Chapter 2

His stunned silence was the trigger. The polished ballroom faded, replaced by the memory of his suffocating Upper East Side apartment.

Six years ago, I lived for him.

I learned to cook the bland, traditional New England dishes his mother preferred. I abandoned the vibrant, hand-woven clothes from my commune for beige cashmere and muted silks. I learned to sit quietly at his family dinners, enduring the condescending looks from his sister, Claire, and the polite, dismissive questions about my "quaint" background.

I gave up everything that was me to become a person he could find acceptable.

He loved my devotion in private. He craved the way I would yield to him, the way I would do anything he asked. But his desire always came with a thick coat of shame.

I remember one night vividly. He had been rough, almost frantic. Afterward, instead of holding me, he got dressed, his movements stiff.

"I have to go to the chapel," he'd said, not looking at me.

"Now? It's past midnight."

"I need to pray," he'd answered, his voice tight with a conflict I didn't understand. "For forgiveness."

He used me to satisfy a hunger he couldn't name, then ran to God to wash himself clean of the sin of wanting me. I was his dirty secret and his confessional, all in one. I thought his struggle was with his faith, his piety at war with his passion. I was so wrong.

The real war began when Claire came home.

She had been at a "wellness retreat" in Switzerland for a year. The day she returned, Julian changed. His attention, which had been a suffocating, all-consuming force on me, shifted entirely to her.

He followed her around their family mansion like a lost puppy. He laughed at her cruel jokes, fetched her drinks, and listened, rapt, as she talked about Europe. I became invisible.

Claire hated me on sight. She was a porcelain doll with venom in her veins.

One afternoon, I found them in the library. She was perched on the arm of his chair, her hand resting on his shoulder.

"Julian, darling," she said, her voice dripping with poison as she looked me up and down. "When are you going to get rid of this... this rustic little thing? She doesn't belong here."

Julian didn't defend me. He didn't even look at me. He just looked up at Claire, his expression soft, adoring.

"Soon, Elle," he promised her. "Soon."