Chapter 4

The sterile smell of antiseptic filled my nose before I even opened my eyes. Hospital. Again.

My head throbbed with a dull, persistent ache. My knees were on fire. I tried to move and a fresh wave of pain washed over me. I glanced down. My body was a roadmap of bandages and bruises.

I struggled to open my eyes, the fluorescent lights overhead blinding me.

"Don't move."

Kane's voice, low and deep, came from beside the bed. He was sitting in a chair, his face cast in shadow.

"The doctor said you have a concussion," he said, his tone flat. He pressed the nurse's call button.

I managed a dry, painful laugh. "Is that my punishment for being a bad girl?"

He was silent for a moment. "The bottle fell off the tray. It was an accident."

I wanted to laugh again, but the pain in my head was too sharp. It was a lie, a neat, tidy story to cover up the ugliness.

"I didn't hit her," I said, my voice a raw whisper.

He looked at me, his expression unreadable. "I know."

The words hung in the air between us. I stared at him, my heart hammering against my ribs. "You... you know?"

"I know she provokes you," he said, his voice quiet. "I know she enjoys it."

A tremor went through me. A wave of dizzying, desperate hope. "Then why?" I whispered, my voice breaking. "Why did you let them hurt me? Why did you stand there and watch?"

He stood up and walked to the window, his back to me. "She's been through a lot, Eva. She's fragile."

Fragile? Coral was as fragile as a block of granite.

"She's not who you think she is," I pleaded, the words tearing from my throat. "She lies, Kane. She's always lied."

He didn't turn around. "You don't know her. You're always antagonizing her. You need to learn to get along."

My blood ran cold. He was choosing to believe the fantasy, the idealized version of Coral he had built in his mind.

"So you believe her, not me?" I asked, the words barely audible.

He didn't answer. The silence was his confession.

A dizzying sense of absurdity washed over me. I laughed, a raw, broken sound that hurt my throat. Tears streamed down my face, hot and silent. "After everything... you still don't believe me?"

The nurse came in, her presence a brief interruption to the suffocating tension. She checked my vitals, her expression professional and distant, and then left as quietly as she came.

"You can stay at the penthouse while you recover," Kane said, as if offering a consolation prize.

Any hope I had left was crushed into dust. He wasn't offering comfort. He was offering a gilded cage.

My fingers clenched the thin hospital sheet. My breathing came in ragged gasps.

I looked at him, my eyes burning. "What about our marriage?" I asked, the words tasting like acid. "Our five years together. Does that mean nothing?"

It was a lie he had told me, a promise of a future that kept me tethered to him. He' d shown me a certificate once, a document I now knew was as fake as the love he professed.

He flinched, just for a second. His hand, resting on the windowsill, tightened. He turned to face me, his eyes dark and deep.

I stared back, a hundred questions swirling in my mind. Who am I to you? Did you ever care? Was any of it real?

His phone rang, a sharp, intrusive sound. His face changed when he saw the caller ID. He answered, his voice shifting into fluent, effortless French.

I had never heard him speak French before. I didn't even know he knew how.

I couldn't understand the words, but I understood the tone. It was the same intimate, gentle tone I had mistaken for affection.

Then I heard a woman's voice on the other end, excited and shrill. Even with the language barrier, I heard one word clearly. Coral.

The woman was talking about him and Coral. About how he was helping her... learning French for her.

My heart sank, a stone dropping into a bottomless well. It was all a plan. All of it. He was courting Coral, and I was just... practice. The stand-in he used to perfect his lines.

"Is he still hung up on that substitute?" the woman on the phone asked, her voice carrying clearly in the quiet room.

Kane's response was a knife to my heart. "She's just a plaything," he said in cold, perfect French. "Not even in the same league."

My breath hitched. I forced myself to look confused, as if I didn't understand. As if his words hadn't just ripped me apart.

The woman on the phone continued, gushing about how romantic it was that he was learning French just for Coral, because she had studied art in Paris.

He had never asked about my art. Never cared that I, too, had dreamed of Paris. He had never seen the similarities, because he had never seen me.

He hung up the phone and turned to me, his expression smooth again. "Company business," he lied.

The last embers of my love for him died out. There was nothing left but cold, hard ash.

"Coral needs me," he said, his voice soft, almost apologetic. "She was frightened by what happened. You need to understand, Eva. You have to let this go."

He didn't even look at me as he said it. He walked to the door, his steps sure and steady.

He was leaving me here, broken and bruised, to go comfort the woman who had orchestrated my pain.

The door clicked shut behind him.

And I finally let myself scream, a silent, tearing scream as the tears poured down my face, hot and endless.