Chapter 5

ADRIA

The pharmacy was one of those twenty-four-hour chains that dotted the city, fluorescent-lit and nearly empty at this hour. I walked through the automatic doors with my sweatshirt hood pulled up, avoiding the bored cashier's gaze as I made my way to the first aid aisle.

My chest and stomach still burned where the soup had scalded me. I'd checked in the storage unit bathroom-the skin was angry and red, blistering in a few places. Nothing serious enough for a hospital, but painful enough that I needed something to take the edge off.

I grabbed burn ointment, bandages, and on impulse, added a bottle of extra-strength pain relievers. The cashier barely looked at me as she rang up my purchases, too engrossed in whatever show was playing on her phone.

The drive back to Damien's house-I couldn't bring myself to call it home anymore-took another thirty minutes. It was nearly two in the morning when I pulled into the driveway, expecting darkness and silence. Instead, every light in the house blazed like a beacon.

My stomach dropped.

Damien's Mercedes was parked in his usual spot, which made no sense. He'd said he wasn't coming home. He was supposed to be with Adina, or Amber, or whoever was warming his bed tonight.

I sat in my car for a long moment, gripping the steering wheel, trying to calm the sudden spike of anxiety. Old habits died hard-even now, knowing what I knew, my body still responded to his presence with that familiar mix of dread and desperate hope.

No. Not hope. Not anymore.

I grabbed the pharmacy bag and headed inside.

The front door swung open before I could reach it. Damien stood in the doorway, still dressed in the same clothes from the club, his hair disheveled like he'd been running his hands through it. His eyes locked onto me with an intensity that made me freeze mid-step.

"Where the hell have you been?"

His voice was sharp, demanding, but there was something else underneath it. Something that sounded almost like... worry?

I blinked, momentarily thrown off balance. This wasn't the script. This wasn't how things usually went. When Damien stayed out, he stayed out. He didn't come home early. He certainly didn't wait up for me, pacing and worried.

"I-" I started, then caught myself, adjusting my posture into something smaller, more apologetic. The docile wife. The role I'd perfected over eighteen months. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to worry you."

"I texted you over an hour ago." He stepped aside to let me in, and I noticed his phone clutched in his hand, the screen still lit up with our message thread. "You didn't respond. You always respond within seconds."

Because you trained me to, I thought bitterly. Because the one time I took ten minutes to reply, you accused me of ignoring you and didn't speak to me for three days.

But I didn't say that. Instead, I held up the pharmacy bag, letting confusion and contrition color my voice. "I had to get ointment for the burns. I didn't have my phone with me-I left it in the car while I was in the store. I'm sorry, I should have been more careful."

Damien's eyes dropped to the bag, then to my chest where the burns were hidden beneath my sweatshirt. Something flickered across his face-guilt, maybe, or something that looked like it from certain angles.

"Let me see," he said, reaching for the bag.

I handed it over, watching as he pulled out the burn ointment and examined it like he was verifying I'd actually bought what I claimed. Satisfied, he gestured toward the living room.

"Sit down."

It wasn't a request. It never was with Damien. Everything was a command, a directive, an expectation that I would comply without question.

I walked to the living room and sank into the armchair-my usual spot, the one farthest from where he typically sat, the one that let me stay small and unobtrusive. But Damien followed me and pointed to the sofa instead.

"There. Where I can see you properly."

My skin prickled with unease, but I moved to the sofa. Damien sat beside me, closer than he usually did, and held out his hand for my sweatshirt.

"Take it off. I need to see how bad it is."

Heat flooded my face-not from embarrassment, but from anger I couldn't afford to show. He'd poured that soup on me. He'd humiliated me in front of his friends, called me pathetic, told me to clean myself up. And now he wanted to play concerned husband?

But I needed to maintain the facade. Just a little longer. Just until I figured out which of his friends owned that necklace.

I pulled off my sweatshirt slowly, revealing the tank top underneath. The burns covered my chest and stomach in angry red patches, some already blistering. Damien's jaw tightened as he looked at them.

"Sit back," he said quietly.

I obeyed, settling against the sofa cushions while Damien opened the ointment. He squeezed some onto his fingers and began applying it to the burns with surprising gentleness. His touch was careful, almost tender, and I had to fight the urge to pull away from him.

This is a performance, I reminded myself. Just like everything else in this marriage. He's performing concern because that's what husbands are supposed to do. Or maybe someone said something to him. Maybe Marcus or Kieran told him he went too far.

"You need to get better at understanding what I need from you," Damien said as he worked, his voice taking on that familiar patronizing tone I'd heard a thousand times before. "If you had brought the soup at the right temperature, if you had been more careful, this wouldn't have happened. You understand that, don't you?"

My hands clenched in my lap, nails digging into my palms. He was actually blaming me for this. For him pouring hot soup down my front. For the burns that were currently making my skin feel like it was on fire.

"Yes," I heard myself say, the word tasting like ash. "I understand."

"Good." He applied more ointment, his fingers trailing across my ribs. "I don't like punishing you, Adriana. But you have to learn. You have to be better."

Punishing me. As if he was some benevolent teacher and I was a slow student who just couldn't grasp the lesson. As if pouring soup on me was a reasonable response to it not being hot enough for his mistress.

Chapter 6

ADRIA

"I'll try harder," I said, forcing the words past the rage building in my throat. "I promise."

"I know you will." He finished with the ointment and wiped his hands on a towel he'd apparently brought from the bathroom. "You always do. That's what I appreciate about you, Adriana. You're willing to improve."

Willing to improve. Willing to shrink myself down to nothing. Willing to accept abuse and call it love because I'd convinced myself he was someone he'd never been.

Damien stood and held out his hand. "Come on. Let's go to bed."

I stared at his outstretched hand like it was a snake about to strike. "Bed?"

