Nora thought she had walked into the wrong room.
The once-beautiful sunroom now reeked of muddy water. The windows were smeared, the marble floor littered with flower petals and broken stems. All her carefully cultivated blooms had been cut, mangled, left to wilt in disarray.
Hadley, in a bikini, zipped around the house in a toy car, crashing into furniture and walls.
“Nora! Wanna ride? I’ll drive you around!” she giggled.
Damien leaned against the doorframe, eyes fixed on Hadley, reminding her over and over to be careful.
Nora’s voice came out hoarse. “Where did that car come from?”
Damien’s smile faded. He still didn’t look at her. “Hadley saw the neighbor’s kid with it. She liked it, so I bought it.”
He added, as if that explained everything, “Nora, when I treat your family well, that includes you. Hadley’s different from you—she has no one left in this world.”
Hadley’s biological parents—Nora’s adoptive ones—had died three years ago. Even though they had mistreated her, Nora had still arranged an honorable funeral.
She’d thought returning to her birth parents would be a fresh start. But it was just a different kind of hell.
Damien frowned. “You two are sisters. But Hadley’s so playful and lively, while you… you’re just lifeless all the time.”
Nora’s body went numb. She couldn’t find her voice.
She remembered when they first got married, she’d said she wanted a child. Damien had insisted—career came first. Kids were too loud, too messy.
They’d started sleeping in separate rooms after that.
He hadn’t hated kids. He just didn’t want her child.
Hadley aimed her water gun and sprayed Nora across the face.
Nora staggered back in shock, wiping her eyes, but tripped—falling straight into the pool behind her.
Water swallowed her in an instant. Panic clawed at her chest. She thrashed toward the surface and gasped, “Damien… help me…”
Damien muttered, “What a hassle,” and began unbuttoning his shirt.
But before he could move, Hadley screamed.
“Ow! Damien help. I’m so clumsy! I was trying to help, but I twisted my ankle!” She collapsed dramatically, sobbing. “Go help her, it’s fine!”
Damien didn’t hesitate. He turned and rushed to Hadley, lifting her in his arms.
“You poor thing. Look at this, you’re bleeding…”
He walked right past the pool, not even glancing at Nora.
“Don’t worry about her. She needs to grow up sometime. Maybe this’ll help her get over that drowning trauma.”
Everyone knew—eight years ago, on Hadley’s birthday yacht party, Nora had fallen into the ocean and nearly died.
Damien had jumped in after her without thinking, spent a month in the hospital.
Now, as Nora looked at Damien and Hadley pressed up against each other, all tangled up in flirtation and affection, she understood—this time, Damien wouldn’t be the one to save her.
She had already lost all strength from thrashing around in the water. Just when her consciousness was about to slip away, her hand somehow caught onto a giant inflatable duck floating in the pool.
Clinging to the duck, Nora lay there coughing up water, gasping desperately for air.
It was supposed to be a blazing hot July afternoon, but all she felt was cold. Her skin felt like it was icing over, the chill cutting straight into her bones.
By the time Nora stepped out of the shower, freshly dried and wrapped in her robe, Damien had just walked through the door.
