The Scar He Gave Me

Untitled Episode

He thinks he won. That's what kills me. Not the cheating. Not the lies. The fact that Ethan Hayes actually believes he got away with it.

He walks around in his thousand-dollar suit—the one I helped him pick out from that Italian tailor on Rodeo, the one I stood behind while the pins pricked his shoulders. Drives the car I put the down payment on. Sleeps in the bed I spent an entire afternoon choosing, mattress firmness, thread count, the whole thing. And he actually believes he won.

He thinks I was the problem. Too cold. Too busy. Too stupid to see he was f*****g my own cousin in his office while I was downstairs negotiating his next merger.

He thinks I lost. He thinks I'm hiding somewhere—probably picturing me in some cheap motel, crying into two-dollar wine, begging God to bring him back. I can almost hear him thinking it: *Poor Chloe. She couldn't handle it. She ran away.*

And I let him think that.

I let every single person in that building believe I was the pathetic wife who couldn't fight back. The one who just disappeared. The cautionary tale they'd whisper about at office parties.

Because the truth is so much worse for him.

I didn't scream when he picked up that piece of broken glass. I didn't beg when he looked me in the eyes—*my eyes*, the ones that had looked at him with nothing but love for seven years—and dragged it across my face. I didn't make a sound when he locked me in that storage room, tape on my mouth, belt on my back, until the world went black and I thought, *This is it. This is where I die.*

Four days.

He didn't come home. Didn't check if I was alive. Didn't even wonder why my phone stopped ringing. He was too busy popping champagne with the woman who destroyed me, posting pictures as if nothing happened. His i********: feed: yacht, wine, her legs in the background. Not one thought for the wife bleeding in the dark.

And when he finally walked back to an empty house? Half the furniture is gone. My number is blocked. Our wedding photo cut in half—his side still hanging, my side in the trash. He still didn't get it. He still thinks I ran away because I had nothing.

He doesn't know about the phone call I made from that storage room. He doesn't know who answered. He doesn't know that while he was playing house with my cousin, I was quietly taking back everything he never deserved.

The company? Built on my father's name. The money? Came from my family. The power he thinks he has? It was never his. It was always mine. I just let him borrow it.

He thinks he won.

But he never even knew the game we were playing.

And by the time he figures it out?

I'll be long gone.

And he'll be nothing.