Chapter 2

The conversation on the terrace ended. I heard the scrape of a chair, the clink of glasses. I stayed on the floor, hidden by a large leather armchair, my body numb. The words echoed in my head, a relentless, punishing loop.

Arranged for her to be assaulted.

Secretly giving her birth control pills.

Tainted.

I pushed myself up, my legs unsteady. I walked through the silent house, our house, a place I had believed was a sanctuary. Every object now seemed like a prop in a meticulously staged play. The photos on the mantelpiece-our wedding, a smiling couple against a backdrop of lies. The soft throw blanket on the sofa, the one Ethan always wrapped around me when he thought I looked cold. It all felt disgusting.

The house was cold, the air-conditioning humming a low, mechanical tune that grated on my nerves. It was a sterile, lifeless sound.

When Ethan came inside, he was smiling. He walked over to me, his expression softening with that familiar, feigned concern.

"There you are," he said, reaching out to touch my cheek. "I was looking for you. Are you cold?"

I flinched away from his touch. It was a small, involuntary movement, but he noticed. His smile faltered for a second.

"Ava? What's wrong?"

I looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time. I saw the handsome face, the concerned eyes, and behind them, I saw the monster. The cold, calculating man who had discussed my ruin over drinks.

"Nothing," I said, my voice surprisingly steady. "Just tired."

"You work too hard," he said, his loving husband persona snapping back into place. "Come on, let's go to bed."

He tried to put his arm around my shoulders, but I stepped away, moving toward the stairs. "I'm just going to get a glass of water."

He watched me go, a flicker of something-annoyance? suspicion?-in his eyes before it was gone.

In the kitchen, I gripped the edge of the marble countertop, my knuckles white. I had to be sure. I had to see the proof for myself, even though I knew, deep in my gut, that it was true.

I waited until I heard the shower running upstairs. Then I went into his study, a place I rarely entered. It was his space. Neat, organized, and impersonal. I started with his desk, my hands shaking as I pulled open the drawers. Papers, pens, business files. Nothing.

I moved to his bookshelf. Then I saw it. His leather travel bag, the one he used for overnight business trips, was sitting on a chair in the corner. He' d just gotten back from a trip to Chicago yesterday.

My heart pounded against my ribs. I unzipped the side pocket. Inside was a small, nondescript bottle of multivitamins. I opened it. The pills inside looked just like the vitamins I' d seen him take every morning. But when I dumped them out onto his desk, a few smaller, white, uncoated pills rolled out from among the larger gel caps.

I recognized them instantly from my medical training. A common, low-dose oral contraceptive.

The air left my lungs in a painful rush. The visual proof was a punch to the gut, more real and visceral than the overheard words. For three years, he had been poisoning me, ensuring the doctor' s diagnosis of a "damaged" body would hold true. He had been actively preventing the one thing he pretended to want with me.

I swept the pills back into the bottle and put it back in his bag, my movements stiff and robotic.

I heard the shower turn off upstairs. I hurried out of the study, my mind racing.

When I walked into our bedroom, he was drying his hair with a towel, dressed in his pajamas. He smiled at me.

"Feeling better?" he asked.

"Much," I said, my voice a hollow echo of itself.

He sat on the edge of the bed and patted the space next to him. "You know, I was thinking," he said, his tone soft and intimate. "Maybe we should look into other options. Surrogacy, maybe? Or adoption. I just want us to have a family, Ava. Whatever it takes."

The hypocrisy was so profound it was breathtaking. He sat there, fresh from a shower, calmly discussing building a family with me, while the pills that guaranteed it would never happen were in his bag downstairs. The cruelty of it was a physical weight, pressing down on me.

I didn't answer. I just stared at him.

Inside my head, a quiet, firm voice cut through the chaos. I will leave. I will survive this. And he will never see me again.

My love for him had been the foundation of my new life. Now, that love was a dead thing, a corpse. And my resolve to escape was the only thing that felt real.

I feigned a yawn. "Let's talk about it tomorrow, Ethan. I'm really tired."

I got into bed and turned my back to him, pulling the covers up to my chin. I felt the bed dip as he got in beside me. His hand rested on my hip, a gesture that had once brought me comfort. Now, it felt like the touch of a snake.

I lay there, rigid, pretending to sleep. I stared into the darkness, and for the first time in three years, I wasn't thinking about the past that had been forced upon me. I was planning my future, a future that would be built on the ashes of this one. I would walk away from this gilded cage, and I would leave him with nothing but the silence I left behind.