LOGINIris's POV
The phone felt like a brick in my hand. I stared at the screen, at those three lines from an unknown number that wasn't really unknown because I knew exactly who it was. I always knew. Victor had a way of making himself known even when he wasn't supposed to be there. "Iris?" Maya's voice cut through the fog. "Who is that?" I looked up. My friends were all watching me now, their shopping bags dangling from their hands, theiIris's POV He didn't speak to me the next morning. I came downstairs after a sleepless night to find him already in the kitchen, moving around with that same deliberate calm he had worn since the moment he walked through the garage door with all those bags. There was coffee brewing and eggs on the stove and two plates set on the counter, and for one disorienting moment everything looked so normal that I almost convinced myself the previous night had been a nightmare. Then I saw his eyes when he turned to hand me a mug of coffee, and I knew it wasn't. There was nothing there. No warmth, no anger, no grief. Just a flat gray calm that belonged to a man I had never met before, a man who had replaced my husband while I was away on tour. I wrapped my hands around the mug and sat at the kitchen table because I didn't know what else to do. He finished making breakfast and slid a plate toward me, two eggs over easy and a slice of toast cut diagonally the way I liked it. The gesture was so
Iris'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 POV The bell above the door chimed when I walked in, a soft jingle that felt entirely too cheerful for the way my stomach was knotting itself into something unrecognizable. The bookstore smelled like old paper and fresh coffee, the kind of smell that used to make Iris close her eyes an
Marcus's POV The house had never felt this empty before Iris started leaving. I noticed it first about a month after the wedding, when she flew to New York for some publishing thing and I came home to a dark kitchen and a sink full of dishes I hadn't dirtied. The silence wasn't the peaceful kind
Chapter 87Iris's POVI didn't sleep after I hung up with Victor. I lay on top of the covers still wearing my clothes from the night before, the photograph propped against the lamp on the nightstand where I couldn't escape it. Every time I closed my eyes I saw it again. My face caught in the mornin
Iris's POVI stood in the parking lot for what felt like a small eternity, the photograph trembling in my hand while the orange streetlight buzzed overhead and the night pressed in around me like something alive. The image was grainy but unmistakable. My face caught mid-step as I pushed through the







