The year my husband, Ethan, and I were most deeply in love, he took three bullets for me. One to the chest, one in the arm, and another that lodged deep in his back.

Everyone said Ethan loved me more than his own life.

Until another woman posted a baby bump on Instagram.

"You're Chloe, right?"

She savagely threw a stack of photos at my face.

"Ethan fell out of love with you a long time ago. Be smart. Get the hell out."

In the photos, Ethan’s gaze was tender enough to melt steel.

I glanced at the snow swirling heavier outside the window and slowly raised my hand. The woman’s screams tangled with the wind, a venomous hiss against the glass.

"Ethan won't let you get away with this!"

Now, I just stared coldly at him. He sat across from me, having brought an entire entourage to condemn me.

"Sign it."

"I find you disgusting."

————————

1

"Chloe!"

Ethan sat across from me.

Behind him stood the men he’d personally promoted over the past two years. Outside, dozens of security guards in sharp suits surrounded my spacious penthouse. This wasn't a negotiation; it was coercion, plain and simple.

I watched Ethan. His fingers drummed a frantic, barely controlled rhythm against the glass coffee table.

"She's still in the ICU."

He lifted his eyes. The light from the floor-to-ceiling windows sliced across the high bridge of his nose, making the old scar there stand out in sharp relief.

"She's innocent," Ethan's voice was low, laced with a crushing weight. "She's only twenty-two, Chloe. Twenty-two! And you nearly destroyed her entire life! Do you have any idea what the doctor told me?"

"He said her arm might never fully recover."

Ethan's voice mingled with the wind howling against the skyscraper. I remembered that day, how that woman, even lying in a pool of her own blood, had used her last ounce of strength to scream those words.

"Ethan won't let you get away with this!"

I passed my untouched coffee to the butler, my eyes locked on Ethan’s furious gaze. "So, you've brought this army to my door to get justice for her?"

"And what's the plan?" I let out a soft, incredulous laugh. "Do you want one of my arms? Or are you planning to throw me down a flight of stairs to atone for her little scratch?"

Smiling, I pulled the cashmere shawl on my shoulders a little tighter.

Arthur, my butler, gave a near-imperceptible nod and silently raised the indoor thermostat.

I looked directly at Ethan.

"And who is she, exactly, to deserve you storming my home? Ethan, have you forgotten? I was the one who stood by you from a garage startup in Silicon Valley to the empire you command today. Me. Not her. Are you planning to burn our entire life to the ground for her, or did you come here to take my life?"

My voice was steady, betraying no emotion.

Arthur, ever professional, slid a pistol from inside his coat, the dark muzzle aimed squarely at Ethan's forehead. Ethan’s men tensed, but he merely scoffed.

"Chloe, we're long past the days of back-alley brawls. I don't want to blow this out of proportion." He shoved aside the divorce papers I’d left on the table. "A divorce would be a massive blow to both of us. I won't agree to it. But you will go to her. You will apologize. In person. Otherwise, don't blame me when things get ugly."

Ethan rose from the sofa, strode over to Arthur, and grabbed his wrist, pressing the muzzle of the gun firmly against his own forehead.

"Going to shoot me?"

"With this little pet of yours?"

Ethan suddenly wrenched Arthur's wrist, and a sharp crack of bone echoed through the silent room. But in that same instant, one of his own confidants let out a muffled grunt. A utility knife from my desk was now pressed steadily against the man's throat. I met Ethan's incredulous gaze and smiled.

"Ethan, my people don't touch you out of respect for me. But that doesn't mean," I walked toward him, taking his hand and prying it, finger by finger, from Arthur's wrist, "that you get to touch my people."

I knew, with chilling certainty, our marriage was over.

As the doctor set Arthur's bone, my butler was still seething.

"Miss, after everything you endured with that man in the garage days… are you truly going to let them trample all over you like this?"

I didn't answer.

I glanced at the new text message on my phone.

The profile picture was a blatant provocation: a photo of that woman and Ethan kissing. I opened the message, and a voice note auto-played.

"Chloe, I told you Ethan wouldn't let you get away with this. Your butler's broken wrist was just a little lesson."

"Ethan said you have to come and apologize to me. In person."

"I'll be waiting."

"Doesn't everyone say Ethan loves you more than life itself? I'd love to see just how much." The woman sent a few more photos. "Which of these wardrobes do you think would look best in the master bedroom?"

"Ethan says the most dangerous place is the safest. So, as soon as I'm discharged tomorrow, I'm moving into your house."

"And that art studio of yours? I'll be remodeling it."

Listening to the woman's triumphant voice, I looked up at the massive wedding portrait of us hanging in the hall. The irony was so thick it was suffocating. I toyed with a palette knife, and with a sharp flick of my wrist, the blade flew through the air and pierced the eye of the smiling Ethan in the photograph.

"Disgusting."

I walked out of the hall just as Ethan was directing his men to unload a truck of luxury furniture. We nearly collided, and his expression froze for a rare moment. I just leaned against the doorway, listening to that woman's gleeful voice from behind him.

"Ethan, why aren't you going in?"

Then, her head turned, and her eyes met mine.

"Oh, Chloe," she purred, linking her arm through Ethan's. She tilted her head, a smirk playing on her lips. "Are you here to welcome me?"

"Figured out how you're going to apologize yet?"

