Never Marry?I Bring Him to Heel

A sharp, biting cold sliced through the darkness, forcing Faye's eyes open.

The first thing she registered was pain. A searing, rhythmic throb shot up her right arm, pulsing in time with a heartbeat that was fading far too fast. Her wrist burned where the blade had gone deep. She could feel the ragged edges of the wound, the kind of cut that was meant to end things permanently.

Her vision swam into focus.

Red. Everything was a sick, clouded red. The bathwater was thick and lukewarm, clinging to her skin like a shroud. Her right arm lay limp at her side, draped over the edge of the tub, and from the fresh gash on her wrist, blood still wept into the water in lazy, dark ribbons. Near the porcelain rim, an empty pill bottle rolled softly against the edge. She caught a glimpse of it through the murk. Empty. She had swallowed every last one.

A primal instinct seized her: sit up, breathe. But her limbs were dead weight, unresponsive. Her body slid back down, and the bloody water rushed over her face. She choked, a bitter metallic taste flooding her mouth.

Then the fragments of memories that did not belong to her came. They hit her like shards of glass, slicing through her consciousness.

She saw herself. No, not herself. The other Faye. On her knees. Clinging to a man's pant leg, her voice cracked and raw.

"Bowen, please. I'll die if you leave me. I really will."

His face was cold as marble as he looked down at her without a flicker of emotion.

"Then just die."

The words echoed in the hollow of her new mind, sharp and merciless. He had said it. He had actually said it. And the original Faye had taken him at his word.

Panic, raw and primal, ignited a spark in her dying core.

Survive.

With a strength she did not know she possessed, she slammed her left hand against the slick porcelain rim of the tub. Her knuckles went white, the strain vibrating up her arm. She dragged herself upward, inch by agonizing inch.

More memories flooded in. The handsome face. Bowen Combs. His cold, dismissive eyes. The crisp, cruel pages of a document he had shoved across the table at her just days ago. The heading at the top was printed in bold black letters: Petition for Dissolution of Marriage. She had refused to sign it then. She had begged him not to make her.

And voices, sharp as broken glass, mocking her.

"A woman like you is worthless."

The name hit her like a physical blow. Bowen Combs. Her husband. The man who had taken everything she had given him, her strategies, her business insights, her sleepless nights, and claimed it all as his own.

She remembered how it had started. A chance meeting with Walter Combs, the dying patriarch of the Combs family empire, three years ago. She had been sixteen, working a summer job at a café . The old man had struck up a conversation, and within an hour, he had seen something in her. A mind like a steel trap, he had called it. He asked her questions about business, about markets, about strategy-and she had answered them all without hesitation. He told her she was wasted on coffee orders. He told her she belonged in a boardroom.

That was when he made her the offer. Marry his grandson, Bowen, and save the company that was crumbling under mediocre leadership. In return, she would have a family, a name, a future that her small-town life could never give her. To a girl who had grown up with nothing, it had sounded like a fairy tale. She had believed she could earn their respect. She had believed her talents would be valued. She had believed Bowen would eventually learn to love her.

She had been wrong. She had been so terribly wrong.

She saw herself, the other Faye, hunched over a laptop at four in the morning, the screen's pale glow the only light in the study. A dozen pages of market analysis spread across the desk. Her fingers cramped from typing. Her eyes burned from exhaustion. And upstairs, Bowen slept soundly, dreaming of the applause that would come his way.

She had built his empire. Every acquisition. Every boardroom victory. And he had never once spoken her name.

Walter had kept the marriage in place. He had been the only one who saw her value, the only one who understood that she was the reason the company was still standing. But Walter was gone now-dead just a month ago, his last breath barely cold before Bowen started moving pieces on the chessboard. With Walter dead, there was no one left to stop him. No one to remind him of the deal that had saved his company.

Now Bowen was bringing home his first love, Isabelle Sterling. For that, this Faye had to be erased.

The words of his mother, Evelyn, and his cousin, Tiffany, echoed in the chambers of her new mind.

"Rust Belt trash."

"Country bumpkin."

The original Faye, drowning in a sea of humiliation and heartbreak, had chosen the only escape she could see. She had sliced open her wrist. She had swallowed the pills. She had wanted to disappear.

But now, another Faye was here.

This Faye looked at the wound on her wrist. Deep. Savage. A cut meant to end a life, not to beg for attention. The pills had done their work too. The original Faye had been thorough. She had not wanted to survive.

Too bad. I am here now.

The confusion in her eyes hardened into something glacial. She could not die. Not like this. Not while these monsters got to live their perfect lives, built on her blood and her brilliance.

