His Penance, My Freedom

Two years, Alex. It's been two years. My whisper was dry, lost in the cold, vast living room where I knelt on marble, gripping his expensive trousers. For two years, since his mother' s death, this had been my life, my prison. He blamed me, twisted a lie of grief into his truth: I' d hidden her sickness for his company' s IPO. Every week, a different woman. They wore my robes, used my perfume, slept in our bed. My task: welcome, serve, clean. I swallowed humiliation because my father was sick, his treatments astronomically expensive. Alex Thorne, my husband, was my only hope. But when I begged for money, for my father on his deathbed, Alex sneered, "Let him die." "It's what he deserves for having a daughter like you." Then the hospital called: My father was gone. He took his own life, leaving a note, not wanting to be a burden. I was on my knees, begging for a life already lost. "Problem solved," Alex chirped to his current paramour, tossing my phone aside. My world shattered. He was a monster who savored my pain. Something inside me snapped. The part that endured, that hoped, broke. "No," I said, rising on shaky legs. "I want a divorce, Alex." He laughed, demanding I apologize to his mistress, then commanded me to clean toilets with a toothbrush. He was mocking me. Humiliating me. Using my deepest wounds as his amusement. But as I knelt once more, a single thought crystallised: I wouldn't just leave him. I would erase him. And when he then shoved me, triggering a terrifying pain and a warm, wet sensation, I knew my silent revolution had just begun. He might have killed my father and our unborn child, but he had just awakened the storm within me.