I forced myself to breathe.

I was an architect.

I designed skyscrapers capable of withstanding gale-force winds and seismic shifts.

Surely, I could withstand a dinner party.

Steeling my nerves, I returned to the terrace.

Ariana was lounging in my chair.

She was wearing the diamond earrings.

They caught the candlelight, winking at me in mockery.

"Oh, Caroline," she said, waving a fork airily. "We were just talking about how funny your marriage is. It's so... corporate. Like a merger."

"It is a merger," I said, taking my place by the railing. "That's why the buildings I design for the Family don't collapse. Unlike your gallery."

Her eyes flashed.

"That was arson!"

"It was cheap materials," I corrected coolly. "I saw the wreckage. You pocketed the budget difference, didn't you?"

Blake slammed his hand on the table.

"Enough, Caroline. Stop attacking her."

"I am stating facts," I said. "I am the Architect of Santos Real Estate. I know a load-bearing wall when I see one. And I know a parasite when I see one."

Ariana gasped.

"Blake! Are you going to let her speak to me like that?"

Before he could answer, the world ended.

A concussive boom tore through the building.

The stone floor beneath us heaved upward.

It wasn't a bomb.

It was the gas line in the kitchen below, rigged by the Irish mob.

The shockwave blew out the glass doors in a shower of glittering shrapnel.

The massive iron chandelier above the dining table groaned, its chain shearing like a twig.

Then, gravity took over.

I saw the shadow of the chandelier detach.

It was directly above the table.

Above Blake and Ariana.

I was three feet away.

Blake looked up.

He saw the metal death descending.

He had a choice.

He could dive left, toward me.

He could dive right, toward her.

He didn't hesitate.

Not even for a fraction of a second.

He lunged to the right.

He threw his body over Ariana, shielding her completely, curling around her like a human shell.

The chandelier crashed down.

It missed them by inches.

But the debris-the heavy crystal shards, the twisted iron, the chunks of ceiling-flew outward.

A massive slab of the ceiling beam, dislodged by the impact, swung down.

It slammed into my leg.

I heard the bone snap.

A sickening, wet crunch.

I fell, pinned under the rubble.

Dust choked the air.

Silence followed the roar.

"Ari?" Blake's voice was frantic. "Ari, are you hit?"

He scrambled up, checking her over.

"I'm okay," she coughed, her voice feathery. "You saved me. You covered me."

"Thank God," he breathed.

He helped her stand.

I tried to move.

White-hot agony ripped through my body.

"Blake," I wheezed.

He turned.

He saw me trapped under the beam, blood pooling on the white stone.

He looked at Ariana.

She was coughing, waving a hand in front of her face theatrically.

"The smoke," she whined. "My lungs."

Security burst onto the terrace.

"Boss! We have to move! Secondary explosion risk!"

Blake looked at the guards.

"Get Caroline," he ordered them.

Then he scooped Ariana up into his arms.

"I've got Ariana. She has respiratory issues. I'm taking her down the stairs."

"Blake!" I screamed, the pain in my leg blinding me. "My leg is crushed!"

"The guards have you," he yelled back, already running toward the exit with her.

Two guards lifted the beam off me.

I screamed as the blood rushed back into the shattered limb.

They dragged me up.

I watched him go.

He carried her like she was precious glass.

He left me to be dragged out like a sack of broken cement.

I didn't pass out.

I forced myself to stay awake.

I needed to remember this.

As the guard carried me down the fire escape, jarring my broken bone with every step, I visualized the ledger in my mind.

Minus twenty points.

He became her shield.

I became the casualty.

Score: 10.

The VIP wing of the hospital was oppressively quiet.

My leg was in a cast, elevated on a stack of pillows. My shoulder was stitched tight.

I had been out of surgery for six hours.

Blake hadn't come.

I stared at the clock on the wall, watching the second hand sweep away the remnants of my patience.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Finally, the door opened.

He looked haggard. Layers of soot stained his pleated tuxedo shirt, ruining the crisp white fabric.

He walked to the bed, running a trembling hand through his hair.

"You're awake," he said, his voice rough.

"Six hours," I replied, the words tasting like ash.

"I had to make sure Ariana was settled," he said, turning away to pour himself a glass of water. "The smoke inhalation was severe. Her throat is raw."

I laughed.

It was a dry, brittle sound, lacking any humor.

"My tibia was shattered, Blake. They had to put pins in it. I was crushed under a ceiling while you watched."

"I knew the guards had you," he said defensively, the glass clinking against the table. "Ariana was exposed. She couldn't walk."

"Neither could I!" I shouted.

He flinched.

"Lower your voice. This is a hospital."

"You used your body to shield her," I said, my voice trembling with a cold, focused rage. "You looked at the falling ceiling, and you chose to protect her."

