A week after the locks changed, the technicians returned. They mounted two large flat screens on the wall directly opposite our bed.

Mathias called it "exposure therapy."

"You suffer from irrational jealousy, Nyla," he told me that evening.

He sat beside me on the mattress. He had already taken off his jacket, his sleeves rolled neatly to his elbows. He reached out and rested his palm on my knee. His touch was warm, heavy, and completely still.

"In modern medicine, how do we cure a phobia?" he asked, using the same calm, reasonable voice he used when closing tech deals. "We expose the patient to the trigger until the panic stops. Your reaction to other women is an emotional defect. We are going to fix it."

He pressed a button on the remote.

The screen lit up. The feed was clear and high-definition. It showed a luxury hotel suite downtown. Amber Chen sat on a white sofa in a silk robe, sipping red wine. A moment later, Mathias walked into the frame on screen, loosening his dark silk tie.

My chest caved in. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to turn my head away.

Mathias’s grip on my knee tightened. His fingers dug into my flesh until it bruised.

"Eyes open, Nyla," he ordered softly. His voice wasn't angry. It was clinical. "Don't hide from it. Breathe through the discomfort."

"Turn it off," I whispered, tears spilling hot over my cheeks. "Please, Mathias. Turn it off."

"No," he said, staring at the screen. "Amber means nothing. You see that? I don't love her. This is purely maintenance. It is physical function, nothing more. Once you see it enough times, your brain will stop panicking. You will become an evolved wife."

The terrifying thing was his face. There was no cruelty in his eyes. No smirk. He genuinely believed he was helping me. He looked at me with quiet pity, the way a surgeon looks at a patient who needs a painful procedure.

Two nights later, the feed changed.

This time, the camera was mounted inside the leather interior of his town car. A young woman from his marketing department sat in the back with him. She looked twenty-two, with dark ponytail and nervous eyes.

Mathias sat beside me on our bed, stroking my knee in slow, rhythmic circles.

"Look at my posture on the screen," he narrated quietly. "Notice the lack of emotional tension. It takes five minutes. It takes nothing away from you. You are my wife. You hold the title. Why weep over scraps?"

On the monitor, the young woman leaned in. The audio came through the soundbar beneath the television—sharp, wet, and intimate.

"See?" Mathias murmured near my ear. "It’s just biology, Nyla. Just an appetite."

A strange snap echoed in my head.

The sound suddenly dropped out. The room lost its color. The two bright screens smeared into grey static, like an old television with no signal. The bed beneath me seemed to vanish. I stopped feeling Mathias's hand on my knee. I stopped feeling the air moving in and out of my throat.

I was floating away. Fast and quiet.

***

When my eyes opened, the room was pitch black.

I wasn't in bed anymore. I was curled up on the cold marble floor of the master bathroom. My back was pressed hard against the porcelain tub.

I glanced at the glowing digital clock on the vanity.

*2:14 a.m.*

More than two hours were completely gone. Blank space. I didn't remember the screens turning off. I didn't remember Mathias leaving the room.

My worn leather journal sat open on my bare legs. My right hand gripped the pen, the black ink tip pressed firmly against the cream paper.

I looked down.

The page was completely empty. Not a word. Not a line. Not even a stray scratch.

My fingers went numb. I let go of the pen, and it rolled across the white tiles with a quiet clatter.

A chill crawled over my skin. I wasn't just locked in a lakeside house. I was slipping away from myself. Mathias was breaking down my mind until there was nothing left inside to fight back.

I pulled my knees against my chest and rested my chin on my skin. *Why don't I smash a window?* I thought. *Why don't I scream until the neighbors hear?*

Then the memory came back. It always did.

Two winters ago, before the wedding, I had caught a terrible strain of the flu. My fever spiked to a hundred and four. I was shaking so hard my teeth clicked. I couldn't even stand up to reach the bathroom.

Mathias hadn't called a doctor to replace him. He stayed.

