Her Regret, His Peace

They told me it was a contract marriage, a deal to save my mother' s life.

In reality, it was my own slow death sentence.

For three years, I was hired to be Chloe Davis' s husband, the man she blamed for ruining her life after her high school sweetheart dumped her.

I endured her endless parade of boyfriends, her daily allowance of five dollars, and constant humiliation, all to ensure my ailing mother received the best care.

Then, the day my mother died, Chloe' s assistant called, demanding I return home from the funeral to make snacks for a party.

Chloe, my wife, had no idea my mother was gone.

Days later, I learned the truth: my mother had committed suicide to free me, after Chloe' s cousin, Jake Stone, maliciously convinced her that she was an inescapable burden.

That night, at a club, Chloe poured red wine over my head for Jake' s amusement.

But the ultimate betrayal came when I collapsed from malnutrition and exhaustion.

Chloe visited me in the hospital, not with concern, but to demand I take the fall for Jake' s drunk driving accident.

The irony was suffocating; her own reckless driving had caused the power outage that shut down my mother' s life support, effectively killing her.

"No," I told her, my voice finally firm after years of silence.

"I want a divorce."

Her shock was absolute; I had never defied her.

Before I could escape, Jake ambushed me, confessing his role in my mother' s death, triggering a rage that landed me back in the hospital.

Yet, Chloe watched as her bodyguards, on her command, broke my ribs and crushed my painting hand.

Why had my life become this torment?

Why had I, a quiet artist, become the target of such unbridled cruelty?

I left with my mother' s ashes, leaving behind all the money, and promised myself I' d never look back.

They told me it was a contract marriage, a deal to save a life. My mother' s.

In reality, it was my own slow death sentence.

I became the scapegoat for a rich girl' s broken heart, a prop in a play orchestrated by her manipulative mother. My wife, Chloe Davis, was supposed to marry her high school sweetheart, Liam White. But he dumped her.

So they hired me. For three years, I was her husband on paper, the man she blamed for ruining her life. The man she tortured.

And it all came to a head the day my mother died. The one person I did it all for. The reason I endured everything.

Now, I stood alone in the cold, damp cemetery, the smell of wet earth filling my lungs. Rain slicked the polished wood of my mother' s casket. It was a simple ceremony, just me and a few distant relatives who barely knew her.

Chloe, my wife, wasn' t here.

Of course she wasn' t.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. It wasn' t her. It was her assistant.

"Mr. Miller, Ms. Davis is wondering when you' ll be home. She has guests and wants you to prepare snacks."

The voice was crisp, professional, and utterly devoid of emotion. I stared at the fresh pile of dirt beside the empty grave.

"Tell her I' m busy."

"Busy with what, sir? Ms. Davis was very specific."

"I' m at a funeral," I said, my own voice sounding hollow and distant.

There was a pause on the other end. I could hear the faint sound of music and laughter in the background. A party. Chloe was throwing a party.

"Whose funeral?" the assistant asked, a hint of annoyance in her tone.

"My mother' s."

Another pause, longer this time. I heard her relay the message to Chloe in a hushed tone. I couldn' t make out Chloe' s response, but the assistant' s voice was apologetic when she came back on the line.

"My sincerest apologies, Mr. Miller. Ms. Davis was unaware. She says to... take your time."

Take my time. As if this was some minor inconvenience, a dentist appointment I had forgotten to mention. The call ended. I slid the phone back into my pocket, my hand trembling. The betrayal was a familiar ache, but today it felt sharper, deeper.

After the funeral, I went straight to the Davis mansion. Not to the main house where Chloe lived, but to the smaller villa where her mother, Mrs. Davis, resided.

I found her in the garden, calmly pruning roses. She looked up as I approached, her expression a careful mix of sympathy and authority.

"Ethan," she said softly. "I heard about your mother. I' m so sorry."

"I want to end the contract," I said, cutting straight to the point. There was nothing left to hold me here.

She snipped a dead rose from its stem before turning her full attention to me. "The contract is for three years, Ethan. You know this. And besides, your mother..."

She trailed off, her eyes holding a warning.

"My mother is dead, Mrs. Davis. The deal is over."

"The hospital said it was organ failure," she said, her voice smooth as silk. "A tragedy, but a natural one. The best doctors in the country couldn' t save her."

I knew she was lying. The hospital hadn' t told me that. The official cause of death was a power failure. The life support machine keeping my mother alive had shut down. A power failure caused by a drunk driver crashing into the hospital' s main power grid.

That drunk driver was my wife, Chloe.

"The contract is fulfilled," Mrs. Davis continued, ignoring the thunderous look on my face. She pulled a check from the pocket of her apron. "This is the final payment. One million dollars. For your services, and for your silence."

My eyes fell on the check. A million dollars. More money than I had ever seen. It wasn' t a payment. It was a gag order. It was blood money.

