Chapter 1

When he was seventeen, Ethan picked up an iron pipe from my doorstep and struck the back of my stepfather's head fourteen times.

My stepfather collapsed onto the ground, motionless.

Blood dripped through the cracks in the pavement, creeping all the way to my bare feet.

The police arrived quickly.

As four officers pinned him to the ground and cuffed him, he turned his head and shouted to me.

"Alaina, you're free!"

He was smiling, his face splattered with crimson dots.

It was as if he hadn't just killed a man, but had merely swatted a troublesome mosquito out of the way.

And so, he went to prison.

Ten years.

I visited him once every month.

He grew from a boy into a young man, his shoulders broadening, his words thinning.

The only thing that never changed was how, at the end of every visit, he would press his palm against the glass partition.

"Lana, wait for me to get out."

The day he was released, I stood outside the prison gates clutching an umbrella.

It wasn't raining.

He looked at the umbrella in my hand, asked no questions, took it, and opened it to shield me from the sun.

I was twenty-seven that year, and he was twenty-eight.

We got our marriage certificate at the city hall.

He had only three hundred dollars in his pocket, and every resume he sent out was rejected, since no company wanted a man who had spent ten years behind bars.

I told him it didn't matter, that I would support him.

He said nothing and crushed out his cigarette.

Three days later, he went to Washington alone, starting from the very bottom at a dusty construction site.

Five years.

He dragged himself up until he became the CEO.

Commercial real estate, cultural tourism development, he owned projects on the prime golden lots of half the city.

After we married, the password to every single one of his accounts was my birthday.

I had never once checked them.

Until that day, when he accidentally left his tablet on the sofa.

A notification popped up.

"Ethan, the baby kicked me today."

It was accompanied by an ultrasound photograph.

I scrolled upward.

Over two thousand three hundred chat logs.

Flirtatious, intimate, and explicit.

There were pictures, too.

Selfies the girl had taken wearing his dress shirt inside an apartment I had never seen before.

His arm was wrapped tightly around her waist.

On his ring finger was our wedding band.

In those two thousand three hundred messages, there wasn't a single mention of me.

It was as if I didn't exist.

As if, in his world, there had never been a woman named Alaina who waited out a ten-year prison sentence for him.

The door clicked.

He was home.

I flipped the tablet over, turning the screen toward him.

"See for yourself."

He cast his eyes down, glancing at it briefly.

His expression didn't change at all.

He picked up the tablet, exited the chat, locked the screen, and placed it back on the table.

"Don't look through things you shouldn't."

Seven words.

Spoken so lightly.

As if those two thousand three hundred logs belonged to someone else, and the name on that ultrasound report had nothing to do with him.

I pulled the divorce agreement from my bag and set it down right in front of him.

"Sign it."

He glanced at it, then stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette directly onto the paper, the burning cherry melting a hole right through the word Husband.

"I told you, the only way you're leaving me is if I die."

He stood up and walked toward the stairs.

"Lana, stop throwing a tantrum."

The door closed on the third floor.

The entire villa fell as silent as a grave.

Chapter 2

Less than an hour after he left, my phone rang.

It was an unknown number.

"Is this Alaina?"

The girl's voice was tender, carrying the delicate entitlement of someone who had always been cherished in the palm of a hand.

"I figured you saw it. Ethan said he left his tablet at home, but he told me not to worry because you'd never snoop."

She let out a soft laugh.

"It looks like he doesn't know you as well as he thinks."

I remained silent.

"My name is Seraphina. I'm twenty-three."

She paused for a moment, as if selecting the most devastating arrangement of words.

"Honey, it's time for you to step down."

"Ethan and I have been together for two years. What he feels for you is just obligation, but what he feels for me is love."

"If you leave gracefully, he'll give you a lump sum, enough to live comfortably for the rest of your life."

"But if you refuse to go..."

Her voice suddenly dropped to a whisper.

"The child in my belly is my ultimate card."

"You couldn't give him a child in four years of marriage, but it only took me three months."

"Tell me, who do you think he'll choose?"

I hung up the phone.

A second later, the phone vibrated a dozen times.

It was an avalanche of photos she had sent.

Photos of her cooking in that apartment wearing slippers, with a strip of photobooth pictures of the two of them stuck to the refrigerator.

Photos of her trying on clothes at a boutique while Ethan sat in the lounge area waiting for her, holding her designer purse.

A photo of a pregnancy test showing two solid lines, sitting next to a mug of herbal tea he had brewed for her.

And the final photo.

She was sitting on his lap, her face buried in the crook of his neck.

His hand rested gently on her slightly rounded abdomen.

On his ring finger, our wedding band was clear and unmistakable.

I set the phone down.

I picked up the cup of cold tea on the table and swallowed a mouthful.

Then I stood up.

I slammed the teacup onto the floor.

Next went the vase.

The lamp.

The fruit bowl.

The oil painting on the wall that he had gifted me.

I smashed every single one of them to pieces.

By the time Ethan rushed downstairs at the noise, the living room was unrecognizable.

leaned against the doorframe, his eyes sweeping over the sea of shattered debris.

"Are you done smashing things?"

I threw my phone right at his feet, the screen still frozen on the image of her sitting on his lap.

"Do you have nothing to say for yourself?"

He picked up the phone, took a glance, and let out a long sigh.

"She's just a child who doesn't know any better. Why are you letting yourself get worked up over her?"

Worked up over her.

What a beautiful excuse.

I was the one who took a knife for him back in Washington.

I was the one who was kidnapped by his rival while seven months pregnant and had to haul my heavy belly out of a third-story window to escape.

In the end, the baby couldn't be saved.

When he signed the consent forms at the operating table while I bled out, he held my hand and whispered, Lana, I'll make it up to you for the rest of my life.

And now, his way of making it up to me was letting another woman carry his child, and telling me not to get worked up over it.

She really didn't know any better.

I picked up a sharp shard of porcelain from the floor, squeezed it tightly in my palm until it bit into my skin, and then let it drop.

I drew a sheet of paper from my purse and slapped it flat on the table.

It was an official medical consent form for an abortion.

His pupils instantly constricted.

"What did you do?"

"She didn't know her place, so I decided to teach her some manners."

Chapter 3

It felt as if all the air in the entire villa had been sucked dry in an instant.

Ethan rushed to me in two strides.

His hands clamped around my shoulders, gripping so tightly that his knuckles popped.

My back slammed into the sideboard, making the cups inside rattle.

"Alaina, have you lost your mind?!"

His voice had never sounded so completely out of control.

Years ago, back in Washington, when he was in a bloody gang fight with a knife pressed right against his throat, his expression hadn't even flickered.

But now, for the sake of the thing inside that woman's belly, he couldn't even hold back the temper he had suppressed for over a decade.

"I've lost my mind?"

I tilted my head, staring at the veins bulging on his arms.

"Ethan, when you put your hands on your wife, did you ever stop to think about the very last words you said to me before you went to prison?"

His fingers loosened slightly.

I grabbed him by the collar and pulled my face close to his.