Chapter 4

Alex POV:

Dwight stared at me, his face a mixture of shock, pain, and disbelief. His hand went to his shoulder, and his fingers came away slick with his own blood. He yanked the silver hairpin out with a grunt of pain and threw it to the floor. It clattered loudly in the silent room.

"You' re insane," he breathed, his eyes wide with a dawning horror, as if he was seeing me for the first time.

"Am I?" I asked, my voice dangerously soft. "Or am I just finally done playing by your rules?"

"She has nothing to do with this, Alex! She' s innocent!" he yelled, gesturing toward the terrified girl in the bed.

"Nobody in this room is innocent, Dwight," I shot back. "Least of all you." I took a deep breath, the cold rage solidifying into an unbreakable resolve. "I want a divorce. Now."

"No," he said, shaking his head, his jaw set stubbornly. "We' re not getting a divorce."

"You don' t have a choice." My lawyer, alerted by my previous text, stepped into the room, holding a leather-bound folder. He placed a single sheet of paper and a pen on the bedside table.

Dwight glanced at the divorce papers, then back at me, a cruel, mocking smile twisting his lips. "You slept with him, didn't you? Is that who this is about?" he sneered, nodding toward my stone-faced lawyer.

"You' re one to talk about sleeping around," I replied, my voice dripping with ice. I gestured to the bed. "What do you call this? A spiritual retreat?"

His face darkened. Without another word, he snatched the paper from the table and ripped it in half, then in half again, letting the pieces flutter to the floor like confetti at a twisted celebration.

My lawyer didn't even blink. He simply opened his folder and produced another identical document, placing it in the same spot. Then another, and another. He began to stack them, a silent, damning tower of my resolve.

Dwight stared at the growing pile of paperwork, his arrogance faltering.

"Sign it, Dwight," I said. "Or I swear to God, the next thing I put through your shoulder will be that IV pole." I looked at Charity, who was trying to make herself as small as possible against the pillows. "And then I'll use it to grant my first request."

His gaze flickered to Charity. I saw the conflict in his eyes, the flicker of fear for her warring with his stubborn pride.

Charity saw it too. Her eyes filled with tears, her lower lip trembling. "Dwight," she whimpered, clutching her stomach. "I don' t feel so good. I think... I think the stress is bad for the baby."

The what?

The air in the room froze. My blood turned to ice in my veins.

"The... baby?" I echoed, the words feeling foreign and sharp on my tongue.

Charity looked from Dwight' s shocked face to my stunned one, and a slow, malicious smile spread across her lips. She had just deployed her nuclear option.

"Yes," she said, her voice suddenly strong, triumphant. She placed a protective hand over her flat stomach. "I' m pregnant. With Dwight' s child."

She then turned her venomous gaze on me. "Something you could never give him. Because you' re empty. A barren wasteland."

The world went red.

I don' t remember moving. One moment I was standing by the door, the next I was on top of her, my hands around her throat, a primal scream of rage and grief tearing from my soul. All the pain, all the loss, the baby I' d lost years ago, the womb that had been stolen from me-it all erupted in a volcano of violence.

"ALEX, NO!" Dwight' s roar was deafening.

He grabbed me from behind, his arms like steel bands around my chest, hauling me off her. I fought him, kicking and scratching like a wild animal, my only focus the woman who had just taken a scalpel to my deepest, most agonizing wound.

"Stop it! You' ve gone mad!" he yelled, shaking me hard.

"You did this!" I screamed back, tears of fury streaming down my face. "You and your lies!"

"My lies?" he spat, his face contorted in a mask of righteous anger. "What about yours? What about what you did to my mother?"

The accusation, after everything, was so absurd, so monumentally unjust, that all the fight went out of me. I went limp in his arms, a hysterical laugh bubbling up from my chest.

"My fault?" I gasped, turning to look at him, my vision blurred by tears. "You' re right. It was my fault. My biggest mistake was ever thinking a man like you could love someone like me. My biggest mistake was marrying you."

The memory of his mother' s face, sneering at me from her deathbed, flashed in my mind. "He' ll never truly love you. You're just filth." For years, I had fought against her words, believing Dwight' s love was my shield. Now I knew she had been right all along. She had won. From beyond the grave, she had won.

He had held me so tightly that night, after she died, and whispered promises of forever into my hair. It was all a lie. All of it.

I pushed away from him, my body feeling hollow and cold. I walked to the bedside table, picked up the pen with a steady hand, and signed the top copy of the divorce agreement. My signature was sharp and clear.

I slid the paper across to him. "Sign it."

He stared at the paper, then at my face. His jaw was clenched so tight a muscle jumped in his cheek. He snatched the pen and scrawled his name with such force that he tore the paper.

"You' ll be back," he growled, his voice low and menacing as he threw the pen down. "You' ll come crawling back to me, Alex. You always do."

"No, I won' t," I said, my voice empty of all emotion.

"You belong to me," he declared, his eyes burning with a possessive fire. "You think a piece of paper changes that? You are mine. You will always be mine."

I just looked at him, at this man I had loved with every fiber of my being, the man who had systematically destroyed me. And in my heart, a new resolve took root, cold and hard and sharp.

He thought he had taken everything from me. My father. My dignity. My hope. He was wrong. He had left me one thing.

Revenge.

I would not just leave him. I would ruin him. I would dismantle his empire, shatter his pride, and burn his entire world to the ground. He would lose everything. And I would be the one holding the match.

I turned and walked out of the room without looking back.

Behind me, I heard Charity' s voice, sweet and cloying once more. "Dwight, honey, are you okay? Don' t worry about her. We have our whole future to look forward to."

A pause. Then, Dwight' s voice, tight with a strained cheerfulness. "You're right. We should plan the wedding."

As I walked down the hallway, I pulled out my phone and sent one last text to my lawyer.

`One more thing. Find the original video file. The one from Eleanor' s study. And leak it.`