Semua Bab Touched by the Billionaire, Owned by the Devil: Bab 31 - Bab 40

The key turned in the lock and I heard it from the bedroom. Three days had passed. Three days of the television and the couch and his eyes following me from room to room. The bruise on my cheek had faded from purple to yellow, and the swelling around my eye had gone down enough that I could see properly again. My ribs still ached when I breathed too deep. The cut on my lip had scabbed over. The nail marks on my arm were still there, four dark crescents healing slowly. He stood in the doorway of the bedroom and dangled my bag from his fingers. "You're going back to work tomorrow." I sat up slowly. My head was light from too little food and too much sleep. "What?" "The week's over. You said you took a week off. It's been a week." He tossed the bag onto the bed near my feet. "Phone's in there. Charged it for you." I reached for the bag and unzipped it with fingers that still felt stiff. The phone was inside and the screen lit up when I touched it. Twelve missed messages. Five from Ma

Shane was waiting when I came home from work. He was sitting on the couch in the dim light of the television, which was off for once, and the only sound was the soft hum of the refrigerator and the creak of the floorboards under my feet. His beer bottle rested on his knee, and his phone lay face-down on the cushion beside him. He didn't look up when I set my bag down, but I could feel the shift in the air. The angle of his shoulders. The way his fingers tightened on the bottle like he was measuring the weight of it. "You were late," he said. "I had to finish something for Gideon." "Gideon." He said the name like it tasted bad, drawing out the syllables. He set the beer down on the coffee table with a heavy clink and stood up slowly, and I stayed by the door because moving forward meant getting closer to him, and every instinct I had was telling me to stay near the exit. "Tell me about your day." "It was normal. Work." "Work." He walked toward me, and I forced myself not to back u

The bruise on my jaw had turned a deep purple by morning, and the swelling made my face look lopsided. I stood in the bathroom with the door locked and tried to cover it with concealer, but the makeup just sat on top of the skin. The mark was shaped exactly like Shane's thumb. I pulled my collar up as high as it would go and hoped for the best. The office was already buzzing when I arrived. I kept my head down and walked straight to my desk. Michael was there before I could put my bag down. He had a fresh paperclip in his hand and a look on his face that was trying very hard to be casual. "So," he said, setting the paperclip next to my keyboard. "That was your husband yesterday." "Yep." "He seems..." He paused, searching for a word. "Intense." "That's one way to put it." He hovered for a moment. "Well, if you ever want to talk about intense husbands or literally anything else, I'm in cubicle twelve. I have snacks." "I know you do." "Good." He wheeled back to his desk. Lena sh

The morning light was gray and thin when I walked into the office. I had woken up before Shane again, slipped out of the apartment while he was still snoring on the couch, and caught the early train. The bruise on my jaw was fading to yellow at the edges, and the finger marks on my arm were hidden under my sleeve. I was getting better at this. The hiding. The covering up. The lying. Michael was already at his desk, building something elaborate out of paperclips. He looked up when I walked past and held up his creation. "It's a dragon. Sort of. The wings are giving me trouble." "It looks like a duck." He stared at it for a moment, then sighed. "It's a duck. I made a duck." He set it down and wheeled toward me. "You're early again. That's the third time this week. Are you sleeping at all?" "Not really." He didn't push. He just nodded and pulled a granola bar from his desk drawer and tossed it to me. "Emergency rations. You look like you need it." I caught it and tucked it into my

The apartment smelled like garlic and oregano when I walked in, which was wrong. Shane never cooked. He reheated leftovers and complained about the microwave. He made toast when he was feeling ambitious. The last time he'd made dinner, he'd told me to quit my job, and I'd spent the whole meal waiting for the other shoe to drop. Now he was standing at the stove with a wooden spoon in his hand and a towel over his shoulder like he was auditioning for a cooking show. "Surprise," he said without turning around. "Figured I'd do something nice for once." I set my bag down near the door and didn't move further into the room. The whole setup was off. He'd set the table with two plates and two glasses and a bottle of wine I didn't recognize. A candle flickered in the center of the table, one of those cheap vanilla-scented ones I'd bought at the grocery store months ago and forgotten about. He must have dug it out of the back of the cabinet. He was making an effort, and Shane never made an