I don’t sleep.
Every time I close my eyes, I hear his voice in the hallway—*She was always a bargaining chip, from the start*—and see my name under the word ASSET on a contract I never signed.
By the time the sky outside my window turns from black to a tired blue, I’ve watched the same crack in the ceiling a hundred times and dissected every possible meaning behind one overheard sentence.
*That’s how he saw her. I won’t let him play that card now.*
Maybe he meant Marco.
It doesn’t matter.
He still said it.
He still put me in the same sentence as a chip on a table.
My chest feels bruised from the inside.
My phone starts buzzing just as the first smear of sunlight touches the sea.
It vibrates across the nightstand until it knocks over an empty glass.
I grab it before it falls.
Mu
