Chapter 5

The sunlight didn’t just wake me; it executed the morning. It cut through the heavy velvet curtains like a serrated blade, exposing the wreckage of a room that had become a crime scene.

I reached out, my fingers trembling as they brushed the cold, expensive silk where Rogue should have been.

The space was hollow, retaining none of his heat, only the lingering, oppressive scent of strong vanilla. He was always gone before the shame could settle, leaving me to drown in the suffocating silence of a house that felt less like a home and more like a gilded cage.

I tried to sit up, but a jagged, white-hot scream of pain radiated from my core. My thighs are trembling.

I collapsed back into the pillows, my breath hitching in a throat that felt like it had been scraped raw. Every muscle was a map of his cruelty—a reminder that he had used me not as a wife, but as a vessel for a rage he couldn’t name and needs he refused to acknowledge.

I stayed motionless, staring at the center of the bed. The bloodstain was a dark, jagged bloom on the pristine white linen, already beginning to rust at the edges.

To a normal wife, it might have been a symbol of a beginning. To me, it was a receipt. It was the physical proof of my father’s debt, paid for in the currency of my flesh.

I didn’t cry. I didn’t have enough fluid left in my body for tears. Instead, I dragged myself to the bathroom, the water scalding as I tried to scrub his touch off my skin. I scrubbed until my shoulders were beet-red and raw, but I knew the stain wasn't on the surface. It was etched into the marrow of my bones.

By ten, the house was a tomb. I had laundered the sheets with shaking hands and scrubbed the floors on my knees, desperate to erase the evidence of the night and the echoes of his friends' muffled laughter from the hallway.

My phone sat dead on the marble counter. No text. No "I'm at the office." Just a void so loud it made my ears ring.

I shouldn't have gone. Every instinct, every bruised inch of my body screamed at me to stay in the shadows. But my heart—that pathetic, battered thing—convinced me that if I showed him a sliver of kindness, if I brought him a home-cooked meal, he might finally see the girl beneath the debt.

I wore a simple floral dress, the fabric light enough to avoid aggravating the bruises on my ribs. I looked in the mirror and saw a ghost with hollow eyes, a shell of the girl who used to dream of love.

When I reached Sterling Tower, the monolith of glass and steel felt like a fortress designed to crush me. The air-conditioning was a physical blow. Sarah, the receptionist, looked up, and for a second, her professional mask slipped. She gave me a look of such visceral, unadulterated pity that I almost turned and ran.

"He’s in a high-stakes meeting, Adeline," she whispered, her voice tight. Her hand hovered over the intercom, hesitating.

“But... they're wrapping up. You can wait inside."

I forced a smile that felt like cracking glass.

“Thank you, Sarah."

I walked toward the heavy mahogany doors, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I didn't knock. Sarah had given me the green light, and I wanted to surprise him. I wanted to see a flicker of something—anything—other than disgust in his eyes.

I pushed the door open. The scent of his cologne hit me instantly, but it was suffocating now, mixed with a heavy, cloying perfume—something floral, something expensive, something that didn't belong to me.

My breath hitched. Rogue wasn't at his desk. He was braced against it, his powerful frame looming over a woman I recognized from the business gala—a sleek, blonde "associate" whose husband was one of Rogue’s primary investors.

His hands weren't on his notes. They were threaded violently through her hair, tilting her head back at an angle that looked painful, his mouth devouring hers with a hunger he had never, not once, shown me. In our bed, it was a conquest; here, it was a feast.

The sound of my lunch bag hitting the floor was muffled by the thick carpet, but the clatter of the glass containers inside was a gunshot in the silence.

Rogue didn't jump. He didn't pull away with the frantic guilt of a caught man. He slowly broke the kiss, his lips wet and swollen, and turned his head. His eyes weren't filled with regret; they were cold, obsidian shards of annoyance.

"Who the hell told you that you could come here?" he snapped, his voice a low, dangerous growl that made my knees weak.

The woman laughed. It was a tinkling, cruel sound as she leaned back against his desk, unbothered, adjusting the silk blouse that had been pulled off her shoulder.

“Is this the wife you mentioned, Rogue? Your father-in-law’s little collateral? She’s smaller than I imagined. And much paler."

I felt the blood drain from my face, a cold sweat breaking out on my neck.

“I... I brought you lunch, Rogue. You didn't eat breakfast and I thought—"

"Lunch?" He walked toward me, each step echoing like a death knell on the hardwood. He stopped inches from me, his presence an overwhelming shadow. He looked down at the bag on the floor, then back at me.

“Do you think I need a pathetic, broken housewife playing maid in my office? Look at you. You look like you’re one stiff breeze away from falling apart."

He reached down, picked up the bag, and without breaking eye contact, tossed it into the trash can.

The sound of the glass shattering inside the bag echoed through the room—a sharp, final snap.

"Go home, Adeline," he said, turning his back on me to place a possessive hand on the other woman’s waist.

“And tell Sarah she’s fired on your way out. You’re an embarrassment to this company and a stain on my name. You’re just a debt I’m forced to tolerate—don’t ever mistake yourself for someone I actually want to see."

The woman smirked, blowing me a mock kiss as Rogue leaned in to whisper something in her ear that made her giggle.

I didn't turn and run. I walked out, my head down, feeling the scorching eyes of the entire floor on me. They knew. They had always known. I was the wife who wasn't a wife. I was the collateral that stayed in the basement.

As I reached the elevator, the pain didn't fade. It began to calcify. It settled into a cold, heavy stone in the pit of my stomach.

I stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the lobby.

One day, I would make sure he knew exactly what that debt cost.

.