That night, Declan held me close and slept soundly.
I didn't sleep a wink, my body stiff in his arms as I feigned every peaceful breath. The moment I heard his car pull away the next morning, my eyes snapped open.
His study was just down the hall. It housed his prized collections, including a custom-made cigar box. He'd once let it slip, drunk and careless, that it had a false bottom.
Anyone who walked into his study would have been impressed by his refined taste, the walls lined with priceless art.
Only I knew that hidden in the secret compartment of that cigar box was a ledger and an encrypted USB drive.
He’d confessed its existence to me in a drunken stupor once, and I remembered the flash of regret on his face the morning after. Lost in the haze of my love for him, I had thought nothing of it.
And he never remembered telling me.
With that thought, I slid open the compartment and pulled out the dusty ledger.
The USB drive was protected by a complex password, proof of how valuable its contents were. I never imagined that the digital cryptography course I'd taken for my art history degree would ever be used for something like this.
After breaking the encryption, I opened the first folder. My breath caught. Inside were scans of countless love letters to "Sloane," written in his aggressive, slanted script.
Each one was a raw, detailed confession of his love and desire for her. They were penned with a kind of desperate care I had never seen from him, a mix of untamed passion and cold restraint.
He was always so casual with me, so easygoing. I’d mistaken it for the comfortable, mature love that comes after the fever of courtship.
The truth was simpler. He just didn't love me.
I flipped toward the back of the ledger, my blood running cold as I read the faded ink on the yellowed pages.
The words chilled me to the bone.
"Someone made a move on Sloane. She was right. A man in my position can't afford a weakness. A lover is a weakness. I have to hide her!"
"That painter girl is so easy to fool."
"My mind was on Sloane all day. Willow, the fool, thinks my dark moods are about her. Let her think it. As long as it keeps Sloane safe, I don't give a damn what she thinks."
"She'd probably die for the privilege of being my wife."
"This will come back to haunt me. I arranged the 'accidental' gunfight, controlled every variable, ensuring her car would drive right into the line of fire. She shattered, just as I'd planned. Now, she'll be too terrified to ever leave my side. I'll make it up to her. I'll spend the rest of my life making it up to her."
I pressed my fingers hard against my eyelids, a futile attempt to stop the burning tears.
So I was never the one he wanted to stand with in the light.
From our first meeting to our wedding vows… my entire life with him had been a lie, a real-life version of "The Truman Show" where I was the only one who didn't know the script.
I closed the ledger and slid it carefully back into its hiding place. It wasn't until I was out of the study and the door was closed behind me that the sobs I’d been holding back finally broke free.
I curled into a ball on our bed, the memory of the gunfight playing behind my eyes.
We had been inseparable back then. I had just left my gallery, bursting to tell him the news that I was pregnant, when my car was caught in a storm of bullets.
They ripped through the metal like paper. One tore through the door and into my side, and our baby was gone before I even knew for sure it was there.
I was fading when Declan found me, his frantic face the last thing I saw before he swept me into his arms.
That was when the terror took root. My confidence, my independence—it all shattered. I couldn't stand to be away from him.
He comforted me, told me it was okay, that we didn't need children.
Of course he didn't want a child with me. He had personally orchestrated the event that took it away.
The man I thought was my savior was the very architect of my ruin. The love that I thought had saved me was the cage he'd built.
The pain was suffocating. My body began to shake, a violent, uncontrollable tremor born of pure despair.
After the wave of agony passed, I lay still, a strange calm settling over me.
I replayed every moment with Declan, every single detail.
In five years, I had stared death in the face more times than I could count, and every time, he was the one who pulled me back from the brink.
His worry for me was real; I knew that much. But it wasn't born of love. It was the fear of losing his real love's shield.
With trembling hands, I opened the USB drive and began to sift through years of his business files.
There. A partnership with a jewelry designer. The very one who created all the custom pieces he had gifted me over the years.