"Yes, bed. Where married couples sleep." He said it like I was being deliberately obtuse. "Unless you'd prefer the guest room?"

The guest room was where I usually slept when Damien bothered to come home. We'd shared a bed maybe a dozen times in eighteen months, and most of those had been in the first month of our marriage before he'd made it clear that my presence disturbed his sleep.

"No, I-" I took his hand and let him pull me to my feet. "I just thought you might want your space tonight."

"Why would I want that?" He led me toward the stairs, his hand warm around mine. "You're my wife. You belong in our bed."

Our bed. The bed he'd bought before we got married, the bed he'd probably shared with Amber before she left for Paris, the bed I'd been slowly exiled from over the course of our marriage.

I followed him up the stairs, my mind racing. This didn't make sense. Damien didn't do spontaneous affection. He didn't do concern or care or tenderness unless there was an audience to perform for. So why now? Why this sudden shift in behavior?

Maybe his friends had said something. Maybe watching me stand there covered in soup had triggered some vestige of conscience he'd forgotten he had. Maybe this was his idea of making amends without actually apologizing.

Or maybe-and this thought made my stomach turn-maybe he was giving me hope on purpose. Maybe this was another game, another way to keep me dependent and desperate. Build me up just enough that I'd be grateful for scraps of affection, then tear me down again when I started expecting more.

I'd seen him do it before. The pattern was familiar: cruelty followed by just enough kindness to make me question whether I'd overreacted, whether things were really that bad, whether I should just try harder to be what he needed.

We reached the bedroom, and Damien released my hand to head into the bathroom. I stood in the doorway, uncertain. The room looked the same as always-impeccably clean, decorated in shades of gray and white that felt more like a hotel than a home. The bed was made with military precision, not a wrinkle in sight.

"Are you just going to stand there?" Damien called from the bathroom. "Get ready for bed, Adriana."

I moved mechanically to the dresser where I kept my sleepwear-modest cotton pajamas that covered everything from neck to ankle because Damien had once commented that my nightgowns were "too revealing." I changed quickly, wincing as the fabric brushed against my burns.

Damien emerged from the bathroom in his own pajamas, his hair damp from washing his face. He looked younger like this, almost vulnerable, and I hated that some part of me still wanted to see good in him.

"Come here," he said, patting the bed beside him.

I climbed into bed, staying on my side, maintaining a careful distance. The mattress dipped as Damien settled in, and for a moment, we lay there in silence, the space between us feeling like an ocean.

Then Damien reached over and pulled me against him.

I went rigid, every muscle in my body tensing. This was wrong. This wasn't how we worked. We didn't cuddle. We didn't sleep intertwined like normal couples. We occupied the same bed on rare occasions and maintained careful distance, like magnets with the same polarity.

"Relax," Damien murmured against my hair. "You're so tense."

Because you poured soup on me five hours ago, I thought viciously. Because you called me pathetic in front of your friends. Because you're sleeping with your secretary and planning to leave me for your ex-girlfriend. Because I've spent eighteen months in hell for a borrowed necklace.

But I forced myself to soften against him, to play the role of grateful wife receiving her husband's affection. His arm was heavy across my waist, his breath warm on the back of my neck.

"Better," he said approvingly.

I lay there in the darkness, listening to his breathing gradually slow and even out as he fell asleep. The arm across my waist grew heavier, more oppressive. I was trapped between his body and the edge of the bed, pinned like a butterfly to a board.

My mind churned through possibilities. Maybe Marcus had pulled him aside after I left, told him he'd crossed a line. Maybe even Kieran, who seemed to have slightly more conscience than the others, had said something about the soup incident being excessive. Maybe Damien was trying to smooth things over before I got any ideas about leaving him.

Or maybe this was simpler than that. Maybe he'd come home and found me gone, and some primitive part of his brain that viewed me as a possession had panicked. Not because he cared about me, but because he liked knowing where his things were.

I almost laughed at that thought, then caught myself. Damien was a light sleeper.

The burns on my chest and stomach throbbed, a constant reminder of what this man was capable of. Of what I'd let him do to me, over and over, because I'd been chasing a ghost.

Beside me, Damien shifted, his arm tightening around me briefly before relaxing again. He murmured something in his sleep-a name that might have been "Amber" or might have been nothing at all.

I closed my eyes and focused on breathing, on staying still, on not waking him. This would be over soon. I'd figure out which of his friends owned that necklace. I'd find the boy who'd actually saved me all those years ago. And then I'd burn this entire life to the ground and walk away without looking back.

The thought sustained me as I finally drifted off to sleep, Damien's arm still heavy across my waist, his breath still warm on my neck, the burns still stinging beneath my pajamas.

I dreamed of fire and freedom, of a version of myself who'd never seen that necklace, who'd never convinced herself that this man was worth destroying herself for.

When I woke up, Damien was gone. The sheets beside me were cold, and I could hear the shower running in the bathroom. Everything was back to normal, as if last night's unexpected tenderness had never happened.

I touched the burns on my chest carefully, feeling the raised edges of the blisters through my pajama top. They would heal. Scars took time, but they eventually faded.

Some scars, anyway.

I got out of bed and looked at my reflection in the dresser mirror. The woman staring back at me looked tired, worn down, defeated. But underneath that carefully constructed exterior, I could feel something else stirring. Something sharp and dangerous and absolutely done with playing small.

Soon, I promised my reflection. Soon you get to come back.

The shower turned off. I heard Damien moving around in the bathroom, and I quickly smoothed the expression from my face, replacing it with the bland, pleasant mask I'd worn for eighteen months.

Just a little longer. Just until I found out the truth.

Then Adriana Chen could disappear forever, and Adriana Salvadore could reclaim everything she'd lost.