"It was instinct," he said.

"Exactly," I whispered. "That's the problem."

"She's fragile, Caroline," he said, pacing the room like a caged animal. "You... you handle things. You're strong. If that chandelier hit her, it would have killed her. You survived."

"I survived because I'm lucky, not because you care."

"I was setting up a safe house for her," he admitted abruptly, stopping mid-stride. "Before the explosion. That's what we were talking about. She isn't safe at the hotel."

"So you're moving her?"

"I'm moving her to the Lake House," he said.

The Lake House.

Our retreat.

Where we spent our honeymoon.

"No," I said, the word leaving me like a gunshot.

"It's the only property with adequate security right now," he insisted.

"If you move her into our home," I said, staring him dead in the eyes, "don't bother coming back to the penthouse."

His phone rang.

The distinctive chime.

"She's scared," he said, checking the screen. "She's in the psych ward for observation. She needs me."

"I am your wife," I said. "I am lying here with broken bones."

"You have the best doctors money can buy," he said, backing toward the door. "I'll be back in the morning."

"If you walk out that door," I said, "you are walking out of this marriage."

He stopped.

He looked at me with pity.

"Stop being dramatic, Caroline. It's for the Family. We can't have a civilian casualty on the news."

He opened the door.

I watched through the gap as he walked down the hall.

He didn't turn left toward the exit.

He turned right, toward the psychiatric unit.

I saw him meet her in the hallway.

She was wrapped in a blanket, looking small and helpless.

He pulled her into a hug, rocking her back and forth, kissing the top of her head.

I wasn't his wife.

I was just the structure that held his life up.

She was the home he lived in.

I reached for my bag on the bedside table.

I pulled out the book.

My hand shook as I wrote.

Minus five points.

Left my bedside for hers.

Score: 5.

Caroline POV

The taxi ride home was a blur of streetlights and throbbing pain.

My leg felt like a concrete anchor encased in fiberglass, heavy and impossibly awkward. My shoulder burned with a sharp, rhythmic fire under the bandages.

The penthouse was dark when I keyed in the code.

It smelled of stale air and expensive misery.

I shouldn't have come back. Logic dictated that I should have gone straight to a hotel.

But I needed the book.

I hobbled down the hallway, the rubber tip of my crutches squeaking obnoxiously against the hardwood floors, echoing in the silence.

The door to the study was ajar.

A sliver of amber light spilled onto the floor, cutting through the shadows.

I pushed the door open.

Blake was there.

He wasn't working. He wasn't planning the next takeover for the Outfit, nor was he brooding over spreadsheets.

He was sprawled on the leather chesterfield, his tie undone, his shirt unbuttoned at the collar to reveal the hollow of his throat.

An empty bottle of Macallan 25 lay on its side on the Persian rug.

He was asleep.

Or passed out.

I moved closer, the pain in my tibia shooting up my thigh with every jarring step.

He looked younger when he slept. The lines of cruelty that usually bracketed his mouth had smoothed out.

For a second, my heart did that traitorous thing. It remembered the man who used to bring me coffee in bed during our first year, before the silence took over.

Then he shifted.

His brow furrowed in distress.

"Ari..." he mumbled.

I froze.

He turned his head into the cushion, seeking comfort in the cool leather.

"I've got you," he whispered, his voice slurred and thick with drink. "Don't go."

I stood over him, balancing precariously on my good leg.

"I'm here," I whispered.

It was a test. A stupid, masochistic test.

He didn't open his eyes.

"Caroline?" he muttered.

"Yes," I said.

He let out a long, heavy sigh. It sounded like pure disappointment.

"Five years," he groaned into the silence of the room. "Nothing. Just... empty."

The words hit me harder than the ceiling beam had at the gallery.

Empty.

That's what I was to him.

I wasn't a partner. I wasn't a wife. I was a vacancy he was forced to occupy.

He rolled over, turning his broad back to me.

I stared at the expanse of his shoulders, watching the slow rise and fall of his breath.

The tether snapped.

It wasn't a loud noise. It wasn't an explosion like the one at the gallery.

It was a quiet, internal severance. Like a balloon string being cut, letting the helium escape into the cold atmosphere.

I didn't feel angry anymore.

I didn't feel sad.

I felt nothing.

I limped to the desk.

I opened the top drawer and pulled out the black leather ledger.

I flipped to the last page.

My hand didn't shake. My handwriting was surgical.

Minus five points.

Called our life empty.

Score: 0.

I closed the book.

I picked up the secure burner phone I had taped under the bottom of the drawer three years ago.

I dialed the number.

"This is Caroline Rossi," I said, my voice steady as steel. "Initiate the extraction. I'm done."