She simply adjusted her handbag, stepped away, and disappeared into the crowd.
Dakota stood at the top of the jet bridge, watching silently. She did not smile. She did not gloat.
She only looked free.
Three months later, Dakota sat alone in a quiet café with her divorce papers on the table.
The firm had been liquidated. The stolen money had been traced. The assets had been recovered. I was awaiting trial, stripped of the image I had spent years building.
Dakota no longer checked old messages.
She no longer stared at wedding photos.
Instead, she opened a travel app and searched for a city she had always wanted to visit.
Then she left the signed divorce decree on the table, walked into the sunlight, and breathed like a woman who had finally reclaimed her life.
For the first time in years, the horizon belonged only to her.
