Chapter 3

Three years.

Three years of Chloe' s suffocating care, her constant reminders of my parents' fragility, their dependence on her.

Three years of my life' s work, my game series, slowly having its profits diverted, by Chloe' s clever accounting, towards "their care" and her "charitable" endeavors.

I was a prisoner in my own home, in my own life.

Then, one afternoon, I was looking for a misplaced design document in the study.

I heard voices from the adjoining sunroom. Chloe and Olivia.

"Chloe, the deepfakes of his parents, the smear campaign, arranging that 'accident' for them... you were brutal," Olivia said, a hint of admiration in her tone.

My blood ran cold.

"And now, keeping him as your husband to torture him daily?" Olivia continued.

Chloe' s laugh was light, airy. "He got Liam expelled from high school after relentless bullying, ruined his scholarship, and then caused our parents' fatal hit-and-run. He deserves to suffer every day, just like Liam did, just like we do without Mom and Dad!"

I froze.

Every word was a lie.

I was bullied by Liam. Liam' s own actions got him expelled.

And their parents...

I leaned against the wall, my breath catching in my throat.

The secret I' d kept for so long, the reason I sent money to that quiet town in Tuscany every month under the name "Mr. Rossi."

Their parents were alive. Safe. Because of me.

And Chloe, my wife, believed I had killed them.

She had orchestrated the ruin of my parents, my life, all for a fiction created by the true monster, Liam.