Ava POV

I tore the IV from the back of my hand.

Dark, thick blood welled up, dripping onto the pristine white sheets, but the pain didn't register. The sting was nothing compared to the freezing void expanding inside my chest.

"Mrs. Phelps-Ava, you can't just leave!" a nurse cried out, rushing into the room as I swung my legs over the side of the bed.

"I'm not Mrs. Phelps." My voice was hollow, stripped of the tremor that usually accompanied my fear. "I'm no one."

I walked out of the hospital wearing clothes still stiff with dried blood from the bank. I didn't call a driver. I didn't call Harrison. I hailed a cab to the estate, the gilded cage I had spent three years polishing.

The house was silent when I entered. It reeked of lemon polish and expensive lilies-the scent of a funeral home.

I went straight to the master bedroom.

I didn't pack a bag. I didn't want the clothes he bought. I didn't want the jewelry that felt like shackles. I wanted to erase him.

I grabbed the wedding photo from the nightstand. In it, Harrison smiled that charming, lethal smile, his hand clamped possessively on my waist. I looked at myself in the photo-young, hopeful, and stupid.

I hurled it against the floor.

The glass shattered explosively. It felt good.

I moved to the closet. I yanked down his suits, his Italian silk ties, his shirts that smelled like sandalwood and lies. I threw them into a heap in the center of the room. I went to the bathroom and swept the bottles of cologne, the razors, the expensive creams into the trash.

I was panting, my injured shoulder screaming in protest, but I couldn't stop. I needed to purge the infection.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

His voice cracked like a whip from the doorway.

Harrison stood there. He looked disheveled, his tie loose, his hair messy. For a split second, he looked like a worried husband. Then his eyes shifted to the pile of his clothes, and the mask fell.

"Just tidying up," I said. I picked up a bottle of whiskey from the dresser-his favorite rare blend-and cracked the seal.

"Put that down," he warned, stepping into the room. The air pressure dropped. The mask was gone. The predator had returned.

I upended the bottle, pouring the amber liquid over the pile of suits.

"Ava!" He lunged.

He snatched my wrist, twisting it hard. I gasped, dropping the empty bottle. It thudded dully against the carpet. He shoved me back against the wall, his body pinning mine.

"Have you lost your mind?" he snarled, his face inches from mine. "You walk out of the hospital, you ignore my calls, and now you destroy my property?"

"Property." I laughed. It was a jagged, broken sound. "That's all I am to you, isn't it? Insurance. A prop."

"You're hysterical," he said, his voice dropping to that patronizing calm that used to make me feel safe. Now it made my skin crawl. "You're traumatized from the bank. You're not thinking straight."

"I know about the marriage license, Harrison."

He froze. His grip on my wrist tightened until my bones ground together.

"Henderson talks too much," he muttered. "It was just paperwork, Ava. An oversight. It doesn't change us."

"It changes everything! It means I'm nothing to you! You chose her!" I screamed, the rage finally breaking through the numbness. "You let them put a bullet in me!"

"I made a tactical decision!" he roared back, shaking me. "Brooke held the codes to the offshore accounts! You didn't! I saved the money, Ava! I saved the Family!"

"You saved your mistress!"

His hand struck my face.

It wasn't hard enough to knock me down, but the shock of it silenced the room. Harrison breathed heavily, staring at his own hand, then at my reddening cheek.

"Look what you made me do," he whispered.

He grabbed a silk tie from the floor-one that had escaped the whiskey. Before I could process his movement, he spun me around and shoved me face-down onto the bed.

"No! Harrison, stop!" I kicked, I fought, but I was weak from blood loss and surgery.

He bound my wrists to the mahogany headboard. He pulled the knots tight, cutting off the circulation.

"You need to calm down," he said, smoothing my hair as I sobbed into the mattress. "You're sick. You're upset about the baby. I get it. But you can't act like this."

My phone began to ring from inside his pocket.

He pulled it out. The screen lit up with a name: Brooke.

