They Erased Me. I Owned Their Empire Chapter 12

I didn’t answer him that night.

“I need time,” I said. “Not because I don’t want to. Because I’ve spent my whole life saying yes to people before I knew

who I was.”

Callum nodded. He didn’t push. He didn’t sulk.

“Take all the time you need,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Two months later, I sat across from Grant in a beige mediation room.

He’d lost weight. His suit hung off him. He wouldn’t meet my eyes.

He signed everything. Uncontested divorce. Full cooperation with the audit. A public statement that every allegation

against me had been false.

His lawyer slid the last page across. Grant signed it without reading. Old habit.

When it was over, he followed me into the hallway.

“Wren. Wait.”

I turned.

He was holding a photo. Our wedding. Me in ivory, laughing at something off-camera. Him beside me, looking at

Bianca in the second row.

I’d never noticed that before. Where his eyes were.

“I kept this,” he said. “I don’t know why. Do you ever think about us?”

I looked at him. This man who had taught me that being loved meant being useful.

“No,” I said. “I don’t need to.”

I left the photo on the bench beside him and walked out into the March sun.

I drove to my parents’ house last.

I

Mom opened the door before I knocked. She looked older. Thinner. She was wearing an apron dusted with flour.

“I made something,” she said nervously. “I asked Theo. He said you used to love-”

“Lemon cake.”

“Lemon cake.” She said it slowly. Carefully. Like she was writing it somewhere inside herself.

Dad stood in the kitchen doorway. He cleared his throat twice before any words came out.

“I voted against you,” he said.

“You did.”

“I was wrong.” His voice cracked like old ice. “I was wrong about a lot of things. For a long time. I don’t know how to fix

sixteen years.”

“You don’t,” I said. “Not all at once.”

He nodded. Like that was fair. Like it was the first true thing anyone had said in this house in years.

Miles was there too. Arms crossed. Eyes red. He mumbled something at the floor.

“What?” I said.

“I said I’m sorry.” Louder. “For the folding chair. For laughing. For all of it. I thought it was funny. It wasn’t.”

Bianca’s old room was empty. Stripped to the mattress. Theo told me she’d moved to Arizona. Stopped answering

anyone. Dad had cut off her credit cards. Mom had stopped sending money in January.

We ate dinner at a table with seven chairs.

Mine was in the middle.

Nobody said anything about it. Nobody had to.

On my plate sat a little card. Mom’s handwriting. Blue ink.

Wren.

And underneath, smaller:

Birthday: December 24th. Yours. Only yours.

I looked at it for a long time.

“I’m going to throw you a party this year,” Mom said, her voice shaking. “If you’ll let me. On the actual day. With your

name on the cake,”

I didn’t forgive them all at once. You don’t heal sixteen years over one lemon cake.

But when I left, I said, “I’ll call on Sundays.”

Mom started crying. The real kind. Not the kind Bianca taught her.

“Sundays,” she whispered. “I’ll be right here.”

I walked down the driveway in the dark. The fire pit sat in the side yard, black and cold. A few charred scraps of paper

still clung to the stones. My old life. Ash.

I stood there for a minute. Let it go.

When I turned around, there was a car parked at the curb.

Callum leaned against it. Two cups in his hands. Steam curling into the cold air.

He held one out. Earl Grey. Splash of milk. No sugar. I’d told him once, in January, in passing.

“Theo told me you’d be here,” he said. “I didn’t want you to drive home alone wondering if I’d stopped waiting.”

He looked at me. Steady. Open. Hiding nothing.

“You said ask again when you were ready.” He took a breath. “So I’m asking again, Wren.”