Pain spread through me, thick and stinging, pricking everywhere at once.
I opened my mouth to say something—anything—
and Marlin Gilbert's phone rang.
The caller ID read “my darling Christina Pruitt.”
And next to that, my name. Just my name, bare and cold.
“Diana Henson.”
The truth was, the whole time we'd been together, I'd noticed. The little moments of indifference Marlin let slip, the way he'd go through the motions without really being there.
Every time, I made excuses for him.
We'd met through a matchmaker, after all.
People who've been worn down by the world don't burn the way teenagers do.
As long as he could genuinely care for me, respect me,
I was willing to hand over everything I had.
But reality was always crueler than anything I'd imagined.
Marlin Gilbert didn't love me.
The woman he loved was the one who'd destroyed my family.
The devil who'd shoved my head into a toilet and carved into my skin with a box cutter.
His arrival in my life wasn't salvation.
It was meant to finish off whatever was left of a life already on the verge of collapse.
Something tore open inside my chest,
throbbing with each pulse.
I refused to let Marlin see me fall apart.
While he took the call, I wiped my tears dry as fast as I could.
“Marlin, I'll give you the money. Just give me my house back.”
Christina Pruitt had already stolen enough from me over the years.
Small things like dresses and toys.
Big things like my father and my family.
Every time I fought back, the whole household answered with fists and feet.
When I was sixteen, if Grandma Evelyn hadn't found me locked on the rooftop, barely breathing,
I probably would've frozen to death that winter.
That house was my shelter.
It was the only thing Grandma Evelyn ever left me.
I would never hand it over to Christina Pruitt.
Marlin didn't respond. He pulled out a bank card and tossed it in front of me.
“The PIN is Christina's birthday. Take the money and pick yourself a new place.”
“I told you I wouldn't shortchange you on the material side.”
“As for everything else……don't ever think you can compete with her.”
A VIP gold card. There weren't more than a handful of those in all of Arden City.
For Christina Pruitt, he really would spare nothing.
I didn't take it. I looked straight at Marlin.
“I don't want money.”
“I'm getting a lawyer and taking my house back.”
Marlin blinked, then grinned.
Pure contempt.
“Diana, don't be childish.”
“In Arden City, no one would dare take your case.”
Right. I'd forgotten.
Marlin Gilbert wasn't the man who'd lain in bed beside me, arguing over what to have for breakfast. He was born into more money than I could fathom—someone who'd never once had to live the way I did.
Someone like that could never understand what my suffering felt like.
The room went quiet for a moment.
I wanted to get out before the tears fell.
But Marlin grabbed my wrist.
A gust caught my sleeve, exposing the scars layered across my arm, some deep, some faded.
Something in his expression loosened for just a second.
After a brief silence, he let out a soft sigh.
“Diana, I'm not trying to make this hard for you.”
“That house doesn't do you any good just sitting there.”
“Sell it to Christina, and we go on the way we have been. What's wrong with that?”
Seven box-cutter slashes across my body. Five cigarette burns. Pinch marks and bruises beyond counting, scattered everywhere else.
Most of them were Christina Pruitt's handiwork, from when we were children.
What she loved most was rounding up a pack of kids to hold court over me.
She'd have them pin me to the ground, plant her foot on my head, and say:
