For three days, Valmere feasted on his death.
Every network replayed Elias's final interview, his smile immortalized in pixels. Fans camped outside his mansion with flowers and holograms. A memorial concert was planned before the autopsy was finished.
And no one mentioned her.
The world believed he had no wife, only lovers, sponsors, and scandals. His marriage license was sealed under a false name, signed in a chapel built by people who did not like their business public.
Maya moved like smoke through her own life. The apartment they shared was stripped by the studio's lawyers within forty-eight hours. His personal effects were "secured for review." She kept only the photograph he'd hidden behind the piano — the two of them on a desolate coast, her hand over his heart.
By the fourth day, she stopped answering condolences that weren't meant for her.
By the fifth, she knew what she had to do.
---
Detective Samuel Kiplagat found her in the hallway of the morgue, sitting perfectly still on a plastic chair. Her eyes were dry, her posture composed. He had been told she was the wife. He didn't believe it at first.
"I'm sorry for your loss, Mrs…?"
"Just Maya," she said. "Hart, if you must."
He hesitated. "You weren't listed in any public records."
"That was the point."
He studied her—too calm, too deliberate. "You think it wasn't an accident."
She looked up at him. "I know it wasn't. That window had reinforced mesh. You can't fall through it unless someone wants you to."
"And who would want that?"
Maya smiled softly, not out of amusement but pity. "In Valmere? Who doesn't want a dead god?"
He had no answer.
When she left, she carried a small box the morgue attendant had handed her — his ring, his watch, a cufflink with a crack across it. She slipped the ring onto her own hand and walked into the sunlight like someone shedding a disguise.
By nightfall, she was gone from the city.
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