I stared at him. “In my marriage.”
He laughed once, without humor. “You think this is a game?”
“No. I think this is evidence.”
His eyes sharpened. For a second I saw something naked and ugly there, something beyond anger. Contempt maybe. Or panic wearing contempt’s coat.
“You want to tear apart everything I built?”
My whole body went cold.
Everything I built.
Not we. Not us. Not our home. Not our child.
I said, very evenly, “You already did that.”
He pushed away from the island so fast the stool beside him tipped and hit the floor.
“Don’t do that,” he snapped. “Don’t stand there acting righteous like you haven’t been living off my name, my money, my work for years. You were nothing when I found you.”
There are sentences that don’t just hurt. They rearrange the room.
For one heartbeat, I could not hear the rain anymore. I could only hear that line echoing inside my skull.
You were nothing when I found you.
I had been twenty-nine, making more money than anyone in my family ever had, leading investigations people twice my age tried to bluff their way through. I had been competent and wanted and tired and alive.
Then I married a man who admired me best when I was useful to his image.