Lucien stood motionless just beyond the door, the weight of it behind him pressing like stone against his spine.
Anana’s image clung to him not in temptation, not even pity, but in a way that crawled beneath his skin. Scarred. Exposed.
Fragile in the cruelest sense. Her pain wasn’t new to him. He’d witnessed agony, inflicted it even, but this was different.
This was personal.
“What kind of man does that to his wife?” he muttered under his breath, voice like gravel. “What kind of husband lets her break… and calls it love?”
His jaw tightened, his fist coiled into his hand. The hallway stretched before him silent, dim, indifferent, but the fury building in his chest was anything but.
Something in him had shifted.
For a heartbeat, he truly saw her—beyond the bruises, beyond the brokenn
