"It’s just an old toy. Maybe Zera gave it to Astrid because she didn’t want it anymore," she said, brushing off my concerns.
But something didn’t sit right with me. The more I thought about it, the more uneasy I felt. So, I decided to dig into Astrid's spending records, and what I found left me stunned.
Worse than that, my wife knew about it. And she let it happen.
——
I had just closed a multi-million-dollar deal with an international client when I got Zera's message. Seeing her sad little face tugged at my heart. I wanted to tell her I’d be home soon and that we could go on vacation together. But after noticing those faint bruises, I hesitated.
I tried asking her about them gently, but her answers were scattered, and soon she stopped replying altogether.
Worried, I checked her social media for clues, but what I found instead was Astrid's latest post. There it was again — Zera's precious bunny, sitting on Astrid's bed.
That bunny meant everything to Zera. Once, when we went to her grandmother's house and forgot to bring it along, she cried all night and even spiked a fever so high that we almost lost her. After that, we never left home without it.