Chapter 4

I walked for hours, the cold New York air doing nothing to clear my head. The city lights blurred into a meaningless smear of color. I remembered a time when these streets felt like home, when the energy of the city fueled my music. Now, it just felt like a bigger cage.

A familiar black car pulled up beside me. The window rolled down, and Eve' s face, pale and furious, appeared.

"Get in the car, Bennet."

I kept walking.

The car crawled alongside me. "I said, get in the car."

"Go home, Eve."

"Why did you leave?" she demanded, her voice tight with anger. "Why aren't you jealous? Why don't you fight for me anymore?"

I stopped and turned to face her. "Fight for what? For the privilege of watching you with another man in my own home? For a marriage that's a lie?"

"You don't love me anymore," she said, the words a statement, not a question. It was the ultimate accusation, the one thing she couldn't tolerate.

A bitter laugh escaped my lips. "Love you? Eve, how could I possibly prove it? What more do you want from me? I gave up my music. I gave up my friends. I gave up myself. What's left?"

I was shouting now, the years of suppressed rage finally boiling over. "What do I have to do? Do I have to die for you? Would that be enough? If I threw myself in front of a car right now, would that finally prove to you that I love you?"

Her eyes widened, a flicker of something unreadable in their depths. "Yes," she whispered, her voice barely audible.

The word hit me harder than a fist. Yes.

My death would be the ultimate proof of her power over me. The final, perfect performance.

Something inside me snapped. The exhaustion, the humiliation, the years of quiet desperation-it all converged into a single, reckless impulse.

Without another thought, I turned and ran into the street, directly into the path of oncoming headlights.

There was a screech of tires, a blare of a horn, and then a blinding, shattering impact.

The last thing I saw before the darkness took me was Eve' s face, her mouth open in a silent scream, her eyes wide with a terror that looked, for the first time in a long time, completely real.

I woke up to the steady beeping of a heart monitor and the smell of antiseptic. My entire body was a symphony of pain. I was in a hospital room, a private one, of course. Eve always insisted on the best.

She was asleep in a chair by my bed, her head resting on her arms. For a moment, she looked almost peaceful, like the woman I had first fallen in love with, before the games and the cruelty had twisted her into something unrecognizable.

I remembered how she used to care for me when I got sick back then, fussing over me, bringing me soup, her touch gentle and warm. The memory was so vivid it brought a lump to my throat.

Then she stirred, her eyes fluttering open. They focused on me, and the softness vanished, replaced by a familiar, chilling coldness.

"You're awake," she said, her voice flat.

She stood up and walked to the bed. "Are you proud of yourself, Bennet? Making a scene like that?"

I stared at her, bewildered.

"Dying proves nothing," she continued, her voice sharp. "It's a coward's way out. It doesn't prove you love me. It just proves you're weak."

The cruelty of her words was breathtaking. I had tried to kill myself for her, and she was turning it into another failure, another test I hadn't passed.

"I don't love you," I said, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. "I think... I think I hate you."

Her face contorted in a mask of rage. "You don't mean that."

"This is exhausting, Eve. I can't do it anymore."

She went silent, her jaw tight. A dangerous look entered her eyes, a look I knew all too well. It was the look she got right before she did something truly terrible.

"You know who's really hurt here?" she said, her voice dropping to a low, menacing whisper. "Kason. He was so frightened by your little stunt. He's in the room next door, under observation for shock."

I could only stare at her, the absurdity of it all making me feel lightheaded.

"You're going to go and apologize to him," she declared.

"What?"

"You heard me. You upset him. You're going to say you're sorry."

I started to laugh, a dry, rattling sound that hurt my broken ribs. "You're insane."

Her eyes narrowed. "Get up."

Two of her burly security guards materialized in the doorway. They lifted me from the bed, ignoring my pained gasps, and half-dragged, half-carried me out of the room and into the one next door.

Kason was sitting up in bed, looking perfectly healthy, scrolling through his phone. He looked up as we entered, a smug smirk on his face.

Eve rushed to his side, her voice softening into a gentle coo. "Kason, darling, are you feeling better? I brought Bennet to apologize."

She was holding a thermos. I realized with a jolt that it was the chicken soup her private chef made, the soup she used to bring me. The soup I had been dreaming of just moments ago.

She opened it and began to spoon-feed Kason, wiping his chin with a napkin.

The sight was so grotesque, so utterly surreal, that I felt a new level of despair wash over me. The small, foolish hope that her presence by my bedside had ignited was now completely, irrevocably dead. I had been a fool to ever think she was capable of genuine care.

It was all a game. And I was the only one who ever got hurt.