The fluorescent-lit corridor swallowed his words whole.
They marched me back through the maze of concrete and metal, past doors that clanged shut behind us like punctuation marks on a sentence already written. The holding cell door opened. Then slammed closed.
The sound echoed in my bones.
I stood in the center of the small concrete box.
And then the truth hit me in waves.
That’s why he’d kept me at arm’s length these past weeks.
Why his touch had vanished, his eyes colder, his patience thinner.
That’s why he’d filled Yannis’s days with tutors and cameras and rigid schedules—so the boy wouldn’t miss me when I was gone. So my absence would feel... manageable.
That’s why he’d let me run to the club every night, let me believe I had a sliver of freedom.
He hadn’t loosened his grip.
He’d been preparing to remove me.
He’d been building a cage, not a marriage.
And now he’d locked me inside the final one.
If I couldn’t convince a judge tomorrow—a judge who would almost certainly recognize the name Ruslan Baranov—that I was innocent...
I would be sentenced as a murderer.
The thought was so enormous it stole my breath.
My knees buckled, and I slid down the wall, back scraping against the cold concrete until I hit the floor.
I drew my knees up, resting my forehead against them, the cuffs digging painfully into my skin.
The sobs came whether I wanted them to or not. Quiet at first. Then violent. Wrenching. Animal.
My chest hurt so badly I wondered, dimly, if it was possible to die from heartbreak alone.
This couldn’t be real.
This couldn’t be happening.
But it was.
Ruslan—my husband.
The man who’d once stared into my eyes at an altar and promised to protect me.
He had chosen vengeance over truth.
Power over mercy.
And tomorrow I would stand in a courtroom, alone, with nothing but my word against the most powerful man I had ever known.
I closed my eyes, tears soaking into the fabric at my knees, my body trembling with exhaustion and grief.
Hope was a fragile, ridiculous thing.
