Chapter 6

Chloe's POV

The baby was gone.

The doctor said the pregnancy was too early, and my body was already severely exhausted from stress. The impact was just the final trigger.

When Maya heard the news, she sobbed in the hallway until she couldn't breathe. But I was dead silent.

I was so quiet, it felt like I had left my voice back at that warehouse.

The next morning, Maya brought a fresh container of clam chowder. Seeing Austin standing outside my hospital room, she slammed the food down on the counter.

"Oh, look who decided to show up. Where were you when she was waiting at City Hall? Where were you when they were stealing her work? When she was bleeding, your first instinct was still to check if Vivian had a scratch!"

Austin's voice cracked. "I just want to see her."

"She doesn't want to see you. Ever."

Inside the room, I heard every word, but I didn't say anything.

I stared out the window, my palm resting flat against my empty stomach.

I had spent nights agonizing over whether I should bring this child into the world. But losing them left an ache that stripped away any remaining dignity I had.

It felt as though a tiny hand had briefly touched mine, only to be violently ripped away by this nightmare.

In the afternoon, I asked Maya to bring me my laptop.

Maya's eyes were puffy. "You just had surgery. Can't this wait?"

"If I wait, they'll write the narrative for me," I said softly. "I'm not letting them call me 'emotionally unstable' again."

I sent a formal email to the agency, the museum curator, and my lawyer.

The email was simple: I was revoking all licenses. My mother's estate, the interviews, the scans, and the blazer design. All use was to stop immediately.

As for the warehouse accident, I demanded a full investigation into the safety of the lighting rig and the contractor responsible.

After sending the email, I asked Maya to help me move my things out of our apartment. I wanted my car and a few boxes of files moved to a secure location. I left all further communication to my lawyer.

Maya blinked. "Where are you going to go, Chloe?"

"The warehouse."

It was an old, dusty storage unit my mother had left me in Queens. Austin had always looked down on it, calling it a useless piece of junk. But it was mine.

I didn't have the energy to sort through six years of life right now. But I could hide there to heal, far away from any place Austin could find me.

Two days later, I checked out of the hospital. I didn't go back to the penthouse.

I went straight to Queens. Maya came with me. I handed my old phone over to my lawyer and set up an auto-forward for Austin's emails. While Austin was still guarding the empty hospital lobby, my car was already heading out of the city.

I didn't say much on the drive. Maya, worried I was freezing, draped her coat over my lap. To keep my mind off things, she blasted a loud, trashy pop song on the radio.

I listened to the beat and actually fell asleep for fifteen minutes.

When I woke up, the sun had set. The highway lights flashed past, cutting my past into distant, fading frames.

Maya asked, "Any regrets?"

I shook my head.

Of course, I was scared. The warehouse was cold, my body was weak, and I had no idea how I was going to make a living or deal with the grief. But I knew one thing for sure: staying where Austin could reach me would only drag me back into the mud of his guilt and Vivian's malice.

Leaving wasn't about being brave.

It was about survival.

The Queens warehouse was in worse shape than I remembered.

The iron door was rusted, the roof leaked, and moss grew in the corners. Maya frowned the moment we stepped inside. "Are you sure you want to stay here? The wind at night is going to sound like a horror movie."

I stood in the center of the dusty room. For the first time in days, I felt grounded.

There were no matching slippers here. No trace of Vivian's perfume. No one asking me why I couldn't just "be the bigger person." It was run-down, but every square inch of it belonged to me.

I decided to turn the warehouse into my new independent studio.

For the first few days, my body was still recovering, so Maya forbid me from doing any heavy lifting. We hired a contractor to fix the roof, change the locks, and paint the walls. I sat on a folding chair, sipping my warm herbal tea, organizing my mother's old leather patterns. I placed her wooden box on the highest shelf. Inside, I slipped a small post-it note:

I'm sorry. I will live a good life.

I didn't write a name. The baby was too small. Too small to have ever been called by a name in this world.