After They Ate Me Alive, I Fought Back

Chapter 8—The Real Problem

“Angry?” Nathan’s hand came up to cover mine against his chest. “Never.”

“I didn’t actually want compensation.” I pressed closer. “And I didn’t want to kick you out. But the first battle had to be won, or we’d never have any say in our own marriage.”

He turned in my arms, and I felt the tension in him ease. “I know. I was worried you’d get hurt. But you handled it beautifully.”

“I had to play the evil daughter-in-law,” I murmured. “For us.”

He smoothed a hand over my hair. “You worked hard.”

I pulled back, took the IOU he’d just signed, and tore it in half. Then I pulled out my phone and sent back the twenty thousand he’d transferred me—and transferred him a hundred thousand on top of it.

He stared at his screen. “What’s this for?”

“You send me your whole salary every month. You’ve got nothing in your pocket. Renting a place, furnishing it, raising Liam—that’s not cheap.” I gave him my softest look. “Give the rest to your mom. Whatever else, I won’t have the old woman and the baby going without.”

“My wife,” he said, and squeezed my chin between his fingers, “is the kindest woman alive.”

And my husband, I thought, is a man who pockets money from the wife he’s planning to bury. Keep it. I want to see exactly how much rope you’ll take.

“Pack light,” I said. “Once your mom’s settled, you come straight back. I won’t sleep a wink without you.”

He kissed my forehead and left, suitcase in hand, a lonely, pitiful figure receding down the hall.

I let myself feel it for exactly one second. The old reflex—the urge to call him back, to soften, to forgive. Then I remembered what he was, and the pity curdled into something colder.

I sat on the edge of the bed and waited. Because I knew this man. I knew he’d come back to test me.

Sure enough—less than two minutes later—the front door beeped, and Nathan’s footsteps crossed the apartment in a rush, straight to me.

I’d already rubbed my eyes raw. I looked up at him, red-eyed, and before I could say a word he’d pulled me into his arms.

“Baby?” I said, all tenderness. “What’s wrong?”

“I was in the elevator,” he said into my hair, “and I just felt this emptiness. Like if I walked out that door, I’d lose you by inches.”

Of course you did. You’re not afraid of losing me. You’re afraid of losing the one thing you’ve been killing me for.

“I feel it too,” I said, and let my voice tremble. “But none of this is real. We can see each other whenever we want. If you fall apart every time you leave, I’ll fall apart too. We’re supposed to be cheering each other on, remember?”

He exhaled, nodded. “You’re right. My family started this mess. I should be the one holding you up, not dumping my fear on you.”

“Go,” I said. “Don’t keep your mom and Liam waiting.”

He straightened his coat. “Oh—the housekeeping service I called. Their worker got into a car accident on the way over. They’re sending someone else.”

There was a time—as recently as yesterday—when I’d have believed that without a second thought.

Now I didn’t believe a single word out of his mouth.

There was no housekeeping service. There was no car accident. He’d never called anyone. He’d just wanted me to sit in that wrecked living room all night, staring at the damage, alone, and remember how small I was. Because in his version of this story, I had no one.

He was right about that part.

But a woman with no one is also a woman with nothing left to lose. And there’s nothing more dangerous than that.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, easy. “I’ll call someone myself.”

“I should’ve stayed to help you clean up.”

“Between us, there’s no such thing as should.”

He nodded, and at the door, he stopped. “Baby—remember your supplements.”

I tilted my head. “I’m doing IVF. Do I still need them?”

“They’re already paid for.” He shrugged, gentle. “Take them a while longer. If you conceive naturally, you avoid the IVF ordeal. If you don’t want to brew them yourself, I can come at night, brew them, leave them in the fridge.”

“I’ll keep taking them.” I kept my voice light. “And I can brew my own.”

“If it gets to be too much,” he said, “I’ll hire you a housekeeper. Or a live-in nurse.”

There it is. Whoever he sent would be a pair of eyes on me, or a pair of hands on my food. Maybe both.

“No.” I shook my head, smiling. “You know I don’t like strangers in the house.”

“Then promise me you’ll eat, and sleep, and take your medicine.”

“I will.” I stood and walked him to the door, nudging him out. “I’m almost thirty. It’s good for me to manage on my own. I can’t lean on you for everything forever—especially once I’m a mother.”

He smiled at that, slow and warm. “You’ll always be eighteen to me. I hope you give me a daughter. I’d spend my whole life taking care of the two of you.”

The man had a gift for saying the exact thing that would have once made me melt.

I’d built an immunity. “Then you can spoil us rotten.”

I watched him step into the elevator. The doors closed. I held my smile until the floor indicator lit up for the lobby.

Then I dropped it.

I reset the front-door code. Deleted Nathan’s fingerprint. Deleted Doris’s.

Then I made two calls: a housekeeping service, and a professional sweep company.

The sweep company’s technician showed up wearing a cleaner’s uniform—an extra two hundred dollars well spent—and went over every inch of the apartment while I supervised. Clocks. Lamps. The smoke detectors. The vents. The bookshelves. Everywhere a camera could hide.

The verdict: clean. No surveillance devices anywhere.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.

Then I took out the cameras I’d bought—the pinhole ones, the voice recorders—and had them installed everywhere except the bathrooms and the master bedroom. Every common area, covered. Every angle, wired for sound.

When it was done, and the cleaners had hauled away the last of the debris, the apartment looked different. Emptier. Quieter.

A lot like me.

I sat on the couch for a while, but I didn’t let myself sink. I had a suspect to examine, and it was sitting in the kitchen cabinet: the herbal supplements. Five packs left, a little under a pound each, enough for two weeks.

I grabbed one and drove to a medical lab.

An hour later, the lab called. Every ingredient was benign—gynecological herbs, blood tonics. Nothing toxic. Several of them, in fact, promoted ovulation.

I couldn’t believe it. I’d heard Doris say the medicine was the point. That this was the “most important stretch.”

“The combination,” I pressed. “Could the herbs interact? Side effects?”

“I trained in this field,” the technician said. “These are mild, and whoever prescribed them knew what they were doing. They’re good for the body—low impact on the liver and kidneys. A few of them actively help with conception.”

None of it matched what I’d heard through that open door.

Which meant one of two things: either Nathan had suspected me and swapped the medicine, or the real poison wasn’t in the herbs at all.

Either way, I was done drinking it.

But I couldn’t stop without tipping him off. So I had a doctor prescribe me a fresh, pregnancy-safe supplement—brewed, sealed, and bagged at a proper pharmacy—and I drove home and boxed up the rest of the old herbs to have tested later, all of them.

The lab kept saying the herbs were fine. I didn’t believe it. I’d spent months tired, weak, sleeping through afternoons I couldn’t account for.

And if the herbs weren’t the problem, then I had a worse question to answer: what else in this house was slowly killing me?

Because for five years, unless he was traveling or working late, Nathan had cooked every single meal I ate.

I stood in the kitchen, the fear crawling up the back of my neck like cold fingers, until my stomach growled loud enough to snap me out of it.

I hadn’t eaten. I hadn’t drunk a drop of water. I looked at the clock and realized an entire day had gone by without me noticing.

For the baby, then. I ordered food.

And that’s when my phone rang.

Lola.