Chapter 1

Clarissa

“I don’t know how you stomach that pathetic excuse for a woman. She walks around like she matters. God, I’d die if I ever had to live like her.”

That voice. I didn’t need to guess. Sasha. The same voice I’d heard whispering through hotel phone lines. The same high-pitched laughter I’d heard echoing in my bathroom two weeks ago. 

He seems to like this particular slut. She's been the only mistress he's repeated. The other women had always been a one time thing. 

I pressed my back to the cold wall outside the bedroom door, holding my breath and listening to them.

“She’s nothing,” Nicho’s voice came through, “A walking corpse. No passion, no spark. Just a name on paper and a face I can barely stand. I told her to stop coming in here.”

I exhaled slowly. So this was today’s insult. A new version of the same truth I’d lived with for seven years. This marriage? A farce. A goddamn contract signed with ink, silence and utter disrespect.

Still, it stung. More than usual. I pushed open the bedroom door like I wasn’t even surprised—and I wasn’t. The sight hit me like a movie I’d seen one too many times.

There they were. Nicho and Sasha, limbs tangled, bare skin on full display, like they were posing for an erotic magazine cover.

He didn’t even flinch when he saw me. He didn’t bother to reach for a sheet.

“You’re disgusting,” I said calmly, stepping fully into the room.

Sasha gave me a slow, smug smile. “Oh, look. The ghost speaks.”

I ignored her. My eyes stayed on Nicho. “Seven years, Nicho. Seven years of this circus.”

“You weren’t invited in here,” he said, eyes narrowing. “How many times do I have to tell you? Stay the hell out.”

Then he stood up. His hand moved so fast, I barely had time to flinch. He gave me a stinging sharp slap. I staggered back a little .

Sasha gasped—but she was smiling. She enjoyed the show.

“Don’t ever walk into my room again,” he growled.

My cheek throbbed, but I didn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me cry. I straightened up, adjusted my shirt, and turned my back on both of them.

I walked down the stairs like I hadn’t just been slapped. Like I wasn’t dying a little on the inside. The bar in the corner of the living room called to me like it always did on nights like this.

I poured myself a glass of whatever was closest—whiskey, maybe? Didn’t care. Just needed the burn. I needed it to push down the anger bubbling in my throat.

I barely had one sip when my phone started buzzing on the counter.

I stared at it. Nicho’s name flashed on the screen.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered, swiping to answer.

“What?” I snapped.

“She’s hungry. Go make something for Sasha.”

I blinked. “You want me to cook for your mistress?”

“She’s my guest,” he said coldly. “You’re still my wife. Do your damn job.”

I let out a short laugh. Not the amused kind. The kind that happens right before someone snaps. “Go to hell, Nicho,” I said, and hung up.

I slammed the phone face-down on the marble.

What kind of man did that? After cheating, after hitting me—he wanted a meal made for his side chick by me?

I stared at the whiskey in my glass, but the buzz was gone. My hand was shaking, not from fear, but rage. Pure, white-hot fury.

How had I survived seven years of this?

Seven years of being spoken to like I was the help. Seven years of being ignored, insulted, cheated on—and always expected to smile and shut up because the contract said so.

The contract. The damn contract. The golden leash around my neck.

I signed it. I knew what I was getting into. But I didn’t know it would feel like this. I didn’t know I’d come to hate him so thoroughly, so deeply, I could barely stand to hear his name in my own mind.

My hand clenched around the glass. I wasn’t some weak, crying little wife.

No. I’d swallowed his bullshit long enough. And something about today, maybe it was Sasha’s smug little smirk, maybe it was the slap, snapped something in me.

Because I wasn’t going to just survive the rest of this marriage. I was going to make damn sure Nicho regretted every single second he spent underestimating me.

Let him enjoy his little mistress. Let him laugh with Sasha now. This wasn’t over. Not by a long shot. He thought I was weak?

He was about to meet the real Clarissa.

Few minutes later, I was still nursing the alcohol, letting it burn a path down my throat while the ice clinked lazily in the glass. The silence in the house felt fake—like the calm that came before a hurricane.

And right on cue, I heard heavy footsteps stomping down the staircase.

I didn’t look up, I already knew who it was.

“Clarissa,” Nicho barked, his voice already coated with venom. “I told you to get your ass up and cook. She’s waiting.”

I swirled the liquid in my glass, “And I told you to go to hell.”

His steps halted behind me. I could feel the heat of his anger without even turning around.

“What did you just say?”

I turned my head lazily, locking eyes with him. “You heard me. I’m not cooking. I’m not serving. I’m not playing wife to your whore. I’m done with your shit, Nicho.”

He crossed the space between us in seconds. The glass slipped from my fingers and shattered on the floor as his hand flew to my neck, pinning me back against the bar. His grip was tight, but I didn’t flinch. I just stared at him.

“Don’t test me, Clarissa,” he hissed, his face inches from mine. “You’re bluffing. You won’t last a day without me.”

I stared him dead in the eye and then God help me—I laughed. A low, bitter chuckle that rose from somewhere deep in my chest.

“Is that what you think?” I rasped through his grip. “That I’m too weak to leave you? That I need you to survive?”

His eyes flickered for just a second—hesitation, maybe. Or surprise.

I pried his hand off my neck, one finger at a time. “You’re not a god, Nicho. You’re just a spoiled, insecure little boy who thinks money equals power. But let me tell you something—money doesn’t make you a man. And you? You lost me a long time ago.”

He opened his mouth like he had something to say, but no words came out.

I stepped back, brushing glass shards off my clothes.