For three straight days and three nights, he sat by my bed. He soaked clean washcloths in cold water and laid them gently across my forehead. When my lips cracked, he held a cup of water and tipped it into my mouth, whispering, "Slowly, baby. Just one more sip."

On the second night, his assistant called. A fifty-million-dollar merger was on the table, and the board needed his signature in New York. Mathias answered the phone while holding my cold hand.

"Cancel it," he had said into the receiver.

"Sir, they won't wait," the voice pleaded through the speaker.

"Let them walk," Mathias said, and hung up.

He had stayed awake until dawn, wiping the sweat from my neck with a warm towel. His eyes had looked so dark, so tired, and so full of care.

Sitting alone on the bathroom floor in the dark, I grabbed onto that memory with both hands. It was a heavy iron chain, and it was dragging me under, but I couldn't make myself drop it.

*He was good to me once,* I told the empty room. Tears leaked down my face, tasting of salt. *A man who did that cannot be entirely this. He loved me. He has to still love me.*

The chain held tight. And like a fool, I let it keep me in the dark.

The twin screens glowed bright blue in the bedroom.

On the screen, Mathias was in a luxury suite with two women at once. One on each side. Tangled limbs, dark hair, blonde hair, skin gleaming under soft hotel lights.

Mathias sat beside me on our mattress, drinking cold water from a glass.

"Look at it, Nyla," he said gently. "Three bodies. It’s an exercise. Nothing more."

My ears began to ring. A high, thin whine filled my skull until I couldn't hear the TV anymore. I couldn't even hear his voice. Something inside me snapped. It wasn't loud. It was just a small, quiet crack, like dry wood giving up in winter.

A few minutes later, Mathias turned off the screens and went to his study to take a call.

I stood up.

My feet felt light, carrying me into the master bathroom. I didn't think about it. I didn't make a plan. I simply opened the mirrored cabinet and took a fresh steel blade from his shaving kit.

I sat down on the cold white tile floor, pulling my knees against my chest. The metal felt like ice against my fingertips.

I didn't cry. My chest didn't heave. My body had simply reached the end of what it could carry.

I pressed the edge against my left wrist and dragged it across the skin. Then my right.

The sting lasted for a second, then a strange warmth rushed out. Red pooled onto the marble, bright and thick. I laid my head back against the side of the porcelain tub and closed my eyes. The ringing in my ears faded away. For the first time in months, everything went completely quiet.

***

The next thing I smelled was bleach and sharp antiseptic.

A housekeeper had found me in the morning, soaking in my own blood. Now I was in a hospital bed. Thick white gauze was wrapped tight around both of my forearms. A plastic tube went into the back of my hand, feeding me a slow sedative drip that made my tongue feel heavy.

Outside my door, the hallway was bright with harsh morning light.

I turned my head on the stiff pillow. Through the clear glass partition, I saw Mathias.

He was leaning against the nurses' station, looking clean and handsome in his dark suit. He had that easy, magnetic smile on his face. Beside him stood a young nurse in pastel blue scrubs.

Mathias murmured something low. The young nurse giggled, tucking a strand of blonde hair behind her ear.

Then Mathias reached out.

His fingers slid smoothly to the small of her back. He rested his hand there, stroking the curve of her spine in slow, easy circles while she smiled up at him.

Right outside my door. While I lay with stitched-up wrists.

He didn't care if I saw. Or maybe he had forgotten I was even in the room.

A sickening heat flared in my gut. My chest locked up tight. The machine beside my bed began to scream.

*Beep. Beep. Beep-beep-beep.*

"Get away from me!" I croaked, trying to yell, but the sound came out raw and broken. I kicked at the sheets, thrashing against the thin mattress. "Get him out! Don't let him touch me!"

Two nurses rushed through my door, rubber soles squeaking on the floor.

Behind them, Mathias walked over to the glass. His eyes met mine through the window. He didn't look guilty. He didn't look angry. Instead, his face smoothed into a look of deep, sorrowful pity.

