The wound across my abdomen split wider with every breath, blood soaking through the thin fabric of my pants in a spreading stain.
I kept my head bowed like a puppet with nothing left inside, repeating the same hollow apologies on loop.
"I'm sorry."
"I shouldn't have made you angry."
"I shouldn't have hurt you."
Lucinda savored every second of my humiliation, ordering the servants around like she was showing off a new toy.
"Go get Mrs. Gilbert's favorite jewelry set. I want to try it on."
"And that limited-edition bag. I want that too."
Giles stood there, cold-eyed, and let it happen.
He thought he'd won.
He thought he'd snapped the last bone of my pride.
No one noticed that beneath my lowered lashes, my gaze was locked on the second-floor study.
Giles, you think this is the cage that breaks me. You just opened the door to your own hell.
He looked at me—at the dead, hollow thing I'd become—and something clawed at him, something he couldn't name. I was already slipping out of reach, and he could feel it.
After the apology, Giles had me confined to the master bedroom.
Lucinda paraded around the living room like she owned the place, bossing every servant in the villa.
I shut the door and sealed out every sound.
I needed to rest. I needed to wait for my chance.
It came the next night.
An emergency at the company pulled Giles out of the villa in the middle of the night.
The moment I was sure he was gone, I dragged myself out of bed.
Every step sent a dull blade of pain through my abdomen, the wound pulling open a little more with each one.
But I couldn't afford to care.
I made my way to the second-floor study.
Everything was exactly as I'd left it.
I moved the bookshelf panel aside with practiced hands, revealing the hidden compartment and the safe behind it.
The combination was our wedding anniversary.
How fitting.
At the very bottom of the safe, a brown paper envelope lay waiting.
My hands were shaking as I pulled out what was inside.
A medical report from five years ago.
Three lines, printed black on white, that could ruin him:
*Giles Gilbert — congenital infertility — no known cure.*
My trump card was finally back in my hands.
Five years collapsed in on me at once.
The day I first held that report, my whole body went numb. I couldn't fathom what it would do to a man like Giles—that proud, that certain of himself—to learn the truth about his own body. I was terrified it would hollow him out, terrified his competitors would smell blood and use it to tear him apart. So I went to Rex Delgado, my closest friend and one of the top urologists in the country, and I begged him to bury the secret. Then I walked into a hospital alone and had an IUD put in, and I told everyone—Giles, his mother, the whole Gilbert family—that I was simply too afraid of the pain, that I didn't want children. For five years I swallowed every name they called me—the barren wife, the hen that couldn't lay eggs—and I carried the weight of the entire Gilbert family's contempt on my back without a word.
I thought I was protecting our love and his dignity.
Now I see it for what it was—one long, cruel joke.
I was about to leave the study when the door behind me opened.
Giles stood in the doorway, eyes dark and cold.
"What are you doing in my study this late?"
"Stealing trade secrets? Who are you running to for help?"
He closed the distance step by step, the pressure of him so suffocating I could barely breathe.
I forced myself to stay calm.
I pulled open the drawer and took out the only photograph we'd ever had together, then held it up in front of him and tore it apart, piece by slow piece.
I let the fragments fall at his feet, and when I spoke, my voice carried nothing at all—no anger, no grief, not even the memory of love.
