Chapter 5: Bruises

Night had fallen when Marceline finally found herself alone in the bathroom. The house around her was quiet except for the soft hum of the city outside. She shut the door and leaned against it for support. Everything that had happened pressed on her like a physical force.

When she stepped toward the mirror, she almost wished she hadn’t.

Her reflection stopped her cold. Bruises had begun to bloom along her cheek and jaw, dark purple and angry, throbbing painfully with every pulse of her blood. Her lips were split and bleeding, a streak of crimson that had dried at the corner of her mouth. Her hands trembled as she lifted one to touch them, and the sting made her flinch, forcing a harsh intake of breath.

Blood and pain. Shame and disbelief.

She stared at herself, at the woman who had spent the past three years pouring everything into a marriage she had thought was built on love. The same woman who had cooked, cleaned, smiled, and waited faithfully for the man she trusted. And now… the reflection staring back at her was a stranger.

Rafael. The man she had loved. The man she had thought of as gentle, reliable, and safe. That man no longer existed.

Suddenly, the bathroom door clicked behind her. Marceline stiffened but said nothing.

Rafael stepped in, shirtless, moving with ease as if he belonged everywhere in her life. He came up behind her, close enough that she could feel the heat of his body, and the faint brush of his hair against her neck. He wrapped his arms around her waist and pressed a soft, almost tender kiss to her shoulder, then another, gliding upward toward her neck. His touch was gentle, careful, disarming...but every word that followed cut through the quiet like a blade.

“You know you can’t leave,” he murmured, his voice low and coaxing. “Everything you are… everything you’ve built… it all belongs here. With me. And you know it. You can’t go anywhere. No one would believe you, not without me.”

He paused, letting the words sink in, watching her in the mirror, watching how the bruises, the blood, the rawness of her lips and jaw reflected. “I’ve taken care of everything for you,” he continued softly almost reassuring. “Your life, your home, your name… it’s all tied to me. You can’t just walk away from that, sweetheart. You know you can’t.”

He shifted slightly, pressing closer, as he brushed his lips again along the side of her neck, whispering in a tone that sounded sweet, almost affectionate, but carried something far darker.

“Try to leave me, and everything falls apart. You have nothing without me. No money. No friends who would help you. No way to stand on your own. You’re a housewife. A life built around me. That’s all you’ve ever had.”

His hands tightened ever so slightly around her waist. “I know you’re scared. I know you think you might have a choice, but you don’t. You never really did. You can’t leave. Not now, not ever...not while I’m here. Not while this is everything you are.”

Rafael lingered behind her. Then, in the same gentle tone, as if nothing had happened, as if her bruises were not blooming beneath the harsh bathroom light...he spoke again.

“I’m not angry with you for being afraid,” he murmured, lips brushing her shoulder with a softness that made it worse. “You should be. But you’ll stay. You always stay. And that’s… good. That’s how it should be.”

His arms remained around her waist, steady and possessive, as though he were holding something that belonged only to him.

“We can start planning on a child from now on,” he continued, voice almost warm, almost domestic, like a husband speaking over breakfast instead of a man standing behind the woman he had shattered.

“Do you want a boy or a girl?” he asked quietly, as if it were a sweet little question. “Maybe we should have both, right, sweetheart?” He chuckled under his breath, indulgent, as though the future was something he could simply decide.

“I can already see it,” Rafael went on, unbothered by her silence. “A little boy running through these halls… or maybe a girl with your eyes. You’d be a wonderful mother, Marcie. You were always meant to be.”

His fingers flexed slightly at her waist, not quite tight enough to bruise again, but enough to remind her he was there. Enough to remind her that even this conversation, this fantasy...was not a choice.

“This is what we’ll do,” he said softly, firmly, as though outlining a plan for tomorrow’s meeting at the firm. “We’ll fix things. You’ll stay here where you belong. And we’ll have our family.”

He placed another featherlight kiss on her skin.

“You don’t need to worry about anything,” he whispered tenderly, in a way that felt like a lie. “I’ll take care of it. I always do.”

And even if the mirror reflected the pain she had just gone through, the bruises darkening along her cheek, the split lip, the tremor in her stillness, it was as though none of it existed to Rafael at all.

His gaze did not linger on the damage. His voice did not falter with remorse. He did not look at her as someone hurt.

He looked at her as someone who would remain.

As if the marks on her skin were nothing more than an inconvenience, something temporary, something that did not matter in the face of what he wanted.

He spoke of tomorrow, of children, of a future, with the calm certainty of a man arranging furniture in a house he owned.

As if her silence was agreement.

As if her body was not trembling.

As if her pain was invisible.

Rafael pressed another soft kiss to her shoulder, almost affectionate, almost loving, and the contrast was sickening...his gentleness layered over cruelty, and his sweetness masking control.

To him, the bruises were not a warning.

They were proof.

Proof that she was his.

Proof that she will not be leaving.

And in Rafael Gray’s mind, that was all that mattered.