She gritted her teeth, the sound loud in the silent, steam-filled room. She hauled her drenched, shivering body over the edge of the tub. She landed with a wet thud on the cold marble floor, leaving a smear of red behind her.

Her legs trembled as she pushed herself up, gripping the vanity for support. The corner of the marble counter dug into her hip, a dull ache that barely registered against the fire in her wrist.

She finally looked up. Into the mirror.

The woman staring back was a ghost. Skin as white as bone, lips tinged with blue. Her face was caked in heavy, garish makeup. Thick foundation. Exaggerated black eyeliner that swept toward her temples. Mascara clumped and smeared. She looked like a cheap doll, a caricature of a woman trying too hard.

She had worn this face every day for Bowen. Painted herself into something he might find acceptable. Erased her own youth. She was only nineteen years old now, for God's sake. She had made herself look older, more sophisticated, more worthy.

The original Faye had spent three years turning herself into what he wanted. And he had still thrown her away.

But the eyes staring back from that painted face were not the eyes of a victim. They burned with a cold, terrifying fire.

Revenge.

Her movements were clumsy, but deliberate. She ripped a strip from the thick terrycloth robe hanging on the door and wrapped it tightly around her bleeding wrist, pulling the knot secure with her teeth and her left hand.

A sharp, impatient knock rattled the bathroom door.

"Ma'am? Mr. Combs and the family are waiting downstairs. For the papers."

A slow, chilling smile touched Faye's lips. The papers. Of course. The Petition for Dissolution of Marriage. The document that would legally erase her from his life. The same document she had refused to touch three days ago, the same one she had wept over until the ink blurred.

She turned on the faucet, the rush of water deafening. She splashed the icy stream onto her face, washing away the tears and blood that were not entirely her own. Her fingers scraped at the thick foundation, the smeared eyeliner, the mask of desperation.

It did not all come off. But enough. Enough to see the sharp, clear lines of her own face beneath. Young. Fierce. Dangerous.

Her gaze fell on the oversized, ornate medicine cabinet. She swung it open. Inside, among expensive, barely used creams, sat a first-aid kit. She pulled out antiseptic wipes and a roll of clean, white gauze.

She unwrapped the makeshift bandage. The sting of the antiseptic on the open wound was a welcome shock, a sharp, clean pain that cut through the fog. Each searing wipe was a reminder. Each wrap of gauze, a promise.

She looked back at her reflection, at the woman with the burning eyes.

She knew this face was not entirely her own. The original Faye had died in that bathtub, her last breath bubbling up through bloody water. But her name, Faye Barnes, belonged to this body now. And this body's debts, its grief, its unfinished business, those belonged to her too.

"Your debts," she whispered, her voice raspy. "I will collect them."

"Your life," she promised, "I will live it well."

She walked out of the bathroom, ignoring the bloody water still pooled on the floor. She strode to the walk-in closet.

And stopped.

It was a sea of gray. Sweaters in charcoal and ash. Slacks in dove and slate. Dresses in muted, lifeless tones, all chosen to match his taste, to make her invisible, to erase every trace of the vibrant, ambitious girl she had once been. This was a wardrobe designed by a woman who had given up her own identity to become an accessory.

A wave of fury, raw and untamed, washed over her. She swept an arm across a rack, sending a cascade of cashmere and silk tumbling to the floor.

She wanted to burn it all.

Then, in the very back of the closet, tucked away like a forgotten secret, she saw it. A simple black dress. It was a dress the original Faye had bought before her marriage, a piece of her old self she had never had the courage to wear in this house.

The fabric was a heavy crepe, the cut clean and severe. It was a dress that did not ask for permission.

She pulled it on. It fit perfectly, skimming her body, the hem falling just above her knees. It showcased a frame that was slender but not fragile, a strength that had been hidden under layers of beige wool.

She took a deep, steadying breath. Her eyes in the mirror, still smudged with the remnants of that desperate makeup, blazed with something new.

She opened the bedroom door and walked out.

The plush Persian runner in the hallway swallowed the sound of her heels.

Faye reached the top of the grand, sweeping staircase and paused, looking down into the living room below. It was a stage, and the actors were all in place.

Bowen Combs, impeccably dressed in a custom suit, glanced impatiently at his Rolex. His handsome face was a mask of bored annoyance.

His mother, Evelyn, sat poised on a silk armchair, sipping from a delicate coffee cup. A faint, contemptuous smile played on her lips.

