LOVING YOU WAS HIS REVENGE

CHAPTER 2: The Mask Falls

I did not sleep that night.

I sat on the edge of our bed, which was really his bed, in a house that was really his house, wearing a ring that was really just a receipt for a debt paid in full. The pregnancy test sat on the nightstand beside me. Two pink lines that meant the world to me twelve hours ago now felt like a chain.

Victor did not come to the bedroom. He stayed in his study all night. I heard him on the phone at 2 AM, speaking low and fast to someone.

At dawn, I packed a small bag. Three changes of clothes, my passport, my wallet, and the brown envelope with the contract. Everything else in this house belonged to him. The designer dresses, the jewelry, the imported shoes. He paid for all of it. They were part of the transaction.

I was at the front door when his voice stopped me.

"Where are you going?"

I turned. He stood at the top of the stairs, still in last night's shirt, sleeves rolled up. Dark circles under his eyes told me he had not slept either.

"Away from you," I said.

He came down the stairs slowly. "It is six in the morning, Evelyn."

"I am aware of the time."

"You have nowhere to go."

That was true, and we both knew it. My father was dead. My mother died when I was twelve. My younger brother Innocent was in boarding school, paid for with money I now understood came from this contract. I had dropped out of university in my third year to marry Victor. I had no degree, no savings of my own, and no family to run to.

"I will figure it out," I said.

"Sit down. Let us talk about this like adults."

"Adults." I laughed, but there was no humor in it. "You lied to me for three years and called yourself an adult."

"I never lied to you."

"You never told me the truth. That is the same thing."

He reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped. "I took care of you. I gave you comfort, security, everything your father could not provide. You lived well, Evelyn."

"I lived well." I dropped my bag on the floor. "Like a pet. Like an expensive bird in a cage."

"That is dramatic."

"Tell me what my father did to your family."

His face closed off. "That is not your concern."

"He was my father. His name is on that contract. I have a right to know."

Victor's phone buzzed in his pocket. He glanced at it, then back at me. "I have a meeting."

"Victor."

"We will discuss this later."

"No. We will discuss this now. You owe me that much."

He slid his phone back into his pocket and crossed his arms. "Your father was responsible for the disappearance of my sister. Grace was nine years old when she vanished from a property your father managed. She was never found. My mother died of grief three years later. Your father walked free because there was not enough evidence to charge him. So yes, Evelyn. There was a debt. And you were the payment."

Every word landed like a stone in my chest. I knew Victor had a younger sister who went missing years ago. He told me about it once, early in our marriage, with a sadness in his voice that made me hold him tighter. He said her name was Grace. He said she would have been twenty-four this year.

He never told me my father had anything to do with it.

"That is not possible," I said. "My father was a good man. He would never hurt a child."

"Good men do not sell their daughters to settle debts."

I had no answer for that.

The doorbell rang, cutting through the thick silence between us. Victor moved past me and opened it. A woman stood on the front step, tall and polished in a cream coat, her dark hair falling over one shoulder. Tonia.

She smiled when she saw Victor, then noticed me standing behind him with a bag at my feet. Her smile did not fade; it only grew wider.

"Oh," she said. "Am I interrupting something?"

"No," Victor said. "Evelyn was just leaving."

Tonia stepped inside like she owned the place. Her perfume filled the hallway, sweet and heavy. She looked at my bag, then at me, and tilted her head.

"Leaving so early? Did something happen?"

I picked up my bag. "Ask your friend."

"Evelyn." Victor's voice was low, a warning.

"Goodbye, Victor."

I walked out the front door into the cold morning air. London was grey and damp, the sky hanging low over the rooftops. I had forty-three pounds in my wallet, a phone with seventeen percent battery, and a baby growing inside me that belonged to a man who saw me as nothing but a punishment for my father's sins.

My phone buzzed. A message from Mirabel, my friend from the neighborhood. "Girl, are you okay? I saw Victor's car still at home this morning. Is everything alright"

I typed back: "Can I stay with you for a few days?"

Her reply came fast: "Of course. Come now. I will put the kettle on."

I walked to the bus stop, my small bag over my shoulder, and did not look back at the house that had been my prison for three years. But as the bus pulled away, my phone buzzed again. This time it was from a number I did not recognize.

The message read: "Your father did not jump. I can prove it. Meet me at St. Paul's at noon…come alone.”