The day he paid cash in full for the riverside penthouse, Neville Pruitt household butler handed the master bedroom—the one with the best light—to Eleanor Rowe, the girl he called his adopted sister, declaring he'd give her the most comfortable postpartum recovery money could buy.
I wasn't about to let my marital home turn into Eleanor's recovery suite, so I threw her out, belongings and all.
When Neville found out, he rushed home from the office and gave me two vicious slaps across the face.
"Celia Gilbert, Eleanor's divorced and raising a kid alone. All I'm doing is letting her recover here in our home. Is that really so impossible for you to tolerate?"
"When did you turn into someone this petty and small-minded!"
Watching Neville defend her like that left me cold to the bone.
That same day, Neville shut me inside a dog cage and let his hounds tear at my body.
Outside the cage, he stood there with his arm around Eleanor, watching with cold eyes.
"Celia Gilbert, it's your jealousy that made Eleanor hemorrhage today. She nearly died on me."
"This—all of this—is exactly the punishment you deserve."
It took only a heartbeat for something inside me to die. I pulled out my phone and called my father.
"Dad, Neville and Eleanor—I'm going to make them wish they were dead!"
——
When the words landed, Neville faltered for a moment, then let out a cold, utterly contemptuous laugh.
"Celia Gilbert, you're nothing but a poor country girl. Who do you think you are?"
"Don't go imagining that just because your last name is Gilbert, you're some heiress of the Gilbert family of Northport."
The butler trailing behind Neville chimed right in.
"That's right. For Mr. Pruitt to even look twice at you, to actually marry you—that's a blessing you couldn't have earned in several lifetimes."
"You'd best not push your luck."
Seeing me say nothing, Neville assumed I'd been frightened into silence.
He slid his arm intimately around Eleanor's waist and walked up to the cage.
"Celia Gilbert, if you admit right now that you were wrong, I might consider letting you out."
I was curled up inside the cage, barely waist-high.
Behind me were the two mastiffs Neville kept.
Right now they were fixed on me, eyes hungry and predatory.
Waiting, silent, for Neville to give the command.
Fear had soaked the back of my shirt with sweat, layer upon layer.
Even my body had begun to tremble, and I couldn't stop it.
Even so, I forced myself to sound calm as I spoke to Neville.
"Neville, that's clearly our marital home."
"What gives you the right to hand it over to Eleanor as her recovery room?"
"I will never agree to let her move in, and I will never apologize to her!"
From staying curled up so long, a cramping pain began to twist through my lower belly, wave after wave.
I clutched my stomach, swallowing the pain, and ground out the words at him.
"Neville, let me out of here now. Do you not understand that I'm pregnant!"
The fury in Neville's gaze slowly stilled at those words.
His eyes drifted down to my lower belly.
Yet he made no move at all.
Back when his company went public, he'd told me he didn't want to be distracted, that he needed to throw himself into building his career.
He'd said he didn't want a child for the time being.
And so, through all five years we'd been together,
we had always used protection.
I knew his hesitation now was only because he thought I was lying to him.
Trying to use an excuse like this to get him to let me out.
Just as I was about to speak again,
Eleanor, standing at his side, looked at him with a face full of weakness.
"Neville, Celia says she's pregnant too. You should hurry and let her out."
"When it comes down to it, this whole thing is my fault."
"I shouldn't have intruded on your lives during my recovery."