I saw it right away. I had just handed him the exact weapon he needed.

***

By three in the afternoon, a woman in a tailored grey suit entered my room. The badge pinned to her lapel read: *Dr. Ellen Whitfield.*

Mathias stood slightly behind her chair. His head hung low. He held a crumpled linen handkerchief, his broad shoulders slumped in absolute defeat.

"She’s been deteriorating for months, Doctor," Mathias whispered, his voice trembling with quiet misery. "Paranoid delusions. She thinks every woman in Seattle is sleeping with me. I tried to care for her at home. I hired private security just to make sure she wouldn't wander off or hurt herself. But last night... she nearly succeeded."

"He's lying," I whispered, clutching the sheets with bandaged hands. "He locked me inside. He forces me to watch—"

"Shh, darling," Mathias murmured. He stepped forward and gently brushed a damp lock of hair from my cheek. "It’s okay now. You don't have to carry the fear alone anymore. I’m going to get you real help."

Dr. Whitfield watched him, her eyes soft with sympathy. She looked at Mathias Carr—the wealthy tech billionaire, the devastated, loving husband trying to save his broken wife. Then she looked at me—bruised, wild-eyed, screaming about locked doors and video screens.

"She is a clear danger to herself," Dr. Whitfield said, signing the papers on her clipboard. "We'll admit her immediately to our private wing."

They loaded me into a transport van that evening.

At the facility, they took away my shoes, my sweater, and my wedding ring. They gave me a stiff paper gown and led me down a long hall where none of the doors had handles.

The first shot went into my hip within twenty minutes of arriving.

A thick, grey fog rolled over my brain.

Days melted into weeks. The nurses handed me paper cups with white pills every morning at eight and every night at nine. If I spoke, they raised the dosage. If I stayed silent, they wrote on their clipboards that I was making progress.

There were no clocks on the pale walls. No windows opened to the outside.

Slowly, my voice dried up. My hands stopped shaking. I sat in a plastic chair in the corner of the recreation room, staring at the grey linoleum floor for hours without blinking.

Mathias had always said he wanted to cure my emotions.

Sitting in the cold, drugged quiet, I knew he was finally getting what he wanted. I wasn't jealous anymore. I wasn't angry.

I was barely alive at all.

The days had no edges anymore.

Morning was a paper cup with two white pills. Evening was a paper cup with three blue ones. I sat by the window in the recreation room, my hands resting limp in my lap. I didn't speak. I didn't cry. My mind felt packed with damp cotton.

Mrs. Patterson noticed me on my very first morning.

She was seventy, with soft silver curls and hands that shook when she held a plastic spoon. The nurses said she used to teach fourth grade. While the other patients drifted past like shadows, Mrs. Patterson stopped beside my chair. She looked at my hollow eyes, then down at my bandaged wrists.

She didn't say, *What happened to you?* She didn't ask why I never moved.

Instead, she reached into the pocket of her knitted cardigan. Her trembling fingers pressed something warm and smooth into my cold palm.

A hard-boiled egg.

"You eat, sweetheart," she whispered. Her voice was raspy, dry as autumn leaves. "You keep your strength."

I looked down at the pale shell. My fingers wouldn't close around it at first. But Mrs. Patterson stood there, patient and still, until I brought it to my mouth. It tasted of salt and nothing else. But every single morning, right after the eight o'clock pill line, she found me.

She never asked for a thank you. She just slipped an egg into my fingers and stroked my hair once.

In that frozen place, it was the only warm thing left in the world.

***

Three weeks in, the click of high heels cut through the quiet hallway.

No one wore heels here. The nurses wore soft rubber soles that squeaked on the linoleum. I turned my head slowly toward the reinforced glass of my door.

Mathias stood there.

