MY EX-HUSBAND IS ALIVE AND WANTS ME BACK
The words landed harder than she meant them to, an echo of everything she'd said to Nikolia the night before, and she watched Rafael flinch at the recognition of it, at the realization that he'd committed some smaller version of the exact same sin.
"I know," he said quietly. "I know it wasn't."
Alessia stared at him, exhaustion and grief and fury tangled together into something she didn't have a clean name for, five years of a life she'd believed was entirely her own now riddled with quiet interventions and unspoken arrangements from both the men who claimed to love her most.
"I need to know something," she said, voice barely steady. "And I need you to answer me honestly, right now, without