"I'm Maud Fox. Your wife. The woman who stood by you for five years, who spent the last two on her knees praying to every god she could find, begging them to bring you back to me!"
"Can you just open your eyes and look at me? When are you going to stop mistaking me for someone else?"
But he didn't hear me. Or didn't care. He kept Ebony tucked behind him, shielding her like she was something precious and fragile.
When he turned to face me, there was disgust in his eyes.
"You think you get to call yourself that?"
"She is my wife. You're nothing but a lunatic, and if you lay a finger on her again, I swear you'll regret it."
Ebony nestled against Caspar's chest, dabbing at crocodile tears with trembling fingers.
"Maud, please don't misunderstand. There's nothing between me and Caspar. He's sick, that's all. He thinks I'm you. Don't blame him. If you need to blame someone, blame me. It's all my fault..."
Every word was designed to twist the knife, yet she delivered them with the perfect quiver of a victim.
And Caspar fell for it. He raised his arm and shoved me. Hard.
"Get out!"
The venom in his voice, the cruelty in his eyes. I had never seen him look at me like that. Not once in five years.
I hit the floor. From where I lay, I watched them. The two of them, still holding each other. One was the husband I loved down to my marrow. The other was the best friend I'd given my whole heart to.
Together, they had just delivered the killing blow.
I couldn't even speak.
I left the room. Walked out into the street in a daze, barely registering the world around me. A car swerved past, missing me by inches.
"What the hell! Are you out of your mind?"
"Watch where you're going!"
The driver's curse snapped me back. Cold sweat crawled down my spine.
Two years.
Two full years I'd devoted to a man who couldn't recognize my face. Two years clinging to the wreckage of a marriage that had already sunk.
Everyone in Harbor City thought I was a joke.
Even at the last gala, Carissa Sanchez, a woman who'd always been perfectly polite to me, had deliberately shoulder-checked me with a sneer plastered across her face.
"Still think you're the same Mrs. Stephens he used to treat like a queen?"
"He doesn't even know who you are anymore. He'd call any random woman on the street his wife."
"Maud, how many times do you think he's humiliated you in these two years? You must have lost count by now."
I stared at the haggard face in the mirror and forced a bitter smile.
Caspar, I'm so tired.
I sat on the front steps for two hours before I finally dialed a number I hadn't called in a long time.
"Mom. I'll do it. I'll fly out in seven days."
My mother's voice surged with excitement, then confusion.
"You've changed your mind? Wait, that doesn't make sense. Just last year you were telling me everything was fine, that you and your husband were happy, that you didn't want to live apart..."
"And don't forget, if you actually commit to moving here for good, you and that Stephens Group heir of yours won't be seeing much of each other..."
I lowered my head, the bitter smile returning.
"He... doesn't recognize me anymore."
By the time I hung up, it was dark.
I drifted home like a ghost. Back to the house that had been so warm two years ago. Our home.
Back then, Caspar had proposed with everything he had. He'd lit up the Harbor City skyline with fireworks that blazed for three straight nights. People still talked about it as one of the greatest love stories the city had ever seen.
This villa, over five thousand square feet of luxury, he'd personally overseen every detail of the renovation for an entire year before it was finished.
Every corner was exactly the way I liked it.
But soon, none of it would be mine.
I was heading upstairs to start packing when voices drifted from the first-floor bathroom. A man and a woman.
Caspar's voice, deliberately low, strained to the point of breaking:
"Ebony, I already did everything you told me to do. What more do you want?"
I moved closer without thinking.
Through the crack in the door, I saw Caspar pinning Ebony against the wall.
