“I feel… resentful,” I admitted, the word tasting like ash. “Toward our daughter. I never wanted her. And now I can’t even pretend. I can’t bring myself to play with her. To be near her. It’s like… everything in me pulls away.”
Jack’s face went pale, the confession landing with the gravity of a funeral bell.
His chin trembled, but he didn’t argue. Didn’t plead. Instead, he nodded—slow, solemn.
“I think you’re right,” he said, voice breaking at the edges. “It’s time we stopped pretending this is normal… or that you’re a mother who cares.”
The words hit harder than I expected. For the first time in what felt like years, we agreed.
And it made everything feel even colder.
“Tell Olivia her mom had something urgent to attend to,” I said, my voice as frigid as the snow falling outside.
I reached for my purse, brushing my fingers along the worn fabric of the sofa we once chose together in happier days.
“Where are you going?” Jack asked, his tone hollow, like the question was nothing more than habit. His face was stone, but his eyes dropped to the brown leather bag clutched in my hand.
“To Lee’s,” I replied, opening the clasp.
Inside, my fingers found the spine of my journal—its worn edges, its pages filled with things I’d never dared speak aloud. Just knowing it was there calmed the chaos inside me. I snapped the bag shut.
“I thought Lee was gone,” Jack said, almost to himself.
“He is,” I said coldly. “He’s always gone.”
I turned toward the door, but something made me pause. I glanced back at Jack, at the man I had once saved and tolerated.
“I just need some space,” I muttered. “From you.”
He said nothing.
But his silence said enough.
Unexpected guilt twisted in my chest. Our marriage was a mausoleum now—full of ghosts, echoes, and things too painful to name.
And I wondered, for a moment,was any of this worth it?
Chapter 41
Alina
My life had become a sick joke that served no one, least of all myself. I was exhausted by Balthazar’s endless pursuit. Exhausted by Zara’s and the Scholar’s suffocating threats, their words coiling like smoke around my mind, trying to choke the will out of me.
I needed help.
I needed space from Jack, the voices, all of it. So, I went to Lee’s.
I banged on his door, fists trembling, heart thundering in my chest like it was trying to escape. I half expected no one to answer, already reaching into my bag for my key?—
But then the door flew open.
I staggered back in shock, blinking up—not at Lee, but someone else entirely.
“Good,” the man said, voice smooth and cold. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
He loomed in the doorway like something conjured from a nightmare—inhumanly tall, with long, lean limbs that seemed to stretch beyond logic. His expression was feral, unsettling, and his steel-gray eyes glinted like a storm waiting to break. Just one look, and I felt exposed, as if every secret I’d ever buried had been yanked into the open.
“Who are you?” I asked, my voice barelyholding steady.
