So stop wasting my time,” he said.

“Fine,” I said. “If I’m leaving for money, then you handle it. This month’s household expenses—sign it all. You pay it yourself.”

That got a short, contemptuous sound out of him.

He grabbed the pen like he couldn’t wait to end the conversation.

He didn’t read a word.

He signed where the tabs marked. Fast. Bored. Automatic.

I watched his signature land on the page that mattered.

The date.

The full name.

A clean line of ink that cut the last thread between us.

He shoved the folder back at me. “There,” he said. “Now stop this.”

He turned toward the door like he’d won. At the threshold, he tossed the final insult over his shoulder:

“You’ll come crawling back when you realize you can’t survive without me.”

The door shut.

The house went silent.

I didn’t move for a few seconds. I just stood there, breathing, letting the anger settle into place.

Then I opened the folder and pulled out the divorce petition.

Dante Romano’s signature stared back at me.

I slid it into my bag, close against my ribs, and let myself feel it—grief, rage, relief, all tangled together. I didn’t have to be made of stone. I just had to be done.

I looked at the closed door and spoke softly, to the empty room.

“No,” I said. “I’m not leaving because I want your money.”

I zipped my bag.

“What I want,” I whispered, steady now, “is everything you have.”