Silence stretched between us.
Heavy. Intentional.
Then Ruslan drew in a slow breath.
And what he said next was worse than any threat.
“Give me two years to win you back, Elena.”
The words hung in the air like a declaration.
My stomach dropped.
For a moment I just stared at him — stunned not by affection but by audacity.
Two years.
He wanted time.
Time to manipulate. Time to blur the lines between hatred and attachment.
He believed time could erase what he had done.
I straightened slowly.
“You think time fixes prison?” I snapped. “Am I some object? A trophy you can reclaim whenever it suits you?”
Years of buried anger surged through me, breaking free in my voice.
“You and I were never romance, Ruslan — not the way you keep rewriting it in your head. You’re not misunderstood. You’re not redeemed. You’re irredeemable. Don’t you understand that?”
I stepped closer.
“You sent an innocent woman to prison. You let me starve behind bars. I was beaten. Violated. Humiliated. I lost our child — a baby who never even got the chance to breathe.”
My voice cracked for the first time.
“The trauma doesn’t fade. It doesn’t disappear because you regret it now. It lives in my bones. In my nightmares. In the way I still flinch at sudden noise.”
I pointed at him.
“And you stand there talking about ‘winning me back’ like this is some twisted competition? Like I’m something you can earn through persistence?”
A bitter laugh escaped me.
“That’s not love. It’s possession.”
My breathing was heavy now, adrenaline surging.
“Sign the divorce papers today,” I demanded. “Or I walk out of this mansion tomorrow and you’ll never see me again.”
Silence followed.
Thick. Charged.
He watched me carefully — not reacting to my rage, not flinching at my accusations.
“You want to see your sister,” he said slowly, “then tear up the divorce papers you brought.”
