Chapter 3

I was stuffing clothes into my suitcase, not caring if they wrinkled, when Ethan appeared in the bedroom doorway. He blocked the exit, his body a physical barrier to my escape.

"What do you think you' re doing?" he asked, his voice low and threatening.

"I' m leaving you, Ethan. It' s over."

He laughed, a short, humorless sound. "Don' t be so dramatic, Ava. You' re just upset. You' ll get over it."

He walked toward me, reaching for my arm. I flinched away from his touch.

"Don' t touch me."

His face hardened. "We are not over. We are going to get through this. You just need to be rational."

"Rational?" I spat the word at him. "You think it' s rational to let my husband move his pregnant mistress into our home? The woman who was supposed to be my best friend? You think it's rational to be okay with you creating a fake video that got me beaten half to death?"

He sighed, running a hand through his hair in a gesture of fake exasperation, as if I were the one being unreasonable.

"It was one night, Ava. A mistake. A drunken mistake. The video... that was damage control. I did it to protect Chloe. Her career would have been over. Think about the baby. The baby is innocent in all of this. It needs its mother to be stable and secure."

His words were a twisted maze of self-serving logic. He was painting himself as a noble protector, a man making hard choices for the greater good. My pain, my humiliation, my safety-they were all just collateral damage in his quest to protect his new little family.

"So I' m just supposed to accept this?" I asked, my voice trembling with a rage so profound it felt like it would tear me apart. "I' m supposed to welcome her into my home, watch you play happy family, and pretend none of this ever happened?"

He looked at me, his expression serious, as if he were about to propose a perfectly reasonable business deal.

"Yes," he said, without a hint of irony. "That' s exactly what I' m asking. Chloe needs support right now. She needs a stable environment. She' s going to live here, with us. I need you to be mature about this, Ava. For the baby' s sake."

The sheer audacity of his request stole my breath. He wasn't just asking me to forgive him. He was asking me to participate in my own erasure. To be a smiling, supportive bystander to the demolition of my own life. He wanted me to help raise the child born from his betrayal.

"You are insane," I whispered, staring at him in utter disbelief. "You are a sick, manipulative monster."

His face darkened at my words. The mask of the concerned partner slipped, revealing the cold, controlling man beneath.

"Chloe is having a difficult pregnancy," he said, his voice dropping to a low growl. "She' s been having pains. The doctor said any more stress could be dangerous. If anything happens to that baby, Ava, it will be on you. It will be your fault for upsetting her."

He was using the unborn child as a shield, as a weapon to keep me in line. He was trying to chain me to him with guilt and fear.

But I wasn't afraid anymore. I was just... done. Looking at him, I didn't see the man I had married in a beautiful ceremony just weeks ago. I saw a hollow shell, a person so consumed by his own selfishness that he had become unrecognizable. The love I felt was gone, replaced by a cold, clear certainty.

I zipped my suitcase shut. The sound was definitive, a final, sharp punctuation mark on the end of our story.

I looked him straight in the eye, my voice steady and free of the tremor that had shaken it moments before.

"Get out of my way, Ethan."

He stared at me, his eyes wide with a flicker of panic. He was realizing, for the first time, that he was losing control. That his manipulations and emotional blackmail weren't working.

"Ava, don' t do this."

"I' m leaving this house," I said, my voice like ice. "And I am never, ever coming back."