From Mob Princess to Mugshot Photographer novel Chapter 108

**Chapter 5**

As the aircraft glided downward toward Miami, a coastal city that had long occupied a place in my dreams but remained unvisited, a sense of anticipation coursed through me.

Here, there would be no Jake. No Riley. No stifling whispers or judgmental glances to weigh me down.

Through the cabin window, I observed the plane slicing through the clouds like a knife through butter. In that moment, memories flooded back—specifically, the night six long years ago when Jake stood outside my apartment, drenched to the bone by the relentless rain, pouring out his heart with a fervor that still echoed in my mind:

“Chloe, be with me, and I swear I’ll give you the good life!”

His words hung in the air, heavy with promise. With a deep breath, I switched on my phone, and my heart sank as I saw the notification: seventeen unread messages. The most recent one flashed on the screen, timestamped just five minutes ago:

[Chloe, I’m at the County Clerk Office. When are you getting here?]

A laugh escaped my lips, a sound tinged with irony that surprised even me.

How utterly ridiculous.

After twenty-seven days of pleading, all I had received was his hollow promise to “marry me in three days.”

Well, those three days had come and gone, and I found myself devoid of the energy needed to dissect his tangled web of lies.

I began to scroll through our chat history, six years of messages flashing before my eyes like a film reel, each frame a snapshot of our tumultuous journey.

I could almost feel the rain-soaked night again, Jake standing there, vulnerable and exposed, revealing his deepest feelings.

I recalled those early days of our startup, sharing instant ramen in his cramped apartment, laughter mingling with the smell of cheap noodles.

There was the moment he spun me around in a dizzying dance when we landed our first big contract, joy radiating from us like sunlight breaking through the clouds.

In that stark realization, I understood that he had never truly cared for me.

Suddenly, the memory of my mother’s final moments pierced through my thoughts—her frail hand gripping my sleeve, her cloudy eyes filled with a desperate plea. “Chloe… let Mom… rest easy…”

Tears slipped down my cheeks, landing on my phone screen and blurring Jake’s last message into a smudged reminder of the past I was so eager to escape.

My phone buzzed again, the screen lighting up with Jake’s name.

With a resolute heart, I declined the call and swiftly blocked him on every platform—my phone, social media, email—everything.

I was severing the ties that had bound me to six years of self-deception.

If you’re going to leave, I reminded myself, don’t look back.