Morning light cut across the bathroom mirror, bright and unforgiving. One eye was swollen. My cheek had turned purple overnight. There were fingerprints on my arm where he had dragged me away from the bedroom door — because I had dared to say, “I will not live with your mother.”
That was my crime.
His punishment had been quick, ugly, and confident. Then he had brushed his teeth, climbed into our bed, and slept like a man with a perfectly clean conscience.
I had stayed on the tile floor until dawn, holding a towel to my mouth, listening to him snore beneath the ceiling fan I had paid to install.
Now he stood behind me in a pressed shirt — handsome enough to fool strangers, cold enough to freeze a room.
“Evelyn wants the downstairs suite. Don’t embarrass me again.”
— Daniel
I met his eyes in the mirror. “And if I do?”
He leaned down until his breath touched my ear. “Then everyone will finally understand how unstable you are. Fragile little Mara. Always crying. Always so dramatic.”
