---- Chapter 8 Gabriel' s POV: "Check her socials," Mark whispered, his face ashen as he held out his own phone. "She... she posted something." My hands were shaking so violently | could barely take the phone from him. | navigated to her page, my heart pounding a sick, frantic rhythm against my ribs. There it was. A new post, uploaded an hour ago. It was a simple, stark black square. The caption was a quote- her own words, from a song |' d never heard. "The brightest stars burn out the fastest, leaving behind a beautiful, empty darkness." Below it, a single sentence: Goodbye, Gabriel. ' m finally free. And beneath that, a link. My thumb hovered over the screen, a primal fear seizing me. | knew, with a gut-wrenching certainty, that whatever was on the other side of that link would destroy me. | clicked it anyway. The video that loaded was a time-lapse. It showed Claire, my Claire, in her studio. She was standing before a blank canvas, a paintbrush in her hand. And as the video sped up, she began to paint. Swirls of grey and purple, a flash of white for a ---- lighthouse, the violent crash of waves. She was painting 'Tempest' . The video wasn' t silent. Her voice, soft and clear, played over the images. "| started this piece a few months ago," she said, her tone light, happy. It was a voice from a time before the darkness had crept in. "It's for Gabriel. For our fifth anniversary. It' s about how love can be a lighthouse in even the darkest storm." Her words were a physical blow. The painting wasn' t an act of plagiarism; it was an act of love. A love | had taken, twisted, and handed to another woman. The video cut to Claire' s face. She was no longer smiling. Her eyes were hollow, her expression unreadable. "But sometimes," she said, her voice flat and devoid of emotion, "you realize you' re the only one fighting the storm. And the lighthouse that was supposed to guide you home is actually a warning, telling you to stay away. Our marriage was a lie, Gabriel. And | can' t live a lie anymore. This isn't a goodbye. It's an escape." The video ended. | stood there on the dock, the phone trembling in my hand, the sounds of the police and the crying gulls fading into a dull roar. The last look in her eyes from the video seared itself into my brain-that calm, devastating emptiness. |' d seen that same look in her eyes last night, and | had been too blind, too consumed with Aria, to understand what it meant. ---- It was the look of a woman who had already left. Her final posts, scheduled to go live in the hours after her disappearance, were her last words to me. They were a meticulously documented account of my neglect, my lies, my emotional abandonment, laid bare for the whole world to see. There was no mention of Aria, no mention of the stolen music. It was quieter, more insidious. It was a portrait of a man who held his wife' s heart in his hands and simply let it drop. The public backlash was instantaneous and brutal. My carefully crafted image of the doting husband shattered into a million pieces. The narrative was clear: Gabriel Holmes, the charming producer, had driven his brilliant, sensitive wife to her death. Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away, in a small, quiet town where no one knew her name, Claire Avila was unpacking a box in a sun-drenched apartment. She was no longer Claire Avila. She was Chloe Vance. And she was finally, blessedly alone. She was no longer living for love. She was no longer performing for validation. The woman who had loved me, the woman who had been trapped by empty gestures and hollow promises, was dead and gone. And in her place was a survivor, a woman who was finally learning to live for herself. No one knew where she was. And that was exactly how she wanted it. Discover our latest featured short drama reel. Watch now and enjoy the story!