Introduction

The rain that had veiled Emily' s funeral still clung to my black dress as I approached Mark' s gleaming penthouse, a place that now felt like a tomb.

The elevator opened directly into the living room, and the first thing I heard was Mark' s easy laughter, a sound that felt like a physical blow.

He stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows, oblivious, while I, his fiancée, had just buried my little sister.

His eyes swept over me, from my damp hair to my scuffed shoes, and disgust flickered across his features.

"Sarah. What are you doing? You didn' t follow protocol," he hissed, stepping back as if I carried a plague.

Then, he grabbed the worn leather purse Emily gave me, holding it like a dead rat before dropping it into his high-tech trash chute.

"Now go," he commanded. "Get out. And don' t come back up until you' re clean."

That' s when I saw it. He wasn' t afraid of germs. He was afraid of losing control.

He never touched my dying sister, citing "contamination risk," but freely shared mai tais with his assistant, Lisa, and her family in Hawaii, while Emily withered in an impersonal hospice.

Every humiliating cleansing ritual, every compromised dream, every sacrifice I made for this man-it was never about love.

It was about breaking me, about proving I was worth nothing.

Something inside me, long dormant, finally shattered.

I didn' t go to the sanitation suite.

I walked out of that building, leaving behind his sterile, loveless world.

I didn't know where I was going, but I knew I was never going back.