The noise brought out a neighbor, an older woman in a cardigan who cracked open her door to see what was going on. The moment she saw his face—red, wild-eyed, desperate—she slipped back inside and locked up again.
The shame of being seen like that burned hotter than the anger.
With shaking hands, he pulled out his phone and called Alina. The line rang and rang. She didn’t decline the call. She just let it ring.
He called again. And again. And again.
Nothing.
Gradually, the rage drained out of him and left something colder behind.
At last he stopped pounding and leaned his forehead against the cool metal of the door. Eyes closed, he listened for anything on the other side. Footsteps. A chair moving. A mouse click. Anything.
There was nothing.
And in that awful stillness, the truth finally began to settle in.
This had not been a household spat. Not a bad night. Not a woman being emotional. It had been a decision—clear, deliberate, and final.
He remembered her face from the night before: pale, focused, stripped of emotion. She hadn’t been trying to win an argument. She had simply removed an obstacle.
Slowly he stepped back and looked at the door again.
It was no longer the door to their shared home. It was her wall now. Solid, sealed, and not built for him anymore.
