“You think you’re strong?” he asked softly. “You live in my house. Use my name. Spend my money.”
His money.
I almost laughed.
Instead, I lowered my eyes because men like Ethan confused silence with surrender. His mother, Evelyn Whitmore, had raised him that way. Evelyn believed wives existed to obey gracefully and suffer quietly.
Ethan stepped over me, changed into pajamas, and climbed into bed.
Within minutes, he was asleep.
I stayed on the floor until the room stopped spinning. Then I dragged myself into the bathroom and locked the door behind me.
A bruise darkened beneath my eye.
I touched it once.
Then I reached behind the loose tile beneath the sink and pulled out the small black phone Ethan didn’t know existed.
Three unread messages waited for me.
One from my lawyer.
One from my accountant.
One from the private investigator I’d hired six weeks earlier.
I opened the investigator’s message first.
Final evidence package complete.
