Chapter 6: The Falling House
The settlement was brutal for Ryan. Because I could prove the down payment was my inheritance, and because the assault was a matter of public record, Andrea secured a deal that left Ryan with the townhouse but a massive debt to buy me out.
He couldn’t afford it.
The house was sold within two months. I watched from a distance as the “For Sale” sign went up and then down. Ryan moved into a small, run-down apartment on the outskirts of the city. His overtime at the plant dried up. His credit was in tatters.
Then came the news about Nicole.
It happened in the autumn. I was sitting in my new office, the Dublin river flowing peacefully outside my window, when Tasha sent me a link to a local news article.
Nicole had been arrested. She had tried to open a line of credit using a former roommate’s social security number. When the police searched her apartment, they found evidence of multiple identity thefts. She had been a professional predator long before she targeted me.
Ryan called me from a burner phone that evening. He didn’t yell. He sounded like a man drowning.
“She took everything, Emily,” he whispered. “She was staying with me after the house sold. She emptied my safe. She took the last of the settlement money. I’m… I’m about to be evicted.”
I listened to his voice—the same voice that had laughed while my face burned—and I felt nothing. No satisfaction. No pity. Just a profound sense of relief that I was no longer the one who had to save him.
“You chose her over me, Ryan,” I said. “You threw the coffee for her. You threatened me for her. Now, you get to live with the consequences of that choice.”
“Emily, please. I have nowhere to go.”
“I know,” I said. “And for the first time, that’s not my problem.”
I hung up and blocked the number.
I sat in my apartment—the one with the blue armchair and the dishes I liked—and I felt the silence settle around me. It was a clean silence. It wasn’t the silence of fear or the silence of things left unsaid. It was the silence of a woman who was finally the only person in her own head.
The scar on my jaw had faded to a thin, pale line, but the woman who had carried it out of that house was stronger than I had ever been.
