The private doctor was outside, dressing Rosalia's wounds while I packed my bag in the bedroom. Maybe the rustle of my suitcase had roused her.
"How—are you leaving again?" she asked, pushing the door open and wrapping her arms around me from behind. Her lips traced a trail of kisses down the back of my neck.
I froze, but I didn't pull away. I let her shower me with that tenderness—tenderness that felt rehearsed.
"I still have some things I need to take care of," I said. "They want me there."
There was no real need to go. I simply didn't want to see her for a while.
Suddenly, she undid the top buttons of my shirt. "Waylon," she murmured, her voice sounded rough, "hold me tight."
She wanted me. Then, as if claiming me, she forced my hands up over my head. I didn't speak; I quietly wrenched my arms free.
When she noticed, her eyes shot opened. "Are you still angry, Waylon?"
I kept silent.
She sank to one knee like an apology and took out a small gift box from behind her back, almost reverent. "I bought you something new. See if you like it."
I opened the box. Inside lay a set of pure white shirts.
A wave of nausea rose in me. Without a word, I pushed the gift box aside.
“Rosalia, let’s get a divorce.”
Just then, her phone buzzed. Message after message popped up on the screen.
She glanced down almost instinctively, and at once her eyes softened, filled with a tenderness I had never seen directed at me.
I caught a glimpse.
It was a boy named Miles, happily sharing snippets of his daily life with her.
A century seemed to pass before Rosalia finally looked up, as if surfacing from another world.
“Hm? What did you just say?”
I felt as if my fist had sunk into cotton—weak, powerless.
On her lock screen was Miles’s carefree profile, dressed in a striking red shirt. Each time she looked at him, her gaze overflowed with gentleness and indulgence.
A look she has never—not once—given me.
...
When Miles showed up at my door holding a pregnancy report, I slapped him without hesitation.
He hadn't expected my hand to land. He cried out and the two of us tangled, shouting and pulling at one another.
"Waylon, you bastard!" he screamed. "How dare you hit me—Rosalia will never forgive you for this!"
Rosalia rushed in at the noise, her face drained of color. She saw me gripping Miles by the hair, pressing him humiliated against the wall.
"Waylon!" she cried, panicked.
Rather than anger, a strange amusement spread across my face as I turned to her. "Wife, this man is a fraud. He's claiming you're carrying his child. How could that be? For the money he once took, I'll teach him a lesson."
I swung at Miles's stomach—but someone clamped my wrist before my fist made contact.
"Waylon, stop this," Rosalia snapped, pinching the bridge of her nose as if to hold herself together.
"You're stopping me?" I shot back.
In public she always wore the mask of the devoted wife; she lived for other people’s approval. This was the first time she’d ignored their stares and comments just to stop me.
"What's this, then? Is what he says true? Are you really carrying his child?"
I expected denial—evasions, excuses, some tangled web of lies to patch this over. Instead, she met my eyes with a clear, steady answer.
"Yes," she said. "I'm pregnant."
The words landed and everything went still. I used the last of my strength and slapped her full across the face.
Her head turned from the blow. She didn't dodge. She didn't flinch. For a long moment, she simply looked away.
