Chapter 2

David' s face remained impassive. His eyes, once so full of love for me, were now chillingly calm.

"That' s in the past, Eva. It' s over."

"Over?" The word was a strangled gasp. "My son is dead. I lost three years of my life in a cage. Nothing is over."

The room tilted. My heart felt like it was being squeezed in a vise, every beat a new spike of pain. I swayed on my feet, the shaking in my limbs becoming uncontrollable.

For a flash of a second, I saw a flicker of concern in his eyes. Just a flicker.

"Eva," he said, his voice a low warning. He took a quick step toward me, as if to catch me.

But then his phone buzzed. A cheerful, cartoonish ringtone I' d never heard before.

He stopped. His body tensed. He glanced at the screen, and his entire posture changed. The flicker of concern was gone, replaced by a weary parental softness.

"I' m on my way," he said into the phone, his voice gentle. "Yes, I' ll pick up his favorite cookies. Don' t let him cry."

He hung up. The silence in the room was deafening.

I remembered how he used to be with Leo. Stern. Demanding. Leo once cried for a cookie before dinner and David had sent him to his room without supper. He' d always said he was building character, making him strong.

But this new child, Karyn' s child, got cookies just for crying.

I gripped the back of a chair to keep myself from collapsing in front of him. My pride was all I had left.

He hesitated, his gaze lingering on me for a moment before he turned to leave.

"Get some rest. We' ll talk tomorrow."

He started to walk out the door, then paused. "The alarm code is the same. I' ll call you."

My home? Was this still my home? The thought was a bitter laugh in my throat.

He left. The front door clicked shut, plunging the house into a deeper twilight. My world, once so bright, was now just shades of gray and black.

I didn' t want to be in this house, but I had nowhere else to go. And there was something I had to find.

I walked up the stairs, my legs heavy, and went to Leo' s room.

It was empty.

Completely empty. The race car bed was gone. The bookshelf filled with his favorite stories was gone. The pale blue walls, once covered in his crayon drawings of dinosaurs and rocket ships, had been painted over in a sterile, impersonal white.

They had erased him.

"You bastard, David," I whispered to the empty room. "How could you be so cruel?"

My knees gave out. I slid down the wall, the smooth, new paint cold against my back. A raw, animal sound tore itself from my throat, a scream of pure, undiluted agony.

I cried until I was empty, until my throat was raw and my eyes were swollen shut. Exhausted, I stumbled into the master bedroom. Our bedroom.

A tiny, foolish part of me hoped he might have kept something of Leo' s in here. A favorite blanket. A single, forgotten toy.

The room was exactly as I' d left it three years ago. The same heavy curtains, the same king-sized bed. My clothes were still hanging in the closet, my perfume bottles still lined up on the vanity.

Why? Why keep my things if he had a new family? Did he bring her here?

I pulled open the drawer of my nightstand, my hands shaking. I didn' t know what I was looking for.

And then I saw it.

Tucked in the back, behind my old journals, was a small, unopened box of lingerie. Expensive. Silk and lace. Not my style at all. It was Karyn' s style.

I knew, in that gut-wrenching instant, exactly what it was. And I knew why he had kept my things.

This house wasn' t a shrine to our dead marriage. It was their private playground. They would come here, to our bed, surrounded by my ghost, and play their twisted games. The thought of it made me physically sick.

I ran to the bathroom and retched into the toilet, heaving until there was nothing left but bitter bile. My body was weak, my spirit shattered. I collapsed onto the cold tile floor, the world fading to black.

I woke to the dim light of dawn filtering through the window. I was in bed. Someone had moved me from the bathroom floor and tucked me in.

David was standing by the window, staring down at me. His expression was one I hadn' t seen in years. It was soft. It was pained. For a horrifying moment, I thought I saw love in his eyes.

The thought made me want to be sick all over again.

My voice was a croak. "Why didn' t you throw my things away?"

I sat up, pulling the sheets around me like armor.

"Why didn' t you just get rid of me completely, David? Was it more fun for you and Karyn to screw in my bed, knowing I was rotting in a cell?"

His face hardened. The brief moment of softness vanished.

"So you know," he said. It wasn't a question.

"I saw you. At the cemetery. With her. And your son."

He didn' t deny it. He just stood there, a statue carved from ambition and lies.

"We have a child, yes," he said, his voice flat.

My world, which I thought had already been destroyed, crumbled into finer dust. Every memory of his love, his promises, his whispered sweet nothings, turned to ash in my mind.

I thought of him holding me a lifetime ago, promising to protect me. I thought of him crying with joy when Leo was born.

"Why not just divorce me?" I asked, my voice barely audible. "Why put me through all of this?"

He clenched his jaw. "The optics of a messy divorce during a mayoral campaign are not good, Eva. A grieving widower is a much more sympathetic figure."

He was talking about Leo. Like a political asset.

"But when I get the nomination," he continued, his voice chillingly reasonable, "and the election is secured, I will divorce Karyn. You and I can be together again."

I stared at him, my mind struggling to process the sheer, monstrous audacity of his words. He was keeping me. Like a spare suit in the back of the closet. A comfortable option to return to when his affair with the heiress had served its purpose.

He hadn't changed at all. He was still the same ruthless boy from the slums, willing to do anything, sacrifice anyone, to get what he wanted.