Chapter 4
Vivian's POV
I didn't bother with Dylan. I pulled the storage room door open.
My things were spread thin across the small space — a few pieces of clothing dumped directly on the floor.
I shook out what looked clean, folded them, and packed them into the suitcase. Then I turned to leave.
"Where do you think you're going?" Dylan stepped into the doorway.
"That's none of your business."
I pulled the suitcase past him.
"Where is Vivian going?" Hazel's voice came from behind me, laced with a performance of concern. "Mr. Hudson, can you talk to her? It's so late..."
Dylan's voice came out cold and with the weight of a blade behind it: "If you want to walk out, walk out. But don't bother coming back."
I didn't turn around.
The night air hit me when I stepped out of the villa. I breathed it in and felt, for the first time all evening, clearheaded.
It was past midnight by the time I made it back to the lab. The temporary accommodation there was cramped and bare, but something in my chest loosened the moment I set down my bag. At least I could breathe here.
My phone buzzed. Jason's message:
[Changed your flight to Sunlight City. You leave the day after tomorrow, early morning. That gives you one day to wrap things up at the lab. Let me know if you need anything.]
I typed back: Thank you. Set the phone down. Stood at the window and drew a slow breath.
Even at this hour, the researchers below were still moving in and out of the building. The sight of that — the steady, purposeful activity — loosened something in my chest that had been wound tight for hours. Work was the one reliable thing I knew how to reach for.
The next morning I was up early. White coat on, hair pulled back, through the clean-room doors.
The neural network samples in the culture dishes were developing steadily. Under the microscope, the synaptic connections were forming with a complexity that still caught me off guard every time I looked. I fell into the work — recording data, adjusting parameters — and looked up to find that the afternoon had come and gone without me noticing.
My phone buzzed.
Dylan.
I watched his name blink on the screen for a few seconds, then answered.
"Where are you?"
"The lab."
"How long are you planning to drag this out?" Same impatience. Same tone. Some things never changed.
I gripped the phone and kept my voice even. "Dylan, I want you to seriously consider the divorce."
"Vivian." His voice jumped up a register. "Are you finished? The 'I want a divorce' threat works once or twice. After that it's just noise."
There it was. In his mind, my decisions were nothing more than moods — temper tantrums, childish provocations. The fatigue was sudden and complete.
"I have things to get back to. Goodbye."
The next two days in Sunlight City were dense from morning to night — data analysis, project progress meetings, call after call with collaborators. My brain barely had space for anything else. That density was, for the moment, a mercy.
Daniel's call came in while I was buried in a data report.
"Look at the academic network group for Oceancrest City, right now. The whole thing's exploding."
I pulled up the chat on my phone, and the first message stopped me cold.
[Did you hear about Vivian? The one who got funding for the neural cultivation project? Sounds like her marriage is falling apart.]
[Are you serious? Isn't she married to Dylan Hudson?]
[If you can even call it a marriage. Word is she got tired of being a wife and mother, just walked out and left them behind.]
[She moved out? Her kid's that young and she just abandoned them? What kind of mother does that?]
[This is why women need to prioritize the family...]
A handful of anonymous posts. Ripples spreading outward from a stone I hadn't seen coming.
I stared at the screen and felt the blood drain slowly from my fingertips.
Other than family, I had told no one about the separation. My colleagues at the lab knew only that the project had me stretched thin and I was sleeping on-site for a few days. Daniel might have guessed something was off, but he wouldn't have said a word.
Where had this come from?
I closed the app and pushed myself back into the work, but the tension that had settled between my shoulders did not leave.
The real assault came the following morning.
Before dawn, I was pulled from a restless sleep by a barrage of notifications.
The room was still dark. The phone screen at the edge of the pillow kept flashing. I fumbled for it half-asleep, unlocked it — and woke up completely.
The messaging app icons were stacked with numbers that were still climbing. WhatsApp was the same — friend requests from strangers, unread messages piling on top of each other.
I opened the most recent text. Unknown number. The words reached into my chest and squeezed.
[Abandoning your husband and child for your own selfish life. Disgusting. You should be ashamed to exist.]
[You call yourself a mother? You make me sick. Go to hell.]
[Poor Allen. What a miserable thing, to be stuck with a mother like you.]
Each one worse than the last.
I opened WhatsApp with shaking fingers. Dozens of friend requests from strangers, every accompanying message some variation of the same hatred and contempt.
My social media accounts had been hit as well.
Someone had posted my lab address. They had dug up old photographs from my university years. They had invented details with confident specificity — accusations of child neglect, of clawing my way into the Hudson family. The comment section on a recent post I had made about the project's progress had been buried under filth.
[Independent woman — right. She got bored with domesticity and wanted to run wild. That's what this is.]
[Her child was hospitalized with an allergic reaction and she didn't even bother to show up. Is she even human?]
[Mr. Hudson is a good man. He doesn't deserve this. She deserves everything coming to her.]
[Remember this face. Vivian. Wife and mother who walked out on her family.]
I sat on the edge of the bed, phone in both hands, and felt the cold work its way through me from the outside in.
I pulled one corner of my mouth into something that wasn't quite a smile.
Dylan. Hazel. Well-coordinated.
I steadied my breathing and placed the call. It connected before the first ring had finished.
"Vivian?" Jason's voice had the raw, early-morning quality of someone just surfacing from sleep. "This early. What happened?"
"Jason." My own voice, when I heard it, was rawer than I'd realized. "I need your help with something."
"Talk to me."
