Chapter 2

The moment I returned to the estate, I went to the study and took out the deed to the coastal house Lorenzo had built for me.

Then I called a private property broker.

“I’d like to list an estate for sale.”

The next morning, I was still half asleep when Lorenzo came back.

Rain clung to his coat. He walked into the room without stopping to change and came straight to my bed, his expression tight with alarm.

“Adela,” he said, “did you put our estate on the market?”

The house had been registered in my name. He would never have known unless he had gone to the broker himself.

I sat up and looked at him.

“You went to the broker?”

He paused for only a second.

“A friend wanted a place on the coast,” he said. “He asked me to take a look.”

A friend. Or Vera.

Apparently her little “wedding gift” had pleased him enough that he was already helping her find somewhere new to live.

I kept my voice level.

“Yes. I need money.”

The assisted-death service had quoted me a sum so high it would have frightened anyone else.

I thought one heart was worth the price.

Relief crossed his face so quickly it made me sick.

“I thought maybe you’d changed your mind about the house,” he said. “I barely slept. I kept thinking you must hate it.”

His eyes were bloodshot. There were bruised shadows under them that might once have moved me.

Then he leaned closer, and I saw the marks on his neck.

Faint bruises. Fresh.

He took my hand and kissed my fingers one by one.

“I already had it pulled off the market,” he said. “That house is ours. I built it for you. If you ever need money, go straight to the family comptroller.”

Then he placed a call in front of me.

“From now on, if my wife asks for funds, no one questions it. No reports. No approval.”

When he hung up, he looked at me with the tenderness of a devoted husband.

“Do you know how frightened I was? I thought you were selling it because you didn’t want to marry me.”

Lorenzo.

How could anyone lie so beautifully?

How could a man leave another woman’s bed and still come home wearing a face like that?

I lowered my eyes before he could read anything in them.

“I need the money because I want to buy you a wedding gift.”

That brought him back to life at once.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

He smiled, bright and pleased. “Then I’ll wait for my surprise.”

I smiled too.

I hoped he would.

Over the next few days, he barely came home.

Vera, on the other hand, never stopped sending messages.

She seemed determined to show me exactly what he was doing whenever he claimed he was busy. The photos became bolder. The videos crueler. In one clip, the black Rolls-Royce Phantom chosen as the lead car in our wedding convoy sat in a private garage, the leather back seat soaked through. The camera dipped lower, catching torn foil wrappers scattered across the floor.

Vera’s voice came through the speaker, smug and intimate.

“I had no idea a man could have this much appetite. He kept me in the car so long I lost count of the positions.”

I never replied.

I spent those days quietly erasing myself from the house instead. Documents. Jewelry. Clothes. Old notebooks. Anything that could prove I had once lived there. If I was going to disappear, I wanted to do it properly.

Three days before the wedding, the invoice from the assisted-death service arrived.

The price was obscene, but the confidentiality agreement was airtight. That mattered more. If Lorenzo ever learned I meant to vanish by letting the world believe I was dead, he would never let me go.

The sale of the estate had not cleared yet, so I went to the woman who handled Lorenzo’s private accounts.

She took the invoice, scanned it, and stopped when she reached the payee.

[Final Passage]

For the first time, her expression shifted.

She looked up at me, and I could tell she wanted to ask a question.

In the end, she said nothing.