Chapter 236

No.1

The guest room was dead silent, save for the faint hum of the central air conditioning.

Elisa sat on the edge of the mattress. She stared at the Gstaad phone number on her screen. A wave of disgust washed over her, but she forced it down. She pressed the green call button and lifted the phone to her ear.

It rang four times.

"Speak," August's voice answered, a low, impatient rumble. In the background, Elisa could clearly hear Allena's coquettish giggle and the sharp clink of crystal glasses. "August, darling, who is it? Don't waste our time on the phone..." Allena's voice drifted through,thick with cloying intimacy.

Elisa's stomach churned. The physical reality of what they were doing in that ski cabin hit her, but her face remained a mask of stone.

No.2

"Put her on speaker, or listen closely, I don't care,"

Elisa demanded. Her voice was flat and robotic.

There was a rustle on the line, and Allena's voice suddenly took over, having snatched the phone. "Oh,it's the ex-wife," Allena purred, her tone shifting to pure, malicious triumph. "I'm sorry, Elisa. August is busy showering off. We had a very... exhausting morning in the snow."

Allena emphasized the word 'exhausting',weaponizing the sexual intimacy to inflict maximum pain.

Elisa didn't take the bait. She didn't care about their sex life. She only cared about her freedom.

No.3

"Tell him his mother intercepted the separation injunction at the courthouse this morning," Elisa said coldly.

The heavy silence on the other end of the line was instant.

"Tell him," Elisa continued, her voice slicing through the air like a scalpel, "that if he doesn't want to spend the rest of his life keeping you as a dirty little secret, he needs to get his ass back to New York and handle Germaine."

"You're lying!" Allena shrieked. The husky confidence vanished, replaced by shrill panic."August said the lawyers finished everything! You're just making this up to ruin our trip!"

"Believe what you want," Elisa said.

No.4

She pulled the phone away from her ear and hit end call. She tossed the device onto the bed. She knew Allena would run straight to August with the news.The Swiss vacation was officially over.

Elisa stood up. Her throat felt dry. Shé unlocked the guest room door and walked out into the hallway,heading toward the massive open-concept kitchen to get a glass of water.

She walked down the long, familiar corridor. She had lived in this penthouse for seven years. She knew every inch of it.

As she passed the midpoint of the hallway, her peripheral vision caught something wrong. Her footsteps slowed to a halt.

She turned her head to look at the left wall.

No.5

For seven years, that wall had been a massive,

carefully curated gallery. It held dozens of framed photographs of her and August. Pictures from charity galas, corporate retreats, and forced vacations. It was the physical proof of her existence as his wife.

The wall was completely blank.

Every single photograph was gone. The nail holes had not been spackled over. Instead, they stared back at her from the expensive wallpaper like glaring,empty eyes, surrounded by faded, discolored squares where the frames used to hang. He had not even bothered to have his staff repair the damage properly. He had simply ordered a violent, hasty removal.

In the center of the blank space hung three massive,violently colorful abstract paintings. They were aggressive, modern, and completely alien to Elisa's taste.

No.6

Elisa stood in the hallway, looking at the wall littered with empty nail holes. An absurd, almost hysterical laugh threatened to bubble up from her throat. She didn't feel a chill; she felt a profound sense of the ridiculous. It was so childish. So theatrical. Like a toddler scribbling over a drawing he no longer liked.

He thought removing a few pictures could erase seven years of a contract? Pathetic.

She stared at the abstract paintings. Her lips slowly curled into a cold, razor-sharp smirk. Such a childish,desperate erasure only proved exactly how deeply she had scarred his ego. She didn't feel the urge to cry. She didn't feel heartbroken. This wasn't a sudden liberation; this was merely the final confirmation of a war she had already won in her mind.③

There were no more threads left to snap. He had clumsily erased her from his walls, and in return, she was going to meticulously erase his empire from the earth.②

Elisa turned away from the wall. She walked into the kitchen, poured a glass of ice water, and drank it down in one long gulp.

No.7

She walked back to the guest room, locked the door,and opened her laptop. She bypassed the security protocols and logged directly into the Aethel Intelligence mainframe. It was time to prepare the digital weapons.