Golden Cage Mommy Mutiny (Elyse) novel Chapter 52

Chapter 9

Dylan stormed into the studio to wake me, his face twisted with anger and a fresh scrape blooming across his knuckles.

I grabbed the first–aid kit and dabbed antiseptic onto it.

“Who’d you get into a fight with?”

He smirked. “Saw Ethan Cole standing outside the door, so I pulled him into an alley. How’s that? I avenged you.”

I pressed the swab down harder on purpose. “If he’d actually decided to hit you back, you’d be in the ER right now. And I still need your face to make money.”

Dylan paused, then nodded as if the thought had only now occurred to him. “Now that you mention it, yeah… he stood there like he was concussed. Didn’t even swing.

“Shame you didn’t see it–I made him look like a damn punching bag.‘

A few days later, I did see Ethan.

Dylan had exaggerated; besides the faint bruises on his brow bone and lip, Ethan looked mostly fine.

He showed up in full dress uniform, pressed and immaculate, and asked quietly, “Could you take a new ID photo for me? The old promotional ones are from years ago. I want something current.”

Work was work, and money was money.

I agreed and seated him in front of the white backdrop, finishing the shoot in under five minutes.

He studied the print with a dull ache in his eyes. “You used to draw so many portraits of me,” he murmured.

“I’m sorry, for not protecting any of them. But now you’re a photographer… having you take even one picture of me is enough.“.

“Chloe,” he murmured, “I won’t come again. But if you ever need anything, you can find me.”

I didn’t answer.

I simply smiled and told him to take care as the door chime rang behind him like the closing notes of a final scene.

That should have been the end of the story.

But there was an epilogue.

The photo I took of Ethan never made it into any news piece or televised interview, because Kira

Chapter 9

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was investigated soon after.

Ethan’s monthly transfers to her were small, and she couldn’t afford the twenty–eight thousand she owed me; terrified of the police and desperate to protect her failing marriage, she reached out

unsolicited to accept a bribe.

The sting operation caught her immediately.

And whether Ethan knew or not, her crime dragged him into the mud.

He could no longer appear publicly, and a spotless career that once climbed straight upward simply… ended. A former classmate later told me Ethan had been asking around for divorce

lawyers.

At that moment, I was backstage at a major fashion show with Dylan, waiting for the event to start. Bored, I picked up a pen and began to doodle on the corner of a draft sheet.

“Hey–Chloe. Chloe!” Dylan called my name over and over before I finally looked up.

Only then did I realize how long I’d been drawing, and how natural it felt.

I was finding my way back to things I had lost: my talent, my joy, and most importantly, myself.

-The End