Chapter 1
Maybe he saw the despair on my face, because Dominic sighed and stroked my hair, almost tender. "Remember trying on your wedding dress last month? I took her virginity in the fitting room right next door. She was so scared you'd hear that she had to smother it into these little whimpers—Aria, you could never give me that kind of thrill, and you know it."
Everything in me went cold.
That day, I'd run out of the fitting room in my custom gown and looked everywhere for him, and when I finally called, his voice had come out strained and hoarse as he told me an emergency board meeting had come up. Like a fool, I'd worried about him and told him not to work too hard, while the whole time he'd been on the other side of that wall, losing himself in another woman.
Dominic gently wiped away my tears. "I didn't want to miss a second of you in that dress, but that little tease wouldn't let me go, and I couldn't get out of bed all day."
I stared blankly at the ceiling, and even breathing felt like swallowing broken glass.
"I'm sorry, Aria. If you insist on a divorce, I'll leave you the Grand Avenue apartment as compensation." He kissed my fingertips. "But if you can put up with her, I promise everything I own will be yours—my heart included."
This was supposed to have been the happiest day of my life, the day I married the man who once swore he'd make me happy forever.
"Why did you tell me? Why did you have to tell me today?" I screamed with everything I had.
Dominic looked at me with pitying affection. "Silly girl, it's because I care about you. I know I'm a bastard, but we're married now, so I figured I owed you the truth." He paused, then laughed. "And honestly, there was another reason—I couldn't wait to see your face when you found out. You look so pitiful it breaks my heart, and it makes me want to make it up to you. So stop making a scene, all right?"
I slapped him with everything I had, then grabbed whatever I could reach and hurled it at him. "Get out! Get the hell out!"
Dominic turned his face aside and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, and instead of looking angry, he just straightened his collar with practiced ease and walked to the door. "Take some time to cool off, Aria. I'm going to spend her birthday with her."
The door clicked shut, and a suffocating silence swallowed the room.
I curled up in the corner of the bed and tore at my hair, and when I closed my eyes, I was back eight years ago, in a dark, damp basement in Riverside, where Dominic had shielded me with his thin body and taken the blow from my drunk father's metal rod. His back was torn and bloody, and he still smiled at me. "Don't be scared, Aria. No one's ever going to hurt you again."
Back then we slept under bridges and collected scrap to survive, and at our lowest we both got sick and couldn't even afford medicine for a fever, so all we could do was hold each other and share what little warmth we had. With tears in his eyes, he'd sworn, "Aria, once I make money, I'll make you the happiest, most respected woman in the world."
Those memories were poison, and I kept drinking them anyway, desperate for anything that might numb the hell ahead.