His cousin, Tiffany Foster, was filing her nails, the rasping sound grating in the quiet room. "Is she planning on dying up there?" Tiffany drawled. "It would be so dramatic."

Evelyn let out a cold little laugh. "Don't be ridiculous. She does not have the courage. Not without our family's name to hide behind."

Bowen's jaw tightened. The delay was irritating him, a messy loose end on a day that was supposed to be a clean break. "Give her five more minutes," he said, his voice clipped. "Then I am sending the lawyer up."

Faye listened, a profound stillness settling over her. There was no pain, no anger. Just a vast, empty landscape of cold, clinical contempt.

She took the first step down.

The click of her heel on the marble stair was sharp and clear. Another step. Click. Another. Click.

Three heads snapped up in unison.

And then silence.

Tiffany's nail file clattered to the floor. Evelyn's hand, holding her coffee cup, froze halfway to her lips. Bowen's eyes widened. For a split second, a flicker of something, shock, maybe even appreciation, crossed his face. It was immediately extinguished by a wave of confusion and then dark annoyance.

The woman descending the stairs was a stranger.

The severe black dress. The way she held her head, not bowed, but high. And on her right wrist, a stark white bandage, a jarring note against the dark fabric. Her face was clean now, scrubbed of the heavy foundation and exaggerated eyeliner she had worn for three years to please him. Her skin was pale from blood loss, her lips still faintly blue, but beneath that vulnerable surface, there was something else. Something new. Her eyes had changed. They were no longer pleading or fragile. They were cold, sharp, and utterly unafraid.

Tiffany found her voice first, shrill and accusing. "Faye! What is this? Who are you dressed for? A last-ditch effort to win Bowen back? It is pathetic."

Evelyn set her cup down with a sharp clink. "You can put her in silk, but she is still mud underneath. A dress does not change where you come from, dear. You cannot polish dirt."

Faye did not even glance at them. Her gaze was fixed, her path direct. She walked straight to the low glass table where the document lay. The bold black letters at the top read Divorce Settlement Agreement. The same document she had wept over three days ago, the same one she had refused to touch, the same one that had driven the original Faye to swallow a bottle of pills and slice open her wrist.

She stopped.

Bowen's eyes were drawn to the bandage on her wrist. The white gauze stood out like a scream against the black dress. He knew what it meant. He had seen the blood in the bathroom. He had heard the muffled sounds from behind the locked door. And yet he had told the maid to knock, to demand her signature, to get it over with. A flicker of something unfamiliar, concern, guilt, perhaps even fear, pricked at him. "What happened to your hand?" he asked, his tone harsher than he intended.

Faye's eyes met his for the first time. They were calm, empty oceans. "I cut it," she said. Her voice was flat, as if she were discussing the weather.

The casual indifference of it threw him. It was wrong. All wrong.

He had prepared himself for her tears. For her begging. For her hysterics. He had rehearsed his lines of cold, final rejection. I never loved you. You were never good enough. Just sign and get out. He had run through them in his head a dozen times, ready to deliver them with cutting precision. But she had not given him the chance. She had not cried. She had not begged. She had not given him anything to reject.

An unfamiliar sense of irritation, of being outmaneuvered, coiled in his gut. He pushed a heavy, gold-plated fountain pen across the table. "Stop playing games, Faye. Just sign it."

"Yes, stop wasting everyone's time," Tiffany chimed in, smirking as she scrolled through her phone. "Bowen has important people to see today. His future wife, for one." She shot a meaningful look at Bowen, a clear reference to Isabelle Sterling.

Faye knew. The memories of the original Faye told her everything. Isabelle was waiting somewhere in the city, probably picking out wedding china, while the discarded wife was supposed to sign away her existence.

She looked at the pen. Then she looked at Bowen. Her lips curved into something that was not quite a smile.

"Bowen." She said his name slowly, deliberately. "I used to think you were gold. That I was lucky to have found you. That I had to earn your love, your respect, even your basic decency." She paused, letting the silence stretch. "Now I see clearly. And what I see is garbage."

The words landed like a slap. Bowen's face went pale, then red. He opened his mouth to respond, but nothing came out. He had prepared for everything except this. Not this quiet, devastating calm. Not this woman who looked at him like he was beneath her notice.

She picked up the pen.

Her hand was perfectly steady. The white bandage on her wrist was stark against the gold-plated barrel, a reminder of what he had driven her to. A reminder of what she had survived.

Under the astonished, disbelieving, and contemptuous stares of the Combs family, she lowered the nib to the paper.

The pen moved with a smooth, confident stroke. Not a single tremor.

