chapter 13
Not all of it, I realized. Not the basement. Not my marriage bed turned weapon. But enough.
Enough to know the shape of disaster before it arrived.
I laughed once, breathless and unbelieving. “I thought I was losing my mind.”
“You might still be.”
“Comforting.”
“That wasn’t meant to comfort you.”
And somehow, that did.
We exchanged fragments after that. Not everything. Not the ugliest pieces. Just enough to prove the impossible. In his remembered timeline, he had watched Ethan destroy my family and then destroy parts of his own business trying to corner the city’s shipping routes after Rose’s death. He remembered Ethan becoming obsessive, reckless, easier to provoke each year. He remembered buying out one of Whitfield’s subsidiaries too late to keep it from collapse.
He did not remember why Ethan hated him so much.
I did.
Because three years after our marriage, in a hotel suite on the coast, Ethan had taken something meant to sharpen desire and lower caution before a negotiation dinner. He had meant it for me. A private cruelty. An aphrodisiac disguised as medicine, followed by humiliation when I reacted.
But the glasses had been switched.
Rose drank it instead.
And when panic hit, when her breath turned ragged and she started clawing at her own throat, it was Gideon who had come in from the adjoining suite after hearing the crash. Gideon who had carried her to the hospital. Gideon who had stayed when Ethan vanished for six straight hours because the scandal would have damaged a deal.
Afterward, Rose began contacting Gideon in secret.
At the time, I had thought she was seducing him for leverage.
Now I wondered whether she had been trying to survive Ethan.