He looked at me, bound and broken on the bed we shared. Then he looked at the phone.

"I have to take this," he said.

"Don't you dare," I whispered. "Don't you leave me like this."

He walked to the door. "I'll be back in the morning, Ava. Try to get some sleep. We'll talk when you're rational."

He turned off the lights.

The door clicked shut. The lock turned.

I lay there in the dark, tied to the bed of a man who didn't exist, listening to the silence of a house that had never been my home.

Ava POV

The darkness had teeth, and they were gnawing at my shoulder.

Fever took me sometime in the middle of the night. The infection from the gunshot wound radiated outward like a brushfire, turning my blood to magma. I drifted in and out of consciousness, untethered from reality.

In my dreams, Harrison was holding me. He was whispering vows, promising to kill anyone who touched me. I vow to protect you, Ava. Till death.

Then his face would melt, the skin dripping away like wet wax to reveal a grinning skull. The voice would warp, twisting into hers. Brooke's laughter. Sharp. Mocking. A serrated blade against my ear.

I woke to the sensation of cool fingers on my forehead.

"Shh, you're burning up."

Harrison was there. The morning sun sliced through the curtains, illuminating dust motes dancing in the stale air. He looked concerned. Perfectly, impeccably concerned. It was terrifying how easily he wore that mask.

He reached down and loosened the bindings at my wrists. My hands were numb, mottled violet from the lack of blood flow. I couldn't move them.

"I'm sorry," he murmured, his thumbs digging into my flesh as he rubbed circulation back into my arms. "I didn't want to do that. You were out of control. You could have hurt yourself."

The pins and needles of returning feeling stung like fire ants, but I didn't have the energy to pull away. I was a ragdoll in his grip.

"We need to get you back to the hospital," he said, lifting me as if I weighed nothing more than a ghost.

He carried me out to the car. He sat by my bedside while the doctors flushed my wound and pumped me full of antibiotics. He held my hand. He played the role of the devoted husband so perfectly that the nurses cooed at him, blind to the bruises on my soul.

He's a monster, I screamed inside my head. Run.

But I couldn't run. I was weak. And I had nowhere to go. Not yet.

Two days later, he brought me home.

"I have a surprise," he said as we pulled into the driveway.

He didn't turn into our gate. Instead, he pointed across the street. The sprawling Victorian mansion opposite ours-the one that had been empty for years-had a moving truck idling in the driveway.

"I bought it," Harrison said, smiling. "For security. We need a perimeter."

My stomach dropped through the floor. "Who's living there?"

As if on cue, the front door of the Victorian house opened. Brooke stepped out. She was wearing a white sundress, holding a clipboard, directing the movers. She looked radiant. Alive. Everything I currently was not.

"She needs protection too, Ava," Harrison said, his voice hard, daring me to object. "After the bank... she's a target. It makes sense to keep her close."

Close. She was thirty yards away. I could practically see the reflection of my own misery in her windows.

I didn't say a word. I went into the house and walked straight to the kitchen. I needed to do something with my hands. I started chopping vegetables for soup, the knife thudding rhythmically against the board.

Chop. Chop. Chop.

Harrison came in an hour later. He sniffed the air.

"Smells good," he said. He took a bowl from the cabinet.

I watched, frozen, as he ladled the soup I made-my grandmother's sacred recipe-into a plastic Tupperware container.

"Brooke's kitchen isn't set up yet," he said casually, snapping the lid shut. "She hasn't eaten all day."

He walked to the pantry. I followed, silent as a shadow.

He pulled out a burner phone from behind a stack of pasta boxes. He dialed.

"Hey, baby," he said. His voice was different. Softer. Real. "I'm coming over. Yeah, I got the soup. No, she doesn't suspect anything. She's too medicated to notice the sky is blue."

He laughed.

I backed away before he turned around. I stood in the middle of the kitchen, staring at the knife on the counter. My fingers twitched, imagining the weight of the handle.

He walked past me a minute later, the Tupperware in hand.

"I'm just going to drop this off," he said, kissing my forehead. "Be right back."

