Chapter 4

Outside the dining room, Courtland paced, a lit cigarette held between his fingers. He took a long drag, the smoke doing nothing to calm the strange restlessness in his chest. He heard the man's greasy laugh, followed by Anastasia's desperate plea. A muscle in his jaw twitched. This was for Kinsley. This was justice.

Inside, as Mr. Harrison's sweaty hand closed on my arm, a primal instinct took over. I wasn't going to let this happen. I would rather die. With all my strength, I bit down hard on my own tongue. A sharp, searing pain exploded in my mouth, followed by the warm gush of blood.

The suddenness of the act shocked Mr. Harrison. His grip loosened for a split second. It was all I needed. I shoved him away and lunged for the table, grabbing a heavy silver knife.

"Stay away from me!" I shrieked, my voice muffled by the blood filling my mouth. I held the knife to my own throat.

At that exact moment, the door burst open. Courtland stood there, his eyes wide with a fury I had never seen before. It wasn't his usual cold anger; it was a hot, violent rage. He saw the knife at my throat, the blood dripping from my lips, and something inside him snapped.

He moved faster than I thought possible. He wasn't looking at me. His eyes were locked on Mr. Harrison. He grabbed the larger man by the collar and slammed a fist into his face. And then another. And another. The sound of bone crunching echoed in the silent room.

He beat the man until he was an unconscious, bloody heap on the floor. Then he turned to me. His chest was heaving, his hands covered in a mixture of my blood and Harrison's.

"You dare?" he hissed, his voice a low growl. "You dare try to die?" He grabbed the knife from my hand and flung it across the room. "Your life is mine to control. You don't have the right to end it."

His words made no sense. He had just tried to give me to another man. Now he was angry that I had tried to escape through death.

My mind, reeling from the pain and terror, flashed back to a different time. Our first meeting at a charity gala. I had tripped, and he had caught me. His hands were gentle then. He had smiled, a rare, breathtaking sight. He'd handed me a lapis lazuli bead that had fallen from my bracelet. "For protection," he'd said, echoing my grandmother's words. I had cherished that bead, that memory, through all the lonely years in the rehab center. It was the last remnant of the man I thought he was.

Now, looking at the monster before me, that memory felt like a lie. The bead felt like a curse.

The fight went out of me. I sank to my knees, the last of my strength gone.

"I want a divorce, Courtland," I said, my voice surprisingly steady despite the blood I was swallowing.

He froze. The word hung in the air between us, an unpardonable sin.

"My only condition," I continued, looking him straight in the eye, "is that you let me take Aspen with me. You can have everything else. I just want my brother."

His face, already a mask of fury, darkened further. "Divorce?" he whispered, as if the word itself was poison. He took a step toward me, and then another. He grabbed my shoulders and lifted me to my feet, his fingers digging into my flesh. "You think you can just leave?"

He shook me, his rage a palpable force. "You are my wife. You will always be my wife." He shoved me hard, and my head hit the corner of the dining table. The world exploded in a flash of white, and then, mercifully, there was only darkness.

I woke up in a stark white room that smelled of antiseptic. A different hospital this time. The rhythmic beeping of a heart monitor was the only sound. Outside the window, a storm was brewing, the sky a bruised purple.

A fit of coughing seized me, and I felt a familiar, wet warmth in my throat. I coughed into my hand and saw the bright red of blood.

A doctor I didn't recognize entered the room. He was young, with kind eyes that held a hint of pity.

"Mrs. Johnson," he said gently. "I'm Dr. Javier Manning."

He looked at my chart, his expression grim. "Your body has been under immense strain. The malnutrition, the internal injuries from... the substance you were given... they've taken a severe toll. Your organs are beginning to fail."

His words hit me like a physical blow.

"What are you saying?" I whispered.

He looked at me directly, his kindness making the truth even sharper. "I'm saying you don't have much time left, Mrs. Johnson. A few months, maybe. If you're lucky."

A few months.

My hand went to the small lapis lazuli bead I still clutched. It was no longer a symbol of hope. It was a mockery. A reminder of a love that had turned into a death sentence.

The days that followed were a new kind of hell. I was released from the hospital and returned to the mansion, but not as a patient. As a slave. Courtland forced me to perform the most demeaning manual labor. I scrubbed floors, cleaned toilets, my body growing weaker with each passing day. The coughing fits became more frequent, the blood more plentiful.

The household staff delighted in my suffering.

"Hurry up, murderer," a maid sneered one afternoon, kicking over a bucket of dirty water I had just filled. "The toilets won't clean themselves."

As I knelt to clean up the mess, I overheard two of them whispering excitedly.

"Did you hear? Miss Kinsley is coming back tomorrow! For good!"

"Really? I thought she was traveling."

"No, the master has invited her to live here. He wants to take care of her."

The world tilted. Kinsley. Alive. Coming here.

It couldn't be true.