Chapter 3

The next morning, Luna carried out a cardboard box.

"Cassie, do you still want this box of old brushes?"

It was filled to the brim with heavily worn markers and chewed-up sketching pencils.

"Keep them. Just put them at the very bottom of the cabinet."

I recognized the teeth marks on those pencils.

They belonged to Ethan when he was seven years old.

Back then, my mother was running a free community art program for underprivileged kids.

There was a little boy who always hid under the playground slide. He never spoke, never looked anyone in the eye, and always tightly clutched a broken piece of chalk in his fist.

His parents were alcoholics and gamblers who beat him constantly.

Every single day, my mother would bring a different picture book to that playground.

She would sit just two feet away from him, open the book, and read the story aloud.

She did this for three solid months.

When she closed the ninetieth book, the boy finally looked up. His face was bruised, but his dark eyes were incredibly bright.

"Ma'am... will you come back tomorrow?"

Eventually, my mother foster-adopted him.

She used her meager retirement savings to buy him high-quality art supplies. She supported him through local art contests all the way to national exhibitions.

He eventually won a full-ride scholarship to college.

During high school, he was like my shadow.

I was quiet and didn't like to talk, so he used his sketchbook to record my life.

He drew me eating cherry popsicles in the summer heat, crouching over my desk solving math problems, and leaning against the bus stop sign in the rain.

There was one drawing I never forgot.

The theme of his high school art final was "Home."

While others drew houses or family portraits, he drew a single hand.

My left hand.

The wrist was bare and clean, and my fingers held a paint-stained brush.

The teacher asked him how this represented "Home."

He replied, "Wherever she is, that is home."

On graduation day, he shoved a thick sketchbook into my hands.

"This is every version of you I've ever drawn."

He looked at me, his eyes shining with ambition and love.

"No matter how far I go in life, Cassie, you will always be my very first stroke."

After college, we naturally got married.

He wanted to start an educational tech company for children.

On the day he registered the business, he filled out the form with the name: CasStart Academy.

In the beginning, I was the entire creative department.

I designed the curriculum, the teaching methods, and the parent-child reading guides.

I drew over a thousand drafts under the dim light of our rented apartment, night after night.

He handled the funding and the marketing.

We got our marriage license, and we were officially husband and wife.

I picked up a palette knife and scraped away a layer of dried paint from the tray.

The night we secured our Series A funding, during the celebratory dinner, an investor patted Ethan on the shoulder and joked, "Mr. Vance, you're young and successful. Just make sure people don't say you built your empire on your wife's back."

The entire table burst into laughter.

On the drive home, Ethan didn't say a word.

One hand gripped the steering wheel while the knuckles of his other hand tapped hard against the car window.

I looked at the tight, rigid line of his jaw.

It was the exact same expression he wore when he was seven years old, when people pointed at him and called him "trash abandoned by his parents."

That night, when we got home, he sat on the couch and patted the spot next to him.

"Cassie, come here."

When I sat down, he began playing with my paint-stained fingertips.

"The company has reached a new stage. We need a more professional executive team. Starting tomorrow, I need you to hand over your role as Creative Director. You can step back and act as an advisor from behind the scenes."

I stood by the kitchen island, holding a freshly washed apple.

Water droplets dripped from my fingers, splashing onto the hardwood floor.

My mind suddenly echoed with my mother's words before she passed: "He didn't have an easy path to get here, Cassie. Be patient with him."

I set the apple on the counter.

And I nodded.

He pulled me into his arms, resting his chin on the top of my head.

"Good girl. Go check the garage tomorrow. I bought a new Porsche Cayenne. It's registered in your name. Think of it as your reward."

The day I signed the transfer papers, the sky was completely gray.

I sat alone in my office, opening the folder on my computer labeled [CasStart Curriculum Core System].

Three hundred and seventy-two files.

From the very first rough draft of the curriculum to the final version of our interactive reading model.

I dragged them all into the shared company drive.

When the progress bar hit 100%, a notification popped up on the screen: "Transfer Successful."

I shut down my computer.

I began clearing out my desk drawers.

Almost every scrap of paper was covered in sketches I had drawn at three in the morning, filled with my handwritten notes.

At the very bottom of the drawer lay a photo.

It was a team photo taken in the office the day CasStart landed its first major government contract.

I was standing right next to Ethan, holding the signed contract, smiling so hard my teeth showed.

On the back of the photo, he had written: "Cassie, without you, there is no CasStart."

I turned the photo over, leaving it face down on the empty desk.

From that day on, my name vanished from all of CasStart's public materials.

I became a ghost "advisor."

Even in the annual company group photos, I stood at the very edge of the crowd, almost entirely cut out.