He cupped my jaw, his thumb sweeping across my cheek in a gesture too tender, too deceptive, and he murmured. “Didn’t you promise to marry me at twenty-five, sweetheart?
Or did you truly think I’d let you forget?”
There was no affection in his voice.
Only possession.
Only the terrifying certainty of a man who had already decided that my life, my choices, my future—all belonged to him.
He pressed the diamond ring into my shaking palm.
Not as a symbol.
Not as a promise.
But as a command.
The weight of it felt wrong, foreign, cold—a shackle masquerading as love.
I felt it cut into my skin, sharp edges biting, marking me before it even touched my finger.
For a moment—one impossible, foolish moment—I tried to search his face for the boy I once knew.
The one who wrote me poems.
The one who kissed me under the old oak tree.
The one who promised the world without having anything to give.
But he was gone.
Buried.
Replaced by a monster shaped by power and cruelty—and by a world that rewarded both.
That very night, as his wife, I waited for him. Still clinging to hope like an idiot.
Still praying there was something left of the boy I remembered.
He came home late.
Too late.
It was impossible to miss the way he slid his ring back onto his finger—smoothly, carelessly, like it had been taken off for convenience rather than sentiment.
I could smell another woman’s perfume on him.
Sweet. Floral. Expensive. Foreign to me.
My voice shook when I asked, “Who is she?”
I wanted him to lie.
God, I wanted him to lie.
To soften the blow, to pretend, to give me anything that resembled mercy.
Instead, he delivered the words like bullets:
