Husband's Frame, Wife's Fierce Justice

My husband, Alec Craig, was Chicago' s star prosecutor, the man who saved me from a dark past. Or so I thought.

He was the man who sent me to prison, framing me for a crime I didn't commit to protect his ex-girlfriend, Catalina.

My three years in Joliet Correctional Center were a blur of concrete and gray uniforms. The woman who went in, a successful graphic designer who loved her husband, died in there. When I was finally released, I expected to see him, but he sent an assistant to "cleanse my bad energy."

Then I saw them: Alec and Catalina, hosting a "welcome home" party for me, the woman they put behind bars. They paraded me around, forcing me to drink champagne until I bled internally from a perforated ulcer.

Alec, ever the devoted protector, rushed to Catalina's side, leaving me bleeding on the floor. He even falsified my medical report, blaming my condition on alcohol.

I lay in that hospital bed, the last remnants of hope withering and dying. I couldn't cry. The feeling was too deep for tears. I just laughed, a wild, unhinged sound.

I wanted to destroy him. Not jail. I wanted him to lose everything. His career. His reputation. His precious Catalina. I wanted him to feel what I felt.

Chapter 1

Alec Craig was Chicago' s star prosecutor. He put bad guys away, and the city loved him for it. On TV, he was charismatic and righteous. At home, he was my husband. I thought he was the man who had saved me from a dark past.

I was wrong. He was the man who sent me to prison.

He framed me for a crime I didn't commit. Vehicular manslaughter. He stood in court and used my deepest, most private traumas against me, painting a picture of a woman who snapped and killed her own abusive father. The jury believed him. They gave me three years.

The real killer was Catalina Rowland, his ex-girlfriend from law school. A beautiful, unstable corporate lawyer he felt eternally responsible for. He had made her five promises, and protecting her from a DUI manslaughter charge was one of them.

My three years in the Joliet Correctional Center were a blur of concrete and gray uniforms. The woman who went in, a successful graphic designer who loved her husband, died in there. The day Alec came for his final visit before my trial, he held my hands through the thick glass of the visitation booth.

"Just trust me, Haven," he' d said, his voice a low, convincing hum. "This is the only way. For us."

I had. And it had destroyed me.

Now, the heavy steel gate clanked open. Freedom. The air, thick with the smell of rain and exhaust fumes, felt foreign after three years of recycled prison air. I expected to see his sleek black sedan waiting. I expected to see him.

A different car pulled up, a generic silver sedan.

A young man in a suit I didn't recognize got out. He looked nervous.

"Mrs. Craig?" he asked, his voice cracking slightly.

The name felt like a costume I was forced to wear. I didn't answer, just looked at him with the same flat expression I' d perfected in my cell. My face was thinner, my eyes holding a hollowness that hadn't been there before.

The assistant, flustered by my silence, opened the back door. Before I could get in, he pulled a small bundle of sage from his pocket and a lighter. He lit the end, and a plume of thick, cloying smoke filled the air. He waved it around my body, a clumsy, awkward ritual.

"What are you doing?" my voice was rusty, unused to speaking above a whisper.

He jumped, startled. "Mr. Craig' s orders. He said... to cleanse the bad energy. Before you come home."

Cleanse me. The humiliation was a cold, familiar weight in my gut. He hadn' t even come himself. He' d sent a boy to perform a purification rite on me, as if I were a haunted house, not his wife returning from a prison he' d put her in.

"Is that what he calls it?" I asked, the words sharp. "Bad energy?"

I didn' t wait for an answer. I slid into the back seat, the motion triggering a cascade of memories.

The night it happened. Flashing lights. The sickening crunch of metal and bone. Catalina, drunk and hysterical, behind the wheel of my car. My estranged father, a man who had only ever brought me pain, lying broken on the pavement.

I had looked at Alec, my husband, the prosecutor, expecting justice. I trusted him.

"I' ll handle this," he had promised, pulling me away from the scene, his arm a comforting weight around me.

His version of handling it was to stand before a judge and jury and betray me in the most public way possible. He detailed the years of abuse I suffered at my father' s hands, not as a tragedy I had overcome, but as a motive. He twisted my pain into a weapon and aimed it directly at my heart.

The courtroom gasped. The reporters scribbled furiously. I felt hundreds of eyes on me, stripping me bare. I couldn't breathe. The world became a muffled roar, and all I could see was Alec' s face, handsome and composed, as he methodically dismantled my life.

He won his case. I was convicted of patricide.

After the verdict, in a small, sterile room, I finally got to ask him why. His face was a mask of regret, but his eyes were resolute.

"I made promises to her, Haven. Long ago. I have to keep them."

He spoke of Catalina' s own trauma, a story he' d told me bits and pieces of, an event for which he carried an immense, suffocating guilt. He had to protect her. He had to save her.

"Once this is over," he' d whispered, his hand on the door, "once she' s stable, it' ll be us again. Just do your time. Be good. I' ll be waiting."

A bitter laugh escaped my lips then, a sound raw with disbelief and heartbreak. I had dedicated my life to him. I had supported his career, stood by him through every late night and high-pressure case. I remembered the small things, the way he' d hold my hand under the table at fancy dinners, the quiet reassurance in his eyes when my past crept up on me. He had been my safe harbor.

Now I knew the truth. His priority had always been Catalina. My deepest wounds, the ones I had only ever shown him, were just tools for him to use. Collateral damage in his quest to be her savior.

"Don' t appeal," he' d advised, his voice taking on the professional tone of a prosecutor again. "It' ll look better for your parole hearing. Just trust my strategy."

He still wore his wedding ring. "I still love you, Haven. I' m still your husband."

Trust him. The words echoed in the silence of the car.

The flashback ended as abruptly as it began, leaving me back in the silver sedan, the scent of sage still clinging to the air. My eyes were dry. I hadn' t cried in a long time. My tear ducts felt scorched, burned out from the inside.

The car slowed. We weren' t heading to our downtown condo. We were in a trendy, upscale neighborhood, pulling up to a restaurant with large glass windows and an outdoor patio.

Through the window, I saw him.

Alec.

He stood, smiling, raising a glass to a group of people. And then he turned, his smile widening as a woman approached him.

Catalina.

She linked her arm through his, and he leaned down to kiss her cheek. The gesture was easy, familiar.

My assistant cleared his throat. "Mr. Craig and Ms. Rowland arranged a small welcome home party for you."

A party. Planned by the woman who put me in prison. Hosted by the man who made sure I stayed there.