It's already 8 in the evening. Calyx had just finished preparing dinner, while I had just stepped out of the shower, my hair still damp against my skin.
We sat in silence, the only sound the faint clink of utensils against porcelain. His phone was long gone, discarded to prevent any tracking. My burner phone lay on the table beside me, untouched since I read the message before my shower.
A message from my brother, Steven.
The divorce is finalized.
Three simple words. Yet they carried the weight of everything we had built—and everything we had lost.
Our marriage was officially over.
No more papers binding us. No more vows. No more us.
And yet, here we were—sitting across from each other in a safehouse in a foreign country, eating dinner together as if nothing had changed.
A single sentence, yet it carried the force of a gunshot.
I should tell him.
I knew that.
But how did you tell someone that the life you built together, the life that was already hanging by a thread, had officially unraveled?
My fingers tightened around the edge of the table. I glanced at him, watching as he ate in silence, his expression unreadable. He was always hard to read when he wanted to be. But tonight, something felt different. Maybe it was just me. Maybe it was the knowledge that, legally, we were no longer tied together.
I opened my mouth. Then closed it.
I hated this hesitation. I wasn't someone who hesitated.
Not in a fight. Not in a kill. Not in anything.
But Calyx wasn't a mission.
He was—*had been*—my husband.
I exhaled, setting my utensils down. The soft *clink* of metal against ceramic made his eyes flick toward me. He was waiting, expecting me to say something.
I looked at him and forced myself to speak.
"Calyx… there's something you should know."
He stilled, fork halfway to his mouth, eyes lifting to meet mine. There was a flicker of something in his expression—curiosity? Caution? Or maybe he already knew, could feel the shift in the air between us, the finality of what I was about to say.
I swallowed, my throat dry. "Steven texted me."
His gaze sharpened. "And?"
I hesitated, fingers pressing against the cool surface of the table. "It's done," I said quietly. "We're officially... divorced."
The words felt foreign, like they belonged to someone else. But they didn't. They were mine. Ours.
Calyx didn't react at first. He just stared at me, his face carefully neutral. Then, slowly, he set his fork down, the soft scrape of metal against the plate the only sound in the room.
For a moment, I almost wished he would say something—anything. Argue. Laugh it off. Look relieved. But he didn't. He just leaned back in his chair, rubbing a hand over his face before exhaling.
"Right," he murmured, more to himself than to me. "Okay."
That was it.
No fight. No anger. Just… acceptance.
I wasn't sure if that made it better or worse.
I watched him, searching for something in the quiet between us. A flicker of relief. A sign of regret. Anything.
But there was nothing.
Calyx had always been hard to read, but tonight, his silence felt heavier. More final.
I knew he never loved me. That had been clear from the beginning. I had loved him—only me—since I was young, carrying that love like a weight, a promise I refused to let go of.
But now, knowing he was free of me, free of the responsibility I had once been…
My chest tightened.
We had been unraveling for a long time. Our marriage had been fractured well before this moment. But hearing it out loud, saying it—it made it real in a way that I wasn't fully prepared for.
"Are you okay?" I found myself asking.
Calyx let out a quiet chuckle, though there was no humor in it. "You're the one who just got the news, Severa. Maybe I should be asking you that."
I bit the inside of my cheek. I wasn't sure I knew the answer.
We sat there for a while, the silence stretching again, heavier this time. The meal between us untouched.
And then, in a voice so low I almost didn't hear it, he asked, "Does this change anything?"
I looked at him, really looked at him. The shadows under his eyes, the tension in his jaw, the way his fingers curled loosely against his palm.
I knew what he was asking.
Not about the divorce. About us, that is happening right now.
I didn't have an answer.
The weight of his question lingered between us, heavy and unspoken.
Does this change anything?
I could have lied. Could have told him no, that the divorce only confirmed what we had both known for a long time—that we were broken long before the paperwork made it official.
But the truth sat bitter on my tongue. Because I didn't know.
Calyx exhaled, shaking his head slightly, as if he hadn't expected an answer in the first place. He pushed his chair back and stood, his movements slow, measured.
"I'm going to step outside for a bit," he murmured, already turning away.
I watched him go, his back tense as he disappeared through the doorway, the faint creak of the safehouse door closing behind him.
And just like that, I was alone with the remains of a dinner neither of us had touched.
I let out a slow breath, dragging a hand through my damp hair. The air in the room felt suffocating now, thick with words left unsaid.
I reached for my burner phone, staring at the screen as if it held some kind of answer. There were no new messages. No updates from the team. No sign of Dos, Uno, Fifth, or Kaiser. The silence from them was beginning to gnaw at me, a quiet warning at the back of my mind.
Pushing back my chair, I stood, my movements automatic as I checked the locks on the windows and doors. It was routine—muscle memory. But my mind was elsewhere, stuck on the man outside, on the weight of what had just been said.
Or rather, what hadn't been said.
I hesitated at the threshold before following him.
Outside, the night was quiet, the air crisp and cool. Calyx stood a few feet away, hands in his pockets, his gaze fixed on the dark horizon.
I approached slowly, stopping beside him but not speaking.
For a long time, neither of us said anything. Just stood there, side by side, as the night stretched around us.
And then, without looking at me, Calyx spoke.
"You know, when we first got married, I didn't think much of it," he admitted, his voice quieter than usual. "It was just… something that had to happen. For the company. For my family. For yours."
I swallowed hard, my fingers curling at my sides. It had been different for me.
When we got married, I vowed to keep my distance, to bury my feelings so he wouldn't feel trapped in a marriage he never wanted. But somewhere along the way, my feelings for him deepened, slipping past the walls I had built.
And now, I wasn't sure how to keep that vow anymore.
"But somewhere along the way," he continued, "I guess I stopped thinking of it like that."
I turned my head slightly, studying his profile. The way his jaw tightened, the way his shoulders tensed, as if he were struggling to put something into words.
His next words were softer, almost lost to the wind.
"And now, I don't know what to think anymore."
Something twisted in my chest.
This—this was different. He wasn't brushing it off. He wasn't shrugging and moving on like he had before.
He was feeling it.
And maybe that was the most terrifying part of all.
I wet my lips, my voice barely above a whisper. "Neither do I."
It was a lie.
Because I did know what I was thinking. I just didn't want to say it out loud. My mind was a mess, tangled between logic and emotion. I was thinking about our situation, about how I needed to accept that we were officially divorced. That I had vowed to keep my distance, to let him go. That this—whatever this was—needed to end.
But I was also thinking about the danger. About how letting him go now, in the middle of all this, would be reckless. About how I couldn't afford to see him gone.
For the first time since I told him about the divorce, he turned to look at me. And in his eyes, I saw something I wasn't sure I was ready to face.
Something unfinished.
Something not yet broken.
The wind rustled around us, carrying away whatever words we might have said next.
And for the first time in a long time, I had no idea what came next.