The frame creaked under my weight, a tired, familiar sound—one I suddenly realized she must have heard often, alone, listening to the house settle around her while I slept elsewhere.
My hand hovered over the cover.
Then I opened it.
The first page held no words.
Only a single tear stain.
Dark. Irregular. Dried stiff into the paper. It had soaked through the page, warped the fibers, leaving a pale halo like a bruise that never healed.
I stared at it, unmoving.
That tear had fallen here. In this room. In this house.
Under my roof.
While I had been convinced she was my enemy.
A sound tore out of my chest—low, ugly, animal. Half sob, half howl. I clapped a hand over my mouth, but it didn’t help.
The grief forced its way out anyway, bending me forward until my shoulders shook.
I hadn’t read a single word.
And already, I knew this diary would destroy whatever illusions I had left.
I turned the page.
Her handwriting was small, neat, carefully controlled—like someone afraid of taking up too much space.
The tear stain on that first blank page was only the beginning—a mute warning of the devastation bound within those covers.
My fingers hovered above the paper, trembling as if the diary itself breathed, as if it carried a pulse that matched the frantic beat of my heart.
The leather creaked softly beneath my grip, worn thin at the edges from being opened and closed in secret, night after night.
The date glared up at me.
January 12, 2026.
The day after our wedding.
The day after I had bound her to me in name and law and then abandoned her in every way that mattered.
I could see it with cruel clarity: Elena sitting alone on the edge of that enormous bed I had never shared with her, the satin sheets untouched, the chandelier casting too much light on too much space. A pen clutched too tightly in her fingers, knuckles white. Tears blurring her vision before she even knew what she wanted to say.
How many times had she opened this diary only to cry instead of write? How many pages bore nothing but the ghost of her grief?
I swallowed hard.
The paper buckled in places, rippled where tears had soaked through and dried, leaving permanent scars.
Another day in this gilded cage,she had written.
The house is so big, so empty. I wander the halls like a ghost, listening to the echo of my own footsteps. No one speaks to me unless it’s to give an order.
My jaw clenched.