I remembered the day I signed the contract. I was a struggling artist, drowning in my mother' s medical bills. She needed a new heart, an operation that cost a fortune. Mrs. Davis had appeared like a savior.

"Marry my daughter," she had said. "Pretend to be the man who rescued her from a bad investment that her father forced on her. In return, I will cover all of your mother' s medical expenses for three years. The best care, the best doctors, anything she needs."

It sounded too good to be true. It was.

Chloe believed the lie. She believed I was some opportunistic monster who had manipulated her family to get my hands on their wealth, trapping her in a marriage and ruining her chance to be with Liam. Her hatred was instant and absolute.

The first thing she did was cut off my finances.

"You want to be a part of this family?" she' d sneered, tossing a five-dollar bill on the floor. "This is your daily allowance. Learn to live on it."

For three years, that was my life. Five dollars a day. I ate the cheapest bread, wore the same worn-out clothes, and endured the constant humiliation. She paraded a new boyfriend in front of me almost every week, men she would shower with expensive gifts while I counted pennies for a meal.

The day my mother died was the culmination of her cruelty. My mother' s condition had worsened, and she was on a ventilator. I begged Chloe for money, just enough to talk to the chief surgeon about expediting her transplant.

She was with her new flavor of the week, Jake Stone. He was Liam' s cousin, a slimy, manipulative man who seemed to enjoy my suffering even more than Chloe did.

Chloe had laughed in my face.

"You want money? Okay," she said, her eyes glinting with malice. "Kneel. Kneel and beg me like the dog you are, and maybe I' ll consider it."

So I knelt. On the cold marble floor of our mansion, in front of her and Jake, I knelt and begged for my mother' s life.

She let me stay there for an hour, laughing and taking pictures with Jake, before she finally tossed a set of car keys at me.

"Go wait in the car. I' ll drive to the hospital and talk to the doctor myself."

A flicker of hope ignited in me. Maybe she wasn' t completely heartless. I waited for two hours. She never came.

Later that night, I got the call from the hospital. There had been an accident. A drunk driver had crashed into the power grid. The backup generators had failed. My mother was gone.

The next morning, Chloe came home, reeking of alcohol. She looked annoyed when she saw my tear-streaked face.

"What' s with the long face?" she demanded.

"My mother... she' s dead."

Chloe' s expression didn' t change. She reached into her purse and pulled out a black, unlimited credit card. She threw it at my chest.

"Then this should solve your problem," she said, her voice cold and sharp. "If you' d found a way to get her better care sooner, maybe she' d still be alive. This is your fault, Ethan. Not mine."

Her words shattered the last piece of my broken spirit.

I didn' t pick up the card. I left it lying on the floor. I walked out, arranged my mother' s funeral, and said goodbye to the only person who had ever truly loved me.

But just before the funeral, I received a letter. It was from my mother. Her handwriting was weak, shaky. She told me the truth.

Jake Stone had visited her in the hospital. He' d told her everything. He told her about the five dollars a day, about the kneeling, about the constant parade of men. He told her I was trapped, that the only thing keeping me in this personal hell was her.

So she made a choice. She bribed a nurse to mess with her ventilator settings right before the power went out. She took her own life to set me free.

Now, standing in front of Mrs. Davis, holding the million-dollar check, I understood. This was the price of their secret. The price of my mother' s life.

My phone buzzed again. It was Chloe. I let it go to voicemail.

Her voice, slurred and angry, filled the silence of the garden a moment later.

"Ethan, where the hell are you? I told you to get snacks! Jake is hungry! Did your mother' s funeral take all day? Get your ass back here now!"

She didn' t know. She had no idea my mother was dead. I had chosen not to tell her, to let her believe her lie.

I looked at Mrs. Davis, a bitter smile touching my lips for the first time in years.

The debt was paid. I was free.

Chloe' s call came an hour later, summoning me to "The Velvet Rope," her favorite downtown club.

"Jake wants to see you," she' d slurred over the phone. "Get here. Now."

I knew what this was. It was another performance, another chance for her to humiliate me in front of her friends. For three years, this was our routine. But tonight was different. Tonight, I was no longer her prisoner.

When I walked into the club, the loud music hit me like a wall. The air was thick with the smell of expensive perfume and spilled alcohol. I saw them immediately, holding court in a VIP booth. Chloe was draped over Jake, laughing at something he whispered in her ear.

She spotted me and her smile vanished, replaced by a familiar sneer.

"Well, look what the cat dragged in," she announced, her voice loud enough to turn heads. "Took you long enough."

Jake looked me up and down, a smug grin on his face. "Chloe, darling, your husband looks a little... rough. Didn' t you give him his five dollars today?"

The surrounding sycophants laughed on cue.

I said nothing. I just stood there, my hands in my pockets, and met their gaze. My silence seemed to bother Chloe more than any argument would have.

"What' s wrong with you?" she snapped, sitting up straighter. "Lost your tongue?"

