Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The words hung in the air like poison, but I felt nothing.

No rage, no heartbreak, no desperate need to scream at the injustice of it all. Just a strange, hollow emptiness where those feelings should have been.

I stood in the doorway of my own home, watching my husband grope another woman while my son looked at me with pure disgust, and all I could think was how quiet everything had become inside my head.

The silence was almost peaceful, like standing in the eye of a hurricane while everything around me spun into chaos.

Without a word, I walked past them, my footsteps steady despite the pain radiating through my ribs. I headed toward the stairs, each step deliberate and measured.

"Hey!" Alex's voice cracked like a whip behind me. "Where do you think you're going?"

I didn't answer. Didn't turn around. Just kept climbing, one hand gripping the bannister for support.

The wood was smooth under my palm, worn from years of use. I focused on that sensation, on the familiar texture, on anything except the scene I'd just walked away from.

"Mom's being weird again," Tyler announced, his voice dripping with contempt.

"Krista!" Alex's footsteps thundered across the hardwood floor. "Don't you dare walk away from me when I'm talking to you."

I reached the landing and turned down the hallway toward our bedroom. My legs trembled with each step, my body screaming for rest.

"Alex, maybe she needs rest." Monica's voice was silk and honey, playing the role of the understanding woman. "She did just get back from the hospital."

Playing her part perfectly, the concerned other woman who was so much better than the bitter wife.

"She's fine," Alex snapped. "She's just being dramatic like always."

"I'm not dramatic," Tyler chimed in, and I could hear the smug satisfaction in his voice. "Aunt Monica says only babies are dramatic."

Of course she did. Of course she was teaching my son to despise me even more than he already did.

Their voices followed me down the hall, growing louder and more agitated. I stepped into the bedroom and closed the door behind me, shutting out the noise.

The click of the latch was satisfying, final.

The room looked exactly as I'd left it a week ago. The bed was unmade, Alex's clothes scattered across the floor, everything coated in a thin layer of dust and neglect.

A coffee mug sat on the nightstand, half-full and growing mold. The curtains were drawn, making the room dim and stifling.

Nobody had even bothered to open a window.

I walked to the closet and pushed aside the hanging clothes, reaching for the false panel at the back that Alex didn't know about. My fingers found the small latch, and the panel swung open to reveal a metal lockbox.

Inside was my marriage contract, the document I'd signed seven years ago that had sold my life away for the promise of saving my father's business.

A business that had failed anyway, six months after the wedding.

I pulled it out, the paper crackling in my trembling hands. Twenty pages of legal jargon that boiled down to one simple truth: I was property, bound to Alex Hayes for a minimum of five years unless he chose to release me.

One more year. Just one more year of this hell, and then I could be free.

Unless I chose to break it first.

I sat on the edge of the bed, my ribs screaming in protest, and read through the terms I'd memorized a hundred times before. Early termination clause, page seventeen. If either party could prove severe breach of contract or abandonment.

Leaving your wife to die in the street probably qualified as abandonment.

"Krista!" Alex's voice boomed from downstairs, making me flinch. "Get down here and make us something to eat. We're hungry."

The demand was so casual, so matter-of-fact, like I hadn't just spent a week in the hospital fighting for my life.

I stared at the contract in my hands, at the signature I'd made years ago when I was young and stupid and desperate. When I thought saving my father's legacy was worth selling myself to a man who would never love me.

"Mom!" Tyler's whine carried up the stairs. "We want food!"

They hadn't asked how I was feeling. Hadn't asked about my injuries, my pain, whether I could even stand for more than ten minutes without wanting to collapse.

They just wanted me to cook.

For the first time in seven years of marriage, I felt something crack open inside me. Not rage exactly, but something colder, harder. Something that tasted like clarity.

Something that felt like the beginning of the end.

"Krista, I'm not going to ask again!" Alex's footsteps pounded on the stairs.

I stood up slowly, tucking the contract back into its hiding place. My hands were steady now, my mind clear despite the throbbing in my skull.

The pain in my body was nothing compared to the pain I'd been carrying in my heart for years.

When Alex burst through the bedroom door, his face was flushed with anger. "What the hell is wrong with you? I told you to come downstairs."

I turned to face him, meeting his eyes for the first time since I'd walked through the door. "No."

The single word fell between us like a stone.

Alex's eyes widened, then narrowed to slits. "What did you just say to me?"

"I said no." My voice was calm, almost detached. "I'm not cooking for you."

The words felt foreign on my tongue, like speaking a language I'd forgotten I knew.

"Like hell you're not." He crossed the room in three strides, looming over me. "You're my wife. You do what I tell you to do."

