The Billionaire's Maltreated Wife: Reclaimed From the Ashes

Isadora's POV

I mistook being wanted for being loved. It's an easy mistake when you've never had either.’

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“Argh….please stop Roman.”

Glass shattered against the wall just inches from my head, pieces of it splashed on my body.

Roman didn't stop..not at all. Gripping more glass cups, the more I tried to run the more they piece into my skin.

“Please, I don't know what you're talking about…”

“Who the fuck did you have coffee with…”

“He's just a collaborator, Roman, I swear.” covered in tears and sweat I was desperate to fly from here. I threw my hands over my head, covering my face instinctively. 

"Don't lie to me." His voice was too calm. That was always the scariest part. Not the shouting. The calm. He rolled up his sleeves slowly, deliberately, like a man with all the time in the world.

He stepped closer, I immediately moved back. It was a hustle but I did, having no choice I couldn't even afford to die. I have a son. He came closer just moments my back hit the walls. 

His hand closed around my throat and the air left my body all at once. My feet left the floor. My fingers clawed at his wrist, his forearm, anything. 

"Ro….man…" My voice broke on his name. "Roman please—”

His grip didn't loosen. "Where is it, Isadora?"

Not a question. Never a question with Roman. "I don't…" I gasped. My vision was getting blurry. "I don't know…I swear…"

The way he raised me by the throat with just one hand scared me more than anything. My legs were dangling. My heart pounding, my breath knocked out.

How this was my husband. How I had stood at an altar and promised myself to these hands…smiled and kissed his filthy lips….

"Wrong answer." He groaned and pulled me even tighter.

Roman was a monster I didn't recognise until now. The next moment he dropped me forcefully and dragged my hair, slamming my body to the bed.

Tears rolled down my eyes and I was tired of screaming for help. Knowing the room was sound proof. I hadn't even finished catching my breath before I heard the tear on my dress. 

"Roman…no…please…." I scrambled backward on the mattress, my hands shaking so badly I could barely grip the sheets. Tears and sweat mixed on my face. 

His eyes were empty. That was the part that broke something in me every single time. 

Not rage. Not hatred. Just emptiness. Like I wasn't even worth feeling something real for… I mean he had once looked into my eyes and said I was his most precious jewel.

Dragging my hands through anything, anything that could help. The flower vase on the bedside table. My fingers wrapped around it.

I don't remember deciding. I just remember the sound.

The crash of ceramic against his skull. Roman's grunt of pain was the most satisfying sound I had ever heard in my life.

I didn't wait. I ran. Down the hallway. Down the stairs. My bare feet pierced through broken glass, but my life was more important 

I grabbed the car keys from the bowl by the door without slowing down.

"ISADORA…." His voice behind me made my blood turn to ice but my legs kept moving.

I threw myself into the car, jammed the key in, reversed out of the driveway so fast the tires screamed.

In the rearview mirror I could see him at the door. Blood on his temple. Fury on his face.

★★★

Mara's apartment smelled like freshly baked cookies.

Under any other circumstances that would have made me smile. Right now it just made me feel insane, standing at her door in a ripped dress with blood on my shoulder, knocking like my life depended on it.

Because it did. The door swung open.

Mara took one look at me and her face did three different things in the space of one second. Confusion. Recognition and Fury.

"Get inside." She grabbed my arm and pulled me in, closing the door behind us and locking it in one motion. "Sit down. Sit…Dora, sit down."

"I'm okay…"

"You are bleeding." Her voice was sharp. She was already moving to the kitchen, pulling open cabinets. "Take off what's left of that dress so I can see the damage."

I lowered myself onto her couch. My hands wouldn't stop shaking.

She came back with a first aid kit and a bowl of warm water and knelt in front of me and started cleaning the gash on my shoulder without a word.

I flinched, that made her pause, then her hands started moving again, gentler this time, but her jaw was tight and getting tighter.

I felt it…the little grifted teeth sounds. "Tell me it wasn't him." Her voice was quiet. Dangerously quiet. 

"Tell me it's not that bastard husband of yours that you claim to still be in love with." She dabbed at the cut and I hissed through my teeth. "For the sake of raising a son whose father you're protecting like he deserves it."

That hit me more harshly. Leo. My son. The only good thing I had managed to hold onto in this wreckage of a life. And his father wasn't Roman. 

Had never been Roman. Just a stranger from one reckless night I couldn't take back, a man I saw once and never again. Roman knew. He had always known. And he used it like a knife every single chance he got.

"Mara…"

"I'm sorry." She exhaled sharply, eyes closing for a second. "I'm sorry. That was too much at once."

It was. And also it wasn't. Because she wasn't wrong about a single word of it and we both knew it.

She finished cleaning the wound in silence. When she pressed the cotton down a little too hard I flinched again and pulled back and she stood up immediately.

"Stay here."

"Mara…." I called but she was already up the stairs.

I heard her bedroom door. Drawers opening. She came back down holding a gun.

I stared at it. "Mara."

"I'm going to kill him." She said it the way someone says they're going to the grocery store. Calm. Decided. "This ends tonight."

"PUT THE GUN DOWN…" I shot up from the couch so fast my head spun. "Are you insane? You cannot….Mara, please…"

"He put his hands on you AGAIN…."

"And you shooting him solves exactly what?" My voice cracked. "You'd go to prison. And then what? What happened to me? What happened to Leo?"

Her chest was heaving. The gun was still in her hand. "Why do you even have a gun?" I asked, because I genuinely didn't know.

"My grandpa's." She looked at it. Then at me. Then back at it. "He left it to me when he died and I thought…" She stopped. Laughed once, humorlessly. "You know what, that's not the point." She set it down on the coffee table. "The point is what are we going to do, Dora? Because I am not watching him beat you into nothing. I refuse."

I sank back onto the couch. 

"I don't know," I whispered. "Maybe leave…."

"Maybe leave." She repeated it back to me flat. Then she dropped into the armchair across from me and pressed her fingers to her temples. "Shut up. Don't say maybe. We're leaving. Full stop."

I almost smiled. Almost.

"But how…"

"Hold on." She sat up straight suddenly, something shifting behind her eyes. "Wait. I have someone." She pointed at me. 

“My step sister. Alice. She's a lawyer. An actual scary one. The kind that makes grown men cry in courtrooms." She grabbed her phone off the table. "She'll know exactly what to do."

Something loosened in my chest. Just slightly. Just enough.

"Really?"

"Really." She was already typing. "We're not doing nothing, Dora. Not this time."

I nodded. My eyes were burning again. I blinked hard.

She looked up from her phone and must have seen something on my face because she crossed the room and pulled me into a hug, careful around my shoulder, and I let her, pressing my face into her neck and breathing.

"It's going to be okay," she said. "I promise you it's…"

Headlights swept across the curtains. A car. Outside. Pulling up slowly.

Mara pulled back. We both turned toward the window and saw Roman in his bloody shirt stepped out of the car.