Chapter 3

Alison Moody POV:

That evening, a fragile truce settled over the house. I made dinner, we ate in near silence, and the air was thick with the things we weren' t saying. Before heading upstairs, I did a casual walk-through of the first floor, my heart thumping when I checked the security camera panel by the back door. As I suspected, the feed for the camera pointing at the garage was still conveniently "offline." He must have disabled it yesterday before he left to follow me.

Adam came home carrying a small, discreet-looking bag from a high-end electronics store. He tried to angle his body away from me as he walked in, quickly taking it with him into the garage. Through the crack in the door before he shut it, I caught a glimpse of a box. It wasn't music equipment. It looked more like a baby monitor or some kind of advanced listening device. The unease in my gut tightened into a cold, hard knot.

We went through the motions of getting ready for bed. I tended to the angry bruise on my arm, dabbing it with ointment. Adam didn't even glance at it. He was a million miles away, his mind clearly on whatever-or whoever-was in the garage.

Just as I was about to turn off my bedside lamp, he spoke, his voice startling me in the quiet room.

"Are you still thinking about it?" he asked.

I turned to him. "About what?"

"The divorce."

The question was so blunt, so devoid of emotion, it felt like a business transaction. He wasn't asking out of fear or sadness. He was gathering data.

"Are you?" I countered, my voice dangerously quiet.

A thousand bitter thoughts swirled in my mind. Was this the plan all along? Marry the stable woman with the nice house, establish residency, then divorce her and walk away with a hefty payday and half her assets?

"I asked you first," he said, his voice flat.

"And I' m asking you, Adam. Is that what you want?" I said, pushing myself up on one elbow to face him. "Because if you' re not happy, you can leave. You can walk out that door right now. But you will walk out with nothing but the clothes on your back."

He didn' t respond. He just stared at the ceiling for a long moment before letting out a heavy sigh and turning his back to me. "Just go to sleep, Alison."

"You promised you were working on your 'issues' ," I said to his back, the words tasting like poison. I couldn't stop myself from pushing. "You promised things would get better."

"For Christ' s sake, can you just drop it for one night?" he snapped, his voice muffled by his pillow. "We' ll talk tomorrow. Just sleep."

I turned off the light, plunging the room into darkness. We lay there, back to back, the space between us a frozen wasteland. I thought about how different people could be in a marriage, wanting completely different things. I wanted a partner, a life built together. What did he want? It was becoming terrifyingly clear that his goals had nothing to do with me.

The life I was living felt unbearable, a slow-motion suffocation. But I felt trapped, with no clear path out that didn' t involve destroying everything I had worked for.

I must have drifted off eventually, because the next thing I knew, I was being jolted awake by a faint scraping sound. I opened my eyes. The digital clock on my nightstand read 3:17 AM. The space beside me in the bed was empty.

My breath caught in my throat. He was in the garage. He had snuck out of bed, thinking I was asleep, to go to his precious "studio."

This was my chance. I had to see what he was doing. I had to know.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed, ready to creep downstairs and listen at the door. But my body stopped short. My left arm was pulled taut, held in place by something cold and metallic.

I looked down. My heart stopped.

A pair of handcuffs was clasped around my wrist. The other cuff was attached to a thick, heavy chain that was padlocked to the bed frame.

For a moment, my brain refused to process what I was seeing. It was impossible. This was my bed. My room. My safe space. And I was chained to it. Like an animal.

Panic, cold and sharp, seized me. I yanked at the chain, but it was solid, unyielding. The metal bit into my wrist, cold and unforgiving. I was trapped. He had locked me in. He had chained me to the bed so he could go about his secret business without fear of me discovering him.

The rage that followed was so intense it was blinding. I was no longer a wife. I was a prisoner. I was a character in one of those horror movies, the woman chained in the basement. He didn't see me as a person. He didn't even see me as human.

Then I heard it. The soft creak of the floorboards in the hallway. He was coming back.

Pure, instinctual survival kicked in. I scrambled back into bed, pulling the comforter up to my chin, arranging the chain so it was hidden beneath the blankets. I turned onto my side, facing away from his side of the bed, and forced my breathing to be slow and even. I was asleep. I was nothing. I was not a threat.

My mind raced. I couldn' t fight him physically. He was bigger, stronger, and clearly, more ruthless. I had to be smarter. I had to play his game, but I had to play it better.

He slipped back into the room as silently as a ghost. I felt the bed dip as he got in. I didn't move a muscle. I felt him carefully, expertly, unlock the handcuff from my wrist. There was a soft click, and the pressure was gone. He was practiced at this. How many times had he done this before I noticed?

He lay down, and after a moment, I felt him gently nudge my shoulder. A test. To see if I was awake.

I remained perfectly still. I didn't even flinch. I was a statue.

After what felt like an eternity, he seemed to be satisfied. He rolled onto his back and let out a quiet sigh. As he settled in, a strange cocktail of scents drifted over to me. There was the faint, familiar smell of his cologne, but underneath it was something else. A cheap, fruity perfume I didn't recognize, and the acrid, chemical smell of what I thought might be leather dye or some kind of industrial glue.

What in God' s name was he doing in that garage? Was there someone else in there with him? The perfume... was it another woman? My mind reeled with possibilities, each one darker than the last. Nothing made sense.

His breathing soon deepened into a soft snore. But for me, sleep was gone. I lay awake for the rest of the night, my mind a turbulent sea of fear and fury, the feeling of cold steel still phantom-like around my wrist.

When the sun finally rose, the dark circles under my eyes were a testament to my sleepless night. I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror, at the woman staring back with haunted eyes.

This had to end. Today. I couldn't survive another night in this house, in this bed, with this man. The psychological torment was a poison, and it was killing me one slow, agonizing drop at a time.