Chapter 2

Caroline Garrett POV:

The next morning, my phone buzzed with a message from an unknown number. I didn't need to look to know who it was.

He's punishing himself for what you did, the text read. A voice note followed.

I pressed play. Karina's sickly-sweet voice filled the silence of my bedroom. "He's kneeling on broken glass, Caroline. For me. For our baby. To atone for the sins you committed. He said he won't get up until you come to the hospital and apologize to me. On your knees."

My thumb hovered over the delete button.

"Does he really love you, Caroline?" her voice dripped with fake pity. "Or does he just love the power your name gives him? Because a man who loves a woman doesn't make her kneel."

A picture arrived. Jacob and Karina, tangled in the sheets of my bed. Her hand was on his chest, right over his heart. Her diamond ring, a gaudy thing he must have just bought her, caught the light. It was a declaration of war.

We're moving into the villa tomorrow. I've already had the decorators send over new plans. Your taste is a little...dated.

I looked up at the wall opposite my bed. A massive, floor-to-ceiling portrait of Jacob and me on our wedding day. We looked happy. Unstoppable. A king and his queen. Now, it felt like a monument to my own stupidity.

I walked to my dressing table, my movements calm and deliberate. I opened a velvet-lined drawer and pulled out a small, ornate dagger. A gift from my father. 'For cutting ties,' he'd said.

I walked back to the portrait. I looked into Jacob's painted eyes, the artist had even captured the faint scar above his brow. The scar I used to trace with my fingertips.

"You're a disease, Jacob," I whispered.

Then I plunged the dagger into the canvas, right through his left eye. The sound of the tearing fabric was deeply, brutally satisfying.

The next day, I was waiting for them.

They arrived in the afternoon, Jacob's arm wrapped protectively around Karina's shoulders as if I were some kind of monster. He looked tired, his eyes hollow, but his jaw was set with a stubborn resolve.

Karina, for her part, looked pale and fragile, a bandage peeking out from the collar of her shirt. She clung to Jacob, her eyes wide with a carefully rehearsed fear.

They stopped dead when they saw me, standing in the grand foyer.

Jacob' s face tightened. "Caroline. What are you doing here?"

"I live here," I said, my voice flat. "Or did you forget?"

"You're just making this harder," he said, his voice laced with exasperation. He was treating me like a difficult child, a problem to be managed.

Karina leaned into him, her voice a trembling whisper. "Jacob, I'm scared."

"It's alright, baby," he murmured, stroking her hair. "I'm here."

He looked at me, his eyes pleading. "Just let her move in, Caroline. We can sort this out later. Quietly."

The pain that lanced through my chest was so sharp, so physical, I almost gasped. It felt like a shard of ice embedding itself in my heart. He wanted me to be quiet. He wanted me to swallow this humiliation, this betrayal, and just...accept it. Had he ever known me at all?

I didn't answer him. Instead, I turned to Arthur, who stood silently by the door.

"Arthur," I said, my voice ringing with authority. "Have the staff remove that monstrosity from my bedroom and burn it." I gestured vaguely toward the staircase, toward the defaced portrait.

"You will do no such thing!" Jacob roared. He took a step forward, blocking Arthur's path. "This is my house too, Caroline! Stop this childish tantrum!"

He turned his furious gaze on me. "You were the one who was wrong first! You hurt her! You hurt our child! Can't you, for once, think of someone other than yourself?"

His words were a blur of noise. My focus was on Karina. She was hiding behind Jacob, but her eyes were fixed on me, and they were gleaming with triumph. And then, she mouthed a single word. A word that stopped my heart.

'Miscarriage.'

She smiled, a cruel, secret little smile just for me. And then she spoke, her voice just loud enough for me to hear over Jacob's tirade.

"He told me all about it," she whispered, the words like venom. "He said it's for the best that you lost it. That it was probably another man's child anyway. He said he arranged the accident to get rid of it. He never wanted a child with a cold, barren bitch like you."

The world tilted.

The air rushed from my lungs. The scar on my lower abdomen, a thin silver line from the emergency C-section that had failed to save my son, began to burn. A phantom pain, a memory of loss so profound it had nearly destroyed me.

Jacob had held me for weeks after. He had wept. He had built a small memorial by the lake on our property. He had sworn on that child's memory that he would love me forever.

It was all a lie.

The coldness in me, the void, was suddenly filled with a white-hot rage that consumed everything. All thought, all reason, all pain. There was only the fire.

I lunged.

I moved so fast, neither of them had time to react. I grabbed Karina by her blonde hair, yanking her away from Jacob's protection. She shrieked, her hands flying to her head.

I slammed her against the wall. Her head hit the plaster with a sickening thud.

"Caroline, stop!" Jacob yelled, grabbing for my arms.

I didn't even feel him. My world had narrowed to the terrified, tearful face of the woman who had just desecrated the memory of my child.

"You touched the one thing you should never have touched," I snarled, my voice a sound I didn't recognize.

"You're making it worse!" Jacob shouted, his voice cracking with desperation as he tried to pull me off her. "You're just adding to your sins!"