She wrote her name, Faye Barnes, on the signature line. The letters were clear, sharp, and decisive.

When she was done, she set the pen down and looked at the document. Three years. Three years of her life, her work, her sleepless nights, all reduced to this. She had given him everything: her strategies, her insights, her brilliance. And he had taken it all without ever once saying her name.

Now it was over.

She lifted the document and blew gently on the wet ink, a small, almost dismissive gesture. Then she walked toward Bowen, holding the signed agreement in front of her like an offering she was about to withdraw.

He watched her approach, his heart giving a strange, uncomfortable lurch. He could smell her perfume, something clean and cold he did not recognize. It was not the floral scent he had picked out for her.

She stopped directly in front of him.

And then she dropped the papers onto the glass table in front of him with a sharp, deliberate crack. The sound sliced through the silence like a whip.

The pages landed in a messy heap-she had not even bothered to straighten them.

Bowen, Evelyn, and Tiffany stared, speechless. This was too easy. Too clean. It had to be a trick.

"Well, look at that. She actually signed," Tiffany sneered, recovering first. "Putting on a brave face, are we? Hoping we will see how magnanimous you are and beg you to stay?"

Faye did not even grant her a glance.

Bowen's eyes remained fixed on the document. Something was wrong. She had refused to sign this for days. She had wept over it, begged him to change his mind. And now she just... walked down and signed it? Without a fight?

His hand shot out and snatched the papers off the table. He flipped through them, scanning each page with the practiced eye of a businessman who had been burned before. He checked the signature on the second page. Her name. The same looping letters she had always used. He checked the clauses. Nothing had been changed. No new terms had been added. No hidden traps.

It was exactly the document he had drafted.

He looked up at her, searching for any sign of the act, any crack in the facade. He found nothing but a chilling, profound indifference.

Faye's voice was low, but it cut through the tension with surgical precision. "Bowen Combs, your freedom is approved."

The air in the room seemed to crystallize.

Approved?

She used the word approved. As if she were the one in power. As if he were the one being dismissed. Evelyn's perfectly made-up face contorted into a mask of fury. Who did this girl, this charity case from the Rust Belt, think she was? Bowen's pupils constricted. He stared at her, waiting for the mask to crack.

A harsh, grating laugh escaped his lips. He snatched the pen, signed his own name on the second copy with a vicious slash of ink, and slammed it down on the table. The heavy pen bounced, leaving a small black smear.

"Fine! This is what you wanted, Faye! City Hall, Monday morning. Nine o'clock. Do not be late."

He said it like a threat. He expected it to wound her. He waited for a flicker of pain, a flash of hesitation, anything to prove that she still cared, that he still had power over her. He needed her to hurt. Because if she did not hurt, then what did that say about him? What did it say about the years he had spent making her feel small?

But Faye just gave a small, sharp nod. "Okay."

And with that, she turned and walked away.

She did not look back. Not at the furniture she had spent months picking out. Not at the art she had carefully hung. Not at the man she had once loved with all her heart.

Her heels clicked across the marble floor, steady and unhurried. Each step carried her further from the life that had been designed to break her. Each step carried her closer to something new.

As she reached the massive, carved front door, Bowen's voice called out behind her, tight with a frustration he could not comprehend. "You are just leaving? What about your things?"

The divorce agreement stipulated she could take her personal belongings. There were boxes in the closet, still half-packed. There were items she had brought into this marriage, small pieces of her old life that she had never quite managed to erase.

Faye's hand was on the heavy brass handle. She paused, but did not turn around. Her voice drifted back to them, clear and cold.

"There is nothing in this house that belongs to me."

She pulled the door open, letting the morning light flood in. It spilled across the marble floor, washing over the Combs family like an accusation.

"As for the rest," she said, her voice carrying over her shoulder, "consider it a donation. I have always been fond of feeding strays."

The insult hung in the air, sharp and venomous.

"Who are you calling a stray!" Tiffany shrieked, jumping to her feet.

Faye did not answer. She stepped out of the house, into the bright morning sun. The light framed her, turning her silhouette into a dark, powerful shape against the brilliance outside.

The heavy door swung shut behind her. The latch clicked into place with a sound of absolute finality.

Inside the living room, Bowen's hands were clenched into fists at his sides, his nails digging into his palms. He was shaking with a rage he could not name. Not loss. Not grief. The rage of a man who had just realized he had been dismissed.

She had walked out without begging. Without crying. Without giving him the satisfaction of seeing her break.

It was a feeling he had never experienced before. A total, infuriating loss of control.

Outside, Faye stood on the front steps and let the sun warm her face.