Chapter 1

The phone buzzed on the coffee table, a relentless vibration against the wood. I ignored it, my eyes glued to the laptop screen. My best friend Sarah' s face was a mask of fury on the video call.

"Turn it off, Chloe. Just turn it off," she said, her voice tight.

I couldn't. I was staring at a high-resolution photo from the gallery opening. It was a projection, twenty feet tall, of me sleeping. My face was turned to the side, mouth slightly open, a line of drool on the pillow. It was intimate, vulnerable, and a million people had probably seen it by now.

The title of the piece, printed on a placard below, was "Unconscious Honesty." It was just one part of "Raw Truths," Ethan's new, celebrated exhibition. My estranged husband, the celebrated conceptual artist Ethan Miller, had built his new masterpiece on the bones of our dead marriage.

The gallery's press release called it a "brutally honest exploration of modern love and its decay."

The internet called it something else. #EthanTheExploiter was trending.

The comments below the online articles were a firestorm. Half of them called him a monster, a villain who used his wife's body and soul for fame.

The other half called me his willing muse, a participant in my own degradation. They didn't know the truth, they didn't know anything.

"He can't do this," I whispered, my voice cracking. I scrolled to the next image. It was a sound installation, a loop of my voice from an old voicemail, crying after a fight we had. The audio was distorted, layered over a harsh, industrial beat. I felt a wave of nausea. My private grief, packaged and sold as art.

My phone buzzed again. The caller ID was Ethan Miller. My stomach twisted.

"Don't you dare answer that," Sarah commanded from the screen. "Let me handle him. As your lawyer, I'm telling you not to speak to him."

"He's not just a client, Sarah, he's..." I trailed off. My husband. The man I had once loved with a terrifying intensity.

"He's a narcissistic bastard who is using you. Again," she finished for me.

I knew she was right, but a deeper, more primal instinct took over. I needed to hear his voice, to understand the why. I ended the video call with Sarah and my thumb hovered over the green icon before pressing it.

"Chloe," his voice was smooth, a practiced calm that always set my teeth on edge. "I assume you've seen the news."

"What did you do, Ethan?" I asked, my voice shaking with a rage that felt cold and heavy. "What in God's name did you do?"

"I made art, Chloe. It's what I do," he said, and the condescension in his tone was a physical blow. "It's a success. The critics are calling it groundbreaking. We should be celebrating."

"Celebrating? You put my most private moments on display for the entire world! You're selling my tears, my sleep, my life! How could you?"

"It's our life, Chloe. Our story. It' s powerful because it's real," he argued, his voice hardening. "The public is just having a knee-jerk reaction. They don't understand the artistic sacrifice. But this backlash... it's hurting my career. The gallery is talking about pulling the show."

I laughed, a bitter, broken sound. "Good. I hope they do. I hope they sue you for every penny you have."

"That's where you're wrong," he said, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous whisper. "You're going to fix this. You're going to issue a public statement. You'll say you were a willing collaborator, that you support my vision. You'll apologize for the misunderstanding."

"I will do no such thing," I spat. "I will tell everyone exactly what you are."

There was a pause. Then he said, "You know, I was just thinking about your grandmother. How is Susan doing? Still so devout? So... traditional?"

Ice flooded my veins. My grandmother, Susan, was the anchor of my life. She was a deeply religious woman, her heart fragile from age and a lifetime of hard work. She knew Ethan and I had separated, but she didn't know the details. She certainly didn't know we'd been secretly married for five years. A scandal like this, the raw, sexual nature of the exhibition, the public shame... it would devastate her. It might literally kill her.

"Don't you bring her into this," I warned, my voice barely a whisper.

"I don't have to," he said coolly. "A few reporters are already sniffing around your hometown. It's only a matter of time before they knock on her door with a camera and a tablet showing her my art. Showing her your part in it. Can you imagine her face, Chloe? You have twenty-four hours to release that apology."

He hung up. The phone slipped from my numb fingers and clattered to the floor. The threat hung in the air, thick and suffocating. This wasn't the first time he'd done this.

I was transported back to film school, to the whirlwind of our beginning. We were the art department's golden couple, two prodigies madly in love. He was edgy, always pushing boundaries, and I was his muse. I loved his rebellious spirit, his fierce ambition. Our love was a chaotic masterpiece of passion and creativity. We got married in secret at a courthouse, high on love and cheap champagne, believing our bond was stronger than any convention. But the lines blurred. Our life became his material. The first time was a short film he made, using a recording of us making love as the soundtrack. It won him a prestigious award. It made me feel hollowed out, exposed, a piece of his project instead of his partner. That was the beginning of the end. His ambition grew, and he became more and more self-absorbed, until our quiet separation was inevitable. I had thought I was free.

Now, years later, he had done it again, but on a global scale. He had taken our shared history and twisted it into a weapon.

My mind raced, trying to find a way out, a way to protect my grandmother without sacrificing the last shred of my dignity. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely pick up my phone. As I bent down, it began to ring again. It was my aunt.

"Chloe," she sobbed into the phone, her voice frantic. "It's your grandma. She collapsed. We're at the hospital. The doctor said... she saw something on the news."

The world tilted on its axis. The air left my lungs in a painful rush. It was already too late.