I watched from the window as he crossed the street. Brooke met him at the door. She didn't just take the soup. She pulled him in by his tie and kissed him.

He didn't pull away. He shouldered the door shut behind him.

My phone pinged. A text from Harrison.

Harrison: Get ready. Tomorrow night. Just us. The yacht. I want to make it up to you.

I looked at the closed door across the street.

"Okay," I whispered to the empty room. "Let's go to the yacht."

Ava POV

The limousine smelled of rich leather and Harrison's guilt.

He sat across from me, pouring vintage champagne. He was wearing his tuxedo, the same one he wore to the Gala where we had first met. He looked like a prince.

"To us," he said, raising his glass with practiced ease. "To fresh starts."

I stared at him. "To the truth," I said.

He paused, then smiled tightly. "To the truth."

We clinked glasses. I took a sip. It was crisp, expensive, and laced with something faintly bitter.

"Where is Brooke tonight?" I asked, watching him over the crystal rim.

"Safe," he said dismissively. "Working."

"Working on what? Destroying families?"

Harrison sighed, putting his glass down with a sharp clink. "Ava, don't start. I'm trying here. Can't we just have one night?"

The limo pulled up to the marina. The Lady Vengeance, Harrison's yacht, bobbed in the dark water, lit up like a Christmas tree.

We boarded. The deck was set for dinner. Candlelight, white roses. It was beautiful. And it was a complete lie.

We ate in silence. I felt heavy. My limbs were starting to tingle. My eyelids felt like lead weights.

"Are you okay?" Harrison asked, his voice swimming in and out of focus.

"Tired," I slurred. "Dizzy."

"Maybe you should lie down," he said. He didn't sound surprised. He sounded relieved. "Go to the cabin. I'll join you in a bit."

He helped me down the stairs. The cabin was cool and dark. I collapsed onto the bed, the world spinning violently.

Drug, my mind screamed through the haze. He drugged the drink.

I fought the darkness. I bit my tongue until I tasted copper. I needed pain to stay awake.

I heard footsteps above. Not just Harrison's. High heels. Laughter.

I dragged myself off the bed. I crawled to the stairs. Every movement was a war against gravity. I pulled myself up, step by agonizing step.

I peeked over the edge of the hatch.

The romantic dinner table had been cleared. In its place stood a small group of people-Harrison's inner circle. And in the center, bathed in the soft glow of the deck lights, was Brooke.

She was wearing a silver dress that shimmered like fish scales. Harrison was on one knee in front of her.

He held a velvet box. Inside sat a diamond the size of a quail egg. It was the ancestral diamond of the Phelps family. The one he had told me was 'in a vault for safekeeping'. The one I was never allowed to wear.

"Brooke," Harrison said, his voice carrying over the water. "You are my partner. My equal. Will you marry me?"

Brooke threw her head back and laughed, a sound of pure victory. "Yes! Yes, Harry!"

The men clapped. They cheered.

I watched as he slid the ring onto her finger. The ring that should have been mine.

I stumbled. My foot hit a metal cleat with a loud clang.

The cheering stopped. All heads turned toward the hatch.

I stood there, swaying, holding onto the railing for dear life.

"Ava?" Harrison stood up, his face draining of color. "You're supposed to be asleep."

"Used... goods," I mumbled, pointing a shaking finger at Brooke.

Brooke smirked. She walked over to Harrison and looped her arm through his, resting her hand on his chest so the diamond caught the light.

"Go back to bed, sweetie," Brooke cooed. "The grown-ups are talking."

"You..." I looked at Harrison. "You drugged me... for this?"

"I couldn't have you making a scene," Harrison said, his voice cold again. "Brooke is pregnant, Ava. She carries my son. This is necessary."

The world tilted.

Pregnant.

I didn't scream. I didn't cry. The drug pulled me down, down into the black water of unconsciousness. But before I went under, I made a vow of my own.

I wasn't going to just leave him. I was going to burn his entire world to ash.