LOGINIris's POVThe garage door rumbled open at a quarter past eleven, and I felt something loosen in my chest that had been wound tight for hours because Marcus was finally home. I closed my laptop and walked toward the door that led into the garage, already arranging my face into the warm expression I wore whenever he came home, the one he believed because he wanted to believe it.The door swung open and Marcus stepped through carrying two canvas bags that strained against their seams. Behind him in the garage I could see more bags stacked against the wall like he was preparing for something I couldn't name. He set everything on the kitchen counter and turned to go back for another load without looking at me, without a word, without the kiss on the forehead he had given me every single night since we moved into this house.I reached for one of the bags to help, and he shifted it away from my hand before I could touch it. The movement was not aggressive, but it was deliberate enough to ma
Marcus's POVThe café door swung shut behind me, and the night air hit my face like a cold washcloth that did nothing to clear my head. I stood on the sidewalk for a moment while Maya's words echoed through my skull in an endless loop, each revelation stacking on top of the last until the weight of them threatened to buckle my knees. She had been with him the night before our wedding. She had drugged me on my wedding night so I wouldn't notice she wasn't a virgin. My father had orchestrated my trip to Chicago so he could be the one to rescue her when she collapsed, so he could carry her to his bed while I sat in a hotel room three states away, oblivious, trusting and utterly deceived.I got into the car and pulled away from the curb without any clear idea of where I was going. The streets blurred past my windows in streaks of neon and shadow while my mind kept circling back to the same images like a tongue probing a broken tooth. Iris in my father's bed, Iris slipping something into
Marcus’s POV I stared at her, my mind struggling to reconcile the father I knew with the man she was describing. "He blackmailed you." "Yes." "And you kept quiet because you were afraid of him." "I kept quiet because he gave me no choice." She pressed her fingers against her temples, her eyes squeezed shut. "I hated myself for it. I hated watching her walk down that aisle knowing what I knew. I hated standing beside her at the altar and holding her bouquet and smiling for the cameras while you said your vows, because I knew she had been with him the night before, and you had no idea what you were marrying." The words hit me like a physical blow. The night before the wedding. I tried to remember that night, tried to pull up any detail that might have warned me, but it was all a blur of champagne and nerves and the overwhelming exhaustion of the rehearsal dinner. I remembered going to bed early. I remembered Iris saying she needed to finish packing. I remembered waking up in the mo
Marcus's POV Maya was already in the booth when I walked in, her hands wrapped around a cup of coffee that had stopped steaming a long time ago. She looked up when she heard the door, and her face did something complicated, a flicker of relief that I had shown up followed immediately by the kind of dread that comes from knowing you are about to detonate a bomb you have been cradling against your chest for months. Her shoulders hunched forward and her fingers trembled slightly against the ceramic mug, and I could see the weight of everything she had been carrying in the dark circles under her eyes and the way she couldn't quite meet my gaze. I slid into the seat across from her without saying anything. The book was still in my car, locked in the glove compartment where I didn't have to look at it, but the words were burned into my memory now and I couldn't stop replaying them. The handshake. The brunch. The morning after when Iris had jumped me with a hunger I had never seen before,
Marcus's POVShe hung up before I could respond and I sat there with the phone in my hand and the book on my lap and the weight of everything pressing down on my chest until I could barely breathe. I needed to get out of this car. I needed to splash water on my face and look at myself in the mirror and figure out how I was going to drive across town to meet my wife's best friend without falling apart at the wheel.I shoved the book into the glove compartment and walked back toward the bookstore because it was the only place nearby with a public restroom and I wasn't in any shape to drive yet. The same bell chimed above the door and the same cat was still sleeping in the window, completely indifferent to the fact that my entire world had just collapsed in the parking lot outside.Chloe the cashier looked up when I walked in and her face shifted from recognition to concern. "Hey, you're back. Are you okay? You look kind of pale.""I'm
Marcus’s POVShe led me toward the display table, still talking, her words tumbling out in a rush. "Have you read any of her other books? She used to write these sweet little romances, the kind you'd take on a beach vacation and forget about by the time you got home. But this one? This one is completely unhinged in the best possible way. It's like she finally stopped caring what people would think and just went for it.""Sounds great," I managed."It's more than great. It's iconic." She grabbed a copy from the top of the pyramid and pressed it into my hands. "The father-in-law character is unreal. He's so charismatic and intense that you completely understand why she can't resist him even though you're screaming at her to just walk away. Every time she tells herself she's done with him, he shows up and she loses all her brain cells. It's frustrating but also weirdly relatable, you know?"I didn't know. I didn't know anything anymore.The women from the table had noticed us now. One
Iris's POVThe last two days on the island were a fever dream I couldn't wake from.Victor had abandoned all pretense of caution. The man who had spent the first five nights moving through the villa like a specter, timing his arrivals to the exact moment Marcus's breathing deepened into unconscious
Iris’s POV By the sixth day, I had stopped sleeping entirely.I couldn’t sleep during the daylight hours, when Marcus was awake and attentive and looking at me with those steady, trusting eyes that made me want to crawl out of my own skin. Nor could I sleep during the night, after Victor slipped b
Victor's POV The guest cottage was adequate but not exceptional. The quality of the accommodations was irrelevant. What mattered was proximity to Iris. I could see their villa from my bedroom window. Through the gap in the palm trees, I could watch Iris take her morning coffee on the terrace, h
Iris’s POV He removed the blindfold then, and the moonlight was so bright after the darkness that I had to blink several times before his face came into focus above me. He was looking at me with an expression I had never seen before, it was so raw and unguarded that it made my chest ache. Then h