"He' s probably just sad his mommy is in that cheap public hospital," Jake chimed in, swirling the amber liquid in his glass. "Isn' t that right, Ethan? If you weren' t such a failure of an artist, maybe you could afford a decent place for her."

The mention of my mother was a low blow, but I didn' t flinch. I just kept my eyes on Chloe.

She seemed to take my calm as a challenge. She picked up a full glass of red wine from the table.

"Jake' s right. You' re a disappointment," she said, her voice dripping with contempt. She stood up, walked over to me, and poured the entire glass of wine over my head.

The cold liquid streamed down my face, staining my cheap white shirt a deep crimson. The crowd gasped, then erupted into laughter.

I didn't move. I didn't wipe the wine from my eyes. I just stood there, letting it drip onto the floor.

Chloe stared at me, waiting for a reaction. Begging, pleading, anger-anything. I gave her nothing. My emptiness was a mirror, and I think for the first time, she saw a flicker of her own ugliness in it.

"Clean it up," she ordered, her voice a little shaky. She threw a cocktail napkin at my feet. "And then you' re going to get on your knees and apologize to Jake for being so pathetic."

For three years, I would have done it. I would have gotten on my knees. I would have apologized. I would have swallowed my pride for the five-dollar bill she would toss me later.

But today, I just bent down slowly, picked up the napkin, and began to calmly dab at my shirt. My movements were slow, deliberate.

My strange obedience unnerved her. "What are you doing? I said apologize!"

As I cleaned the stain, my mind drifted back. I remembered the one time Jake had spilled a drop of soup on his designer shirt at dinner. Chloe had leaped up, her face a mask of concern. She had dabbed at the spot with a silk handkerchief, cooing at him, apologizing as if it were her fault. She had ordered the kitchen to remake the entire meal for him.

For him, a drop of soup was a catastrophe. For me, a full glass of wine poured over my head was entertainment. The contrast was so stark, so cruel, it was almost absurd.

The lack of food for the past few days, combined with the emotional exhaustion, suddenly caught up with me. The club lights swam before my eyes. The music faded to a dull roar. A wave of dizziness washed over me, and the world went black.

I woke up to the sterile smell of antiseptic and the soft beeping of a machine. I was in a hospital room. The light from the window was dim; it was early morning.

Chloe was sitting in a chair by the bed, her arms crossed. Her party dress was wrinkled, her makeup smudged. She looked tired and, for a fleeting moment, worried.

"You' re awake," she said. Her voice was quiet, stripped of its usual venom.

"You fainted. The doctor said it' s severe malnutrition and exhaustion." She looked away, a flicker of something unreadable in her eyes. "I didn' t know... I didn' t know you weren' t eating."

For a second, a tiny, stupid part of me thought this might be a breakthrough. That seeing me in a hospital bed had finally cracked her icy exterior.

I was wrong.

She took a deep breath, and the mask of the cruel, spoiled heiress slipped back into place.

"Listen," she started, her tone becoming businesslike. "Jake got into a little trouble last night. He was driving my car and... he hit someone. It wasn' t serious, but the police are involved."

I stared at her, waiting.

"He can' t have a DUI on his record. It would be bad for his image." She leaned forward, her eyes pleading in a way I' d never seen before. "I need you to take the blame."

I blinked. She wanted me to confess to a crime I didn' t commit. For Jake. After everything.

"You tell the police you were driving," she continued, as if it were the most reasonable request in the world. "You were upset about your mother, you took my car without asking, you had a drink. It all makes sense. My family lawyers will handle everything. You' ll get a slap on the wrist, maybe some community service. It' s no big deal."

It' s no big deal. The words echoed in the silent room. My mother was dead because of her reckless driving. And now she wanted me to take the fall for her new boyfriend' s reckless driving. The irony was so thick I could choke on it.

A slow, cold anger began to build in my chest, a feeling I hadn' t allowed myself to have in three years. It pushed out the grief, the exhaustion, the hopelessness.

I sat up slowly, my body aching. I looked her straight in the eye.

"No."

The word was quiet, but it hung in the air between us like a physical object.

Chloe' s eyes widened in disbelief. "What did you say?"

"I said no," I repeated, my voice stronger this time. "I won' t do it."

"Ethan, don' t be stupid. This is a simple request. I' ll even raise your allowance. Ten dollars a day. How about that?"

I almost laughed. It was so pathetic.

"I don' t want your money, Chloe," I said. "I want a divorce."

The shock on her face was absolute. It was as if the world had suddenly tilted on its axis. In three years, I had never defied her. Not once.

"A divorce?" she stammered, a hysterical laugh bubbling up. "You want to divorce me? You can' t divorce me! You' re nothing without me! You' re a broke, failed artist who would be living on the street if it weren' t for my family!"

"That may be true," I said, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. "But I' d rather be on the street than be your husband for one more day."

I stood up, my legs a bit shaky, and walked towards the door.

"Our contract is over," I said, not looking back. "I' m done."