He wore a tailored charcoal coat over a black cashmere sweater. Beside him was a girl with honey-blonde hair, draped in a cream designer coat and clutching a crocodile-skin bag. Violeta Ruiz. I recognized her from the gossip blogs Mathias kept on his tablet.

Mathias had brought his newest lover to parade outside my cage.

He held her hand lightly, pointing through the window at me like I was an exhibit in a museum. He smiled. He looked relaxed, powerful, and clean.

He thought Violeta would feel victorious. But as the girl looked through the glass, her face twisted.

She didn't look happy. She stared at me—thin, pale, sunken into a grey hospital gown. And yet, I wore the title. I was the wife. The law still tied Mathias to me, not her.

Violeta’s painted lips tightened into an ugly snarl.

"I don't care that she’s sick!" Violeta’s voice shrieked through the heavy door, sharp and thin. "She's still here, Mathias! You still pay for her! You still carry her name!"

"Keep your voice down, Violeta," Mathias murmured, his smooth tone filtering through the crack of the jamb.

"No!" She stomped her pointed heel against the tile, crossing her arms. "You brought me here to show off? Prove she doesn't matter. Prove it right now! Show me she's just garbage to you, or I'm taking the car and leaving!"

Mathias didn't argue. He never argued when a transaction was on the line.

He glanced back at the window. His dark eyes caught mine, cold as winter water.

He let go of Violeta’s hand, stepped forward, and pushed my door open.

***

The latch clicked shut behind him.

Mathias didn't speak. He didn't greet me. His handsome face was completely blank. He walked to the edge of my narrow bed and reached for his belt buckle.

Panic pierced the fog in my brain. My heart slammed against my ribs. "Mathias... no. Don't."

He didn't hesitate. He grabbed my wrists, pinning them above my head with one broad hand. The paper gown tore like dry leaves under his grip. His weight came down on my chest, crushing the air straight out of my lungs.

"Stop," I gasped, thrashing beneath him. "Please, Mathias, stop!"

He didn't look at my face. He stared past my ear, his breath hot and fast against my neck. It wasn't passion. It was a chore. A chore to quiet a spoiled girl waiting in the hall.

Pain tore through my lower abdomen—a sharp, white-hot rip that made my vision black out.

When he finally pulled away, adjusting his slacks, I was curled on my side.

A terrible wet heat gushed between my thighs.

Red soaked through the thin white sheets, pooling onto the plastic mattress underneath. A scream caught in my throat, but only a wet rattle came out.

The emergency monitors on the wall began to shriek.

Doctors and nurses flooded the room. Someone shoved Mathias back toward the door. Rubber gloves snapped. Hands pressed down hard on my stomach, trying to stem the flood, but the pain kept drilling deeper, tearing me apart from the inside.

"She’s hemorrhaging!" a doctor yelled. "Get three units of O-neg! Move!"

Through the blur of bright ceiling lights, I saw Mathias standing by the door frame. He smoothed the lapels of his coat. His expression remained completely flat.

Ten minutes later, the bleeding slowed.

The doctor stripped off his bloody gloves, his face pale and grim. He looked down at me, his voice flat with clinical finality.

"You were nearly six weeks pregnant, Mrs. Carr," the doctor said quietly. "The trauma caused a complete uterine rupture. We stopped the bleed, but the scarring is severe. You will never be able to carry a child again."

The words hit my chest like heavy stones. *A baby.* A baby I hadn't even known was there. Gone.

Mathias stood by the wall.

He didn't gasp. He didn't flinch. A brief, controlled silence hung over him as he checked his platinum wristwatch.

Then he looked at me one last time. There was no grief in his eyes. There was only a mild annoyance, the look of an executive who had just seen a slight drop in quarterly profits.

He turned on his heel and walked out of the room.

Through the glass, I watched him head down the corridor. He pulled his phone from his pocket, smiling softly as he spoke into the receiver.

"I'm coming down, baby," he murmured, his voice drifting back through the open door. "Get your coat ready. We're going to Nordstrom."