Behind him, Tyler appeared in the doorway, Monica hovering behind him like a shadow. Her perfectly manicured hand rested on my son's shoulder, possessive and triumphant.

"See? I told you she doesn't love us anymore," Tyler said, his bottom lip trembling in a practiced pout. "She won't even make us food."

The manipulation was textbook, something he'd learned from watching his father. I wondered when my sweet baby had turned into this cruel stranger.

"Krista, sweetie." Monica's voice was syrup and poison. "Maybe you should just do as Alex asks. Everyone's hungry, and you know how upset Tyler gets when he doesn't eat on time."

I looked at my son, at the boy I'd nearly died bringing into this world. The boy I'd sacrificed everything for.

The boy who'd told his father I probably jumped in front of that car on purpose.

"I just got out of the hospital," I said quietly. "I have fractured ribs and internal bleeding. I can barely stand."

"So?" Tyler crossed his arms. "You're always making excuses. Aunt Monica never makes excuses."

"Aunt Monica wasn't hit by a car," I pointed out.

"Because Aunt Monica is smart enough to look both ways," Tyler shot back.

The cruelty in his voice was so casual, so practiced, that I knew he'd said worse things about me when I wasn't around to hear them.

"Then maybe Aunt Monica should cook for you."

The words came out before I could stop them, and the room went deadly silent.

Alex's face turned purple. "What did you just say?"

"I said I'm not cooking." I held my ground even as my legs trembled. "I'm injured. I need rest. If you're hungry, order takeout."

"You ungrateful bitch." Alex's voice was low and dangerous. "After everything I've done for you."

"Everything you've done?" The laugh that escaped my throat was harsh and bitter. "You left me to die in the street, Alex. You and our son walked away while I bled out on the pavement."

"Oh, boo hoo." Tyler rolled his eyes. "You're fine, aren't you? Stop being so dramatic."

"I almost died."

"But you didn't." Alex stepped closer, his hand rising. "So stop acting like a victim and get downstairs and do your job."

"My job?" I stared at him. "My job as what? Your slave? Your punching bag?"

"Your job as my wife," he snarled.

"I want Aunt Monica to be my mom instead," Tyler announced, his voice cutting through the tension. "She's nice and she doesn't complain all the time."

Something inside me shattered. Not my heart, because that had broken long ago. Something deeper, something that had been holding me together all these years.

The last thread of hope that maybe, somehow, this could still be a family.

"Fine," I whispered. "If you want Monica so badly, then have her."

Alex's hand shot out, connecting with my face in a vicious slap that sent me stumbling backward.

Pain exploded across my cheek, white-hot and blinding. My already-injured body couldn't handle the impact, and I felt my legs give out beneath me.

I hit the floor hard, my head cracking against the wooden boards. The world spun, darkness creeping in at the edges of my vision.

Stars burst behind my eyelids, and I tasted blood again, familiar and nauseating.

Through the haze, I heard Monica gasp. "Alex, maybe that was too much—"

"She deserved it," Tyler said coldly. "She's being mean to us."

I tried to move, tried to push myself up, but my body wouldn't respond. The room tilted and swayed, and everything felt far away, like I was underwater.

"Get up," Alex commanded, his voice distant and muffled. "Stop being dramatic."

But I couldn't get up, I couldn't do anything but lie there on the cold floor while my vision dimmed.

My cheek throbbed where he'd hit me, and I could feel warmth spreading across the floor beneath my head. Blood, probably, from whatever had reopened inside me.

"Alex, I think something's wrong," Monica said, and for the first time, she actually sounded concerned. "She's not moving."

"She's faking it." But Alex's voice wavered slightly. "She always does this for attention."

"I'm hungry," Tyler whined. "Can we just go eat? I don't want to stay here with her anymore."

Footsteps. Voices arguing above me. The words were garbled now, like someone had turned down the volume on the world.

Then Monica's voice, sharp and decisive.

"Let's just go. There's that new Italian place downtown."

"But—" Alex started.

"She's fine," Monica said firmly. "You said yourself she's being dramatic. Let her lie there and think about what she's done. Maybe when we get back, she'll be ready to apologize."

Apologize. For what? For refusing to cook? For not dying fast enough in the street?

More footsteps. The bedroom door closing. Voices fading down the hallway and stairs.

Then the front door slammed, and the house fell silent.

I lay on the floor of my bedroom, alone and bleeding, while my husband and son went out to dinner with another woman.

Again.

Abandoned again.

Left to die again.

The pattern was almost funny, in a twisted way. Maybe this was just my life now, an endless cycle of being left behind while they moved on without me.

The darkness rushed in, and this time, I let it take me without a fight.