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Chapter 6: inner hurt
publish date:
2025-08-27 19:08:34
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One night with my brother inlaw 28
CHAPTER 27 the gym is gone Liana’s POVThe USB drive had given me answers.But answers without context were just more questions wearing different clothes.I knew what Matteo had done. I knew the shape of it now the debt, the transfer, the correspondence that referred to me as the subject like I was a line item in a budget. I knew my marriage had been a transaction completing itself and that I had walked into it believing it was a choice.What I didn’t know was what Maxwell had intended to do with any of it.And that gap that specific gap between what I knew and what I didn’t was where everything lived. Where the anger lived. Where the something-that-wasn’t-quite-hope-but-wasn’t-quite-dead-yet lived.I needed more.I started small.Careful. Methodical. The way you move when you’re searching inside a house that watches you.I had a name the holding company that had purchased the gym. The attendant had been tight lipped but the sale of a business left records. Public records. The kind
One night with my brother inlaw 27 the gym is gone
Liana’s POVThe USB drive had given me answers.But answers without context were just more questions wearing different clothes.I knew what Matteo had done. I knew the shape of it now the debt, the transfer, the correspondence that referred to me as the subject like I was a line item in a budget. I knew my marriage had been a transaction completing itself and that I had walked into it believing it was a choice.What I didn’t know was what Maxwell had intended to do with any of it.And that gap that specific gap between what I knew and what I didn’t was where everything lived. Where the anger lived. Where the something-that-wasn’t-quite-hope-but-wasn’t-quite-dead-yet lived.I needed more.I started small.Careful. Methodical. The way you move when you’re searching inside a house that watches you.I had a name the holding company that had purchased the gym. The attendant had been tight lipped but the sale of a business left records. Public records. The kind accessible to anyone who kn
One night with my brother inlaw 26 words unsaid
Liana’s POVThe USB drive sat on my nightstand for two days before I touched it again.Not because I forgot it was there.Because I was afraid of what it contained.Or worse, afraid of what it didn’t.On the third morning I woke up before five, lay in the grey dark staring at it, and decided that fear was a luxury I was done affording.I took my laptop to the bathroom. Locked the door. Sat on the cold tile floor with my back against the tub the same position I had found myself in more times than I could count in this house, the floor being the only place that ever felt honest and pushed the drive in.One folder.Titled with a date from eight months ago.I opened it.It took me a long time to understand what I was reading.Not because the language was complicated, it wasn't. Whoever had compiled this had been thorough and precise. Dates. Names. Transaction records. Correspondence. A paper trail laid out with the patience of someone who had been building toward something specific.I r
One night with my brother inlaw 25: staying strong
Liana’s POVThree days passed.Then four.Then a week.And somewhere in that week I made a decision — not dramatic, not announced, just a quiet internal shift — that I was not going to fall apart over a man who had packed his bags before I woke up.I was not going to be that woman.I had already been too many versions of broken in this house. I was not adding Maxwell Reyes to the list of men who had reduced me.So I got up every morning.I ate.I moved through the house with the practiced composure of someone who had been performing fine for years and could do it for a few more weeks without breaking.I was fine.I was absolutely fine.The visitor arrived on a Tuesday.I heard him before I saw him — a heavy voice in the hallway below, the particular boom of a man who assumed every room wanted to hear him. Matteo’s response was warmer than usual which meant this was someone who mattered in whatever world Matteo actually inhabited.I came downstairs composed. Dressed appropriately. The
One night with my brother inlaw 24 His baby 2
Liana povA baby?A woman in London?Pregnant.I looked at the book in my lap.The words on the page had stopped meaning anything several seconds ago. They were just shapes now. Just marks on paper.Some woman he’s been with.I thought about the night. About his hands and his voice and the way he had looked at me afterward, are you okay, like it mattered. Like I mattered.I thought about something came up on a folded piece of paper.Something came up.A baby came up.A whole woman in London came up.A whole life I knew nothing about came up.I pressed my fingers flat against the page of the book.“Liana.” I looked up.Matteo was watching me with mild irritation. “I said, did he eat before he left? Maria mentioned the kitchen was used late.”I held his gaze.“I don’t know,” I said evenly. “I was asleep.” I knew he was asking silly questions to understand my mood He studied me for a second longer than felt comfortable.Then shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.” Back to his phone.I looked back a
One night with my brother inlaw 24: his baby
Liana’s POVI had forgotten what this felt like.Not the heartbreak, I knew heartbreak. Matteo had introduced me to that in the first year of our marriage and refined it steadily ever since. I knew heartbreak the way you know a recurring illness, its patterns, its duration, how long before it became manageable again.This was different.This was the specific pain of someone who had been starving for a long time, who had finally been handed something real and warm and nourishing, and then had it taken back before they had finished.That kind of hunger doesn’t return to where it was before.It returns worse.Because now it knows what it’s missing.I moved through the morning like a woman underwater. Slow. Muffled. The edges of everything are slightly blurred. Maria brought breakfast and I sat in front of it and ate some of it because my body required it, not because I tasted anything.I kept thinking about small things.Not the night, I couldn’t think about the night yet. That was st
One night with my brother inlaw 019: birthday reminders
(Maxwell’s POV)The heavy iron doors of my gym creaked open as I stepped inside, the scent of sweat and steel greeting me like an old friend. The place was already alive—weights clanging, punching bags taking the brunt of frustrations, the low hum of men murmuring in corners.But this wasn’t just a
One night with my brother inlaw 018: confrontation in the garden
Liana’s POVThe garden was quiet tonight. Too quiet.I curled up on the stone bench, my shawl pulled tight around my shoulders, a book open in my lap. My eyes skimmed line after line, but none of the words stuck. They blurred together, useless.All I could think about was the missing sketchbook.I’
One night with my brother inlaw 017: Discovery of the Drawings
(Maxwell’s POV)The house was silent.Too silent.Maxwell leaned against the polished doorframe of his room, staring into the yawning stretch of the dark hallway as if it were mocking him. The shadows seemed to breathe, reminding him of the promises he had made to himself—that he would not go searc
One night with my brother inlaw 014: the kiss Regret
Maxwell’s POVThe walls of my room felt smaller tonIght. Like they were closing In on me, crushing every bit of control I’d been holding on to sInce I stepped Into thIs cursed house. I dragged a hand through my haIr and paced across the floor, boots scuffing against the marble tiles. My chest was t
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