Chapter 3: The Penthouse Purge
Chapter 3: The Penthouse Purge
The silence that followed the destruction of the Shelby was a different kind of loud. Back in her barn, the quiet no longer felt like a void waiting to be filled with the shriek of a grinder; it felt like an echo. Elara had landed her first blow, scarred the ghost of their past, and yet the satisfaction was as fleeting as the sparks from her welder. The rage remained, a low, constant hum beneath her skin. She had drawn blood, but the beast was still breathing.
Two days later, her phone buzzed. It was an unknown number, and she almost ignored it, but a grim curiosity won out. The text message contained only two lines.
The Argent Tower. Penthouse. Code: 0516.
Her blood ran cold. 0516. May sixteenth. The date they met at a local arts fair, where she’d been showcasing her first serious metalwork sculpture. He’d bought it on the spot, not with the condescension of a rich man indulging a local artist, but with a genuine, intelligent curiosity that had disarmed her completely. Using that date as a keycode was a new kind of cruelty, a twisting of a memory that was once solely hers.
This was the escalation. The Argent Tower was the glistening, arrogant spire of glass and steel where Thorne Industries occupied the top floors. His penthouse was the crown jewel of his empire, a fortress in the sky from which he’d looked down on the world he was conquering. It was the physical manifestation of the life he had chosen over her.
This time, she didn't hesitate. She grabbed the crowbar that now lived in the passenger-side footwell of her truck. It felt like an extension of her arm, a partner in her grim crusade.
The lobby of The Argent Tower was designed to intimidate. Soaring ceilings, acres of polished marble, and a silence so profound it felt manufactured. She ignored the questioning look from the concierge, her worn denim and mud-caked boots a defiant stain on the pristine environment. She walked directly to the private elevator, her jaw set. She punched in the code—0516—and felt a bitter tang at the back of her throat.
The elevator ascended in unnerving silence, a smooth, swift climb into the heavens. As the doors whispered open, she stepped out not into a home, but into a magazine spread.
The penthouse was a cathedral of cold opulence. Floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides revealed a breathtaking, god-like view of the city glittering below. The furniture was all sharp angles and unforgiving surfaces—glass, chrome, and stark white leather. A massive, abstract painting, a chaotic splash of black on a white canvas, dominated one wall. It was the kind of art bought for its investment value, not for its soul. The entire space was sterile, minimalist, and utterly devoid of warmth. It was Julian’s new soul, rendered in steel and stone.
“I see you kept the same decorator,” she muttered to the empty room. “Satan.”
For a moment, the sheer scale of it all was paralyzing. This was what he had traded her for. This soulless perfection. This kingdom in the clouds.
Her grip tightened on the crowbar. The first target was a long, low coffee table made from a single, seamless piece of glass. She swung not with the wild abandon of her attack on the car, but with a cold, methodical purpose. The crowbar connected, and the table didn't just break; it detonated, exploding into a thousand shards that skittered across the polished concrete floor like frozen tears. The sound was a gunshot in the sterile silence.
Next was the art. She dragged the crowbar down the center of the abstract canvas, tearing a violent scar through the black paint. Then she moved to the kitchen, a gleaming expanse of stainless steel and Italian marble. She opened a ridiculously expensive bottle of red wine, not to drink, but to pour. She watched the deep crimson liquid bleed into the pristine white suede of a ridiculously impractical sofa, a vulgar, beautiful stain. Each act was a targeted strike, an answer to the cold perfection of the room. She was reintroducing chaos into his ordered world. She was making it ugly. She was making it look like she felt.
She saved his office for last. This was the sanctum sanctorum, the place where her family's fate had been sealed with the stroke of a pen. She pushed the heavy door open, expecting to find trophies of his corporate conquests: framed stock certificates, Lucite awards, photos of him shaking hands with powerful, corrupt men.
The office was as sleek and gray as the rest of the penthouse, dominated by a desk of black wood that looked large enough to land a helicopter on. But there were no awards. No celebratory photos. The walls were bare. The desk was clear, save for a single, expensive laptop. It was... empty. A room scrubbed clean of any personality.
Her eyes scanned the space, and she noticed it: a section of the minimalist, wood-paneled wall that didn't quite align. There was no handle, no visible seam, just a faint outline. A hidden door. Driven by a primal instinct, she wedged the tip of her crowbar into the hairline crack and heaved. The lock gave way with a splintering crack, and the panel swung inward, revealing a small, dark space.
It was not a safe or a panic room. It was a closet-sized study, and the air within felt thick with obsession. One wall was covered in a massive corkboard. But instead of market projections or business plans, it was covered in maps of her valley, satellite images of her ravaged vineyard. Red lines traced the old irrigation systems. Notes in his familiar, sharp handwriting detailed soil composition and frost patterns. It was a meticulous, obsessive plan for restoration.
On a small drafting table below it lay the real shock. Not business documents, but sketchbooks. Dozens of them. She opened one, her hands numb. It was filled with drawings. His drawings. They were clumsy, amateurish, nothing like her own skilled work. But their subject was unmistakable. It was her.
Page after page of her face, her hands, her hair. Elara laughing in the sun. Elara, brows furrowed in concentration, welding a sculpture. Elara sleeping. Then, the drawings grew darker. Sketches of her face from the day of the betrayal, contorted in shock and pain. Drawings of her now, a figure wreathed in fire and shadow, her eyes burning with the cold fury he had created. He hadn’t just been remembering her; he had been studying her, documenting his own destruction of her, obsessing over every stage of her transformation from sunshine to storm.
Her rage, the solid, unshakeable foundation she had built her life on for the past year, began to tremble. This wasn't the work of a man who had moved on. This wasn't the shrine of a victor. This was the cell of a penitent, a man torturing himself with the ghost of what he’d thrown away. The monster she needed him to be—cold, calculating, triumphant—was a fiction. The reality was something far more pathetic and far more complicated.
The crowbar suddenly felt impossibly heavy in her hand. She looked from the obsessive sketches to the wreckage she had wrought in the penthouse. The beautiful, righteous simplicity of her revenge was gone, shattered as completely as the glass table on the floor. In its place was a sickening confusion.
Destroying his things felt hollow now. It was like kicking a man who was already on his knees, flagellating himself in a prison of his own making. The storm inside her didn't know which way to blow. Material destruction wasn't enough. It wasn’t even the point. She needed something more. Something that couldn't be hidden behind a secret door. Something he would have to look at every single day for the rest of his life.
Characters

Elara 'Ellie' Vance
