I left before the cake was cut.
Behind me, the ballroom buzzed with whispers my family could no longer control. Marcus Vale walked me to the exit himself and quietly asked whether Aureon would consider advising his next acquisition.
I smiled.
“Send it to my office.”
Outside, the night air felt clean.
For years, I thought healing would come when my family apologized. But some apologies never arrive, and waiting for them can become another kind of prison.
That night, I understood something simple: I did not need them to admit what they did in order for me to be free.
My worth had never been hidden in their approval. It had been waiting beneath the shame they gave me, patient as a seed under winter soil.
They once called me the ugly graduate.
Ten years later, they watched me leave as the woman they could no longer erase.