chapter 2

Elara 's POV.

The message plays in my head all night.

I lie in the dark, staring at the ceiling, and wonder what she looks like.

Sophia. His ex. The woman he laughs with on the phone. The woman he softened his voice for.

I have never seen her face, he never kept photos. But I know she exists in the spaces between us, a ghost I have been competing with since the day I said I do.

Morning comes. I rise at six, same as always. I make his coffee. I arrange the tray. I place a fresh rose in the tiny vase.

He comes down at seven-fifteen. He takes the cup and leaves.

But something is different. He is humming.

I stand at the kitchen counter, listening to the sound fade down the hall. I have not heard him hum in years.

The melody is unfamiliar, something that belongs to a man who is happy. He is happy because she is coming back.

When I step out of the kitchen, I see the maid walking in with new shirts. Slimmer cuts, younger fabrics. He never did any of this for me.

I remember our first year. I bought a red dress for our anniversary, spent an hour on my hair, lit candles in the bedroom. He came home at midnight, said he had a late meeting, and slept in his study.

The next morning, I found the red dress crumpled on the bathroom floor. I had taken it off alone. He never saw it.

I never wore red again.

****

Three days have passed. My vitamin bottle runs out, and Adrian has been out lately.

I go to the cabinet in the hallway to retrieve a new one. The bottle I find is different. The label is unfamiliar, the font smaller, the brand name something I don't recognize.

I turn it over in my hands. A strange prickle runs down my spine. Without thinking, I pull out my phone. My fingers move before I can think.

I type the manufacturer's code into the search bar. The results load.

My blood turns to ice. Ethinyl estradiol/drospirenone. Combined oral contraceptive.

Not vitamins. Birth control.

I stare at the screen. My hands begin to shake. I read the words again, hoping they will change. They don't.

Ten years. Ten years of little white tablets. Ten years of trusting him. Ten years of wondering why my body never quickened with his child.

I thought it was me. I thought I was broken, barren, a wife who couldn't give her husband what he deserved. I cried over it in the dark.

I apologized to him once, my voice cracking, telling him I was sorry I couldn't bear his child. He held my hand that night. Told me it was fine. Said he didn't need children.

He was lying.

He was making sure I never had a choice.

I wait in his study. The bottle sits on my lap. My fingers grip it so hard my knuckles have gone white.

I have been sitting here for an hour. Maybe two. I have lost track of time.

The door opens. Adrian walks in, still loosening his tie. He stops when he sees me.

His expression flickers. Then it settles into something cold.

"What are you doing in here?"

I hold up the bottle. "What are these?"

He looks at it. His jaw tightens. For a moment, I think I see something, guilt, maybe. But it passes.

"You weren't supposed to find out."

No explanation. No apology. Just you weren't supposed to find out. Something inside me snaps.

I stand. My legs feel like they might give out, but I hold myself straight.

"You've been feeding me birth control for ten years. Telling me they were vitamins. Letting me think I was the problem."

He doesn't answer. He walks to his desk, opens a drawer, and pulls out a folded document.

"I didn't come here to discuss the pills."

Papers fell off his desk, and I quickly picked them up before he could reach them.

My eyes widened, Divorce agreement.

I swallowed hard, my gaze darting from the papers to Adrian, silently wishing it wasn’t what I thought.

“Sophia is coming back,” he says. His voice changes, quieter, almost careful. “She doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

"Then why did you marry me?"

He meets my eyes, unmoved.

"You looked like her. That's why I chose you." He pauses, something unreadable flickers in his eyes.

“Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

The words land like stones in my stomach.

I think of the day I met him. I was twenty, fresh from my first major recital, still buzzing with the applause. He was in the audience.

He came backstage with flowers. He looked at me like I was the only person in the room.

I thought he saw me. I…I thought he loved me.

I was twenty years old, and I gave him everything. My music, my dreams, my body. My trust.

He took it all. And now he tells me I was never anything but a stand-in for the woman he actually wanted.

I pick up the pen.

My hand is steady. I will not let him see me break. I sign my name on the line, each letter a small death.

I set the pen down.

“Elara…..you’ll be better off this way.”

Instead of responding, I picked up the pill bottle and I walked out of his study without looking back.

My room is dark. I lock the door behind me and press my back against the wood.

Then I slide down. My legs fold beneath me. I sit on the floor, my forehead pressed to my knees, and the tears come.

They are silent. I learned to cry without sound years ago. But they fall anyway, hot and endless, soaking into my dress.

Ten years.

Ten years of waiting by windows and swallowing pills I thought were love. Ten years of being a placeholder for a man who never saw me.

I cry until there is nothing left.

Then I stand. I wash my face. I open my closet. I pack one small suitcase.

I take nothing he gave me. No jewelry, no clothes, no souvenirs of a life that was never mine.

I take my old sheet music, the worn leather journal I kept as a girl, and the jade pendant my mother gave me before she died.

That is all I have. That is all I came with.

I walk down the stairs. Agatha stands there, a slow, mischievous smile curling her lips. Adrian’s mother. Of course, this is what she has always wanted.

“At last, the barren woman is gone. We can finally cleanse the house,” she says, like she’s talking about dust, not me.

I look at her, biting down hard on my lip, forcing the tears back before they can fall. I walk out immediately.

The rain has started, I get into my car, my hands steady on the wheel.

I pull out of the gates. The mansion shrinks in my rearview mirror. I do not look back.

My phone buzzes. Adrian's name lights up the screen.

I let it ring.

I keep driving, the rain falls harder. The wipers struggle to keep up. I should pull over.

But I keep going because stopping means thinking, and thinking means remembering, and my heart can't bear it.

Headlights appear in front of me. Too bright.

I hear the screech of tires. I let out a scream..

Then everything goes white..