I looked at her arrogant face, at the fleeting indulgence in Ethan's eyes, and a sharp, suffocating pain clenched my heart. Before I could speak, Ethan interjected.

"The doctor said Scarlett needs to rest." His voice was impossibly gentle when he spoke her name. "This house is large enough. She won't be in your way. Chloe, don't squander the last chance I'm giving you."

I truly couldn't understand.

Ethan.

What gave him the right? Did he really think I would just take this lying down? That I would abandon all my principles, all my boundaries, for him? Again? Hearing his self-righteous tone, I laughed. As I did, Arthur took down the defaced wedding portrait and asked me,

"Miss, where should this go?"

I saw Ethan's face instantly darken, so I pointed to the nearby fireplace.

"Burn it. Don't leave a single scrap."

Arthur nodded and gestured for someone to light the fire.

But Ethan stopped him, storming toward me. "What the hell is this melodrama?"

"Chloe," his voice turned cold, "I told you, you were in the wrong. I am helping Scarlett recover to atone for your mistake. Don't be so ungrateful!"

"That's right, Chloe."

Scarlett followed him.

"Ethan told me everything. He said you had a miscarriage because of your promiscuous past. A psychiatrist said you have to atone for your mistakes to be blessed with a child again. You're not appreciating Ethan's kindness, you're just making more trouble. You're forcing him to leave you."

Scarlett's words were poisoned needles, stabbing viciously into my chest, tearing open a long-healed wound to let it fester. I looked at her smug face, then at Ethan's too-late attempt to stop her. I laughed, then grabbed a fistful of her hair.

"Who gave you the nerve to speak to me like that?"

Before Scarlett could even whimper, I slammed her head against the heavy marble wall. A dull thud echoed through the room. Scarlett screamed, and Ethan rushed over, grabbing the hand I was about to raise again.

"That's enough!"

Ethan glared at me.

"Scarlett is naive! She speaks without thinking! But she's not wrong. How long are you going to keep acting like a goddamn lunatic?"

I stared at Ethan in disbelief.

Back then, he'd been set up by a competitor vying for market share. I was the one who, at great personal risk, broke into a rival law firm to get the evidence that saved him. And it was in the aftermath of that rescue that I lost our child. He had knelt before me, slapping himself relentlessly, his forehead thudding against the floor as he sobbed.

"Chloe!"

His face was red and swollen, blood and tears smearing his cheeks, his voice choked with grief.

"If I, Ethan, ever wrong you in this life, may I be struck down and die a thousand deaths!"

"I, Ethan," he’d vowed, "for the rest of my life, will belong to you, Chloe! Only you! Forever!"

His promises still echoed in my ears. He had once ordered a complete media blackout, forbidding anyone from gossiping about my miscarriage, knowing it was a sacred wound. We had a silent pact to never speak of it, but we had prayed together for the child we never met.

And now.

I gazed at Ethan's face and let go of Scarlett. He let out a sigh of relief, his tone softening slightly.

"Chloe, your temper—"

My hand shot out, plunging a letter opener deep into Ethan's chest. I smiled.

"Ethan, they say betrayal earns a thousand cuts. This is the first."

The blade sank into flesh. With a brutal twist, I yanked it free.

Warm blood splattered my face. I watched the scar on his chest, once a symbol of his sacrifice for me, vanish under a hideous ruin of blood and flesh. A mocking smile played on my lips. But Scarlett took the opportunity to shove me hard.

I stumbled back. When I looked up, I met her resentful gaze.

"Who the hell do you think you are, hurting people like that!"

The next second.

I strode toward Scarlett, raised my hand, and slapped her hard across the face. "If you're so capable, stop being a pet canary in a gilded cage."

"Either that, or impress me." I grabbed her hair again and kicked the back of her knee, forcing her to collapse and look up at me. "Make Ethan divorce me and take my place as his wife."

"Or," I bent down, leaning close, and smiled, "wait for the day I decide to end you."

Scarlett's eyes were red from crying, her body trembling like a dying fawn, but a stubborn light shone in them.

"Go on, then. If you have the guts, kill me!"

"If you don't kill me, I will never leave Ethan!" Scarlett's tears refracted the setting sun. "I will be with him for the rest of my life!"

I froze.

I remembered being sixteen. My father was ambushed, suffering a heart attack, and my mother fought to the death to get me to safety. The sunset that day was also stained blood-red. It was Ethan who was waiting for me on the street, who, with the fearless courage of a boy, had carved out a bloody path for my survival.

It was that Ethan, a scar like a medal on his chest and vicious knife wounds striping his back, who had crashed straight into my heart, shouting my name.

"Chloe!"

"Go, now!"

I had been terrified, but I still ran headlong into that sea of blood, and together, we fought our way to today.

Ethan shoved me away. The wound on his chest was still bleeding, the blood sliding down his shirt like a crimson tear falling onto my heart.

"Chloe," Ethan gasped, squeezing one eye shut against the pain, "you've become a monster."

"I'm not divorcing you, but not because I still love you."

Ethan held Scarlett tightly in his arms.

"It's because," he said, "I owe your father a great debt, and you and I are bound by blood. Don't keep testing my patience, or you will regret it."

Scarlett broke down in his arms, sobbing and screaming, "Ethan! I don't want to live here! I don't want to!"

"I'm so scared!" she cried, clutching his collar hysterically. "I don't want to live with this madwoman! She'll kill me, she'll kill me!"