Mag-log inI stared at my face on the gossip site while my coffee went cold in my hand, the wedding photo someone had pulled from my mother's Facebook page pasted next to a stock image of Victor at a charity gala. He looked exactly like what he was—a man who had never been denied a single thing in his life—and I looked like what I had been that day: a bride who believed she could have it all without anyone getting hurt. The headline read FORBIDDEN ROMANCE AUTHOR CAUGHT BETWEEN FATHER AND SON, which was technically accurate but missed so much of the nuance that it might as well have been fiction.My phone rang while I was still staring at the screen. Linda. She had probably been trying to reach me since the story broke, and I had been ignoring her calls with the same dedication I had once used to ignore Victor's."You absolute legend," she said when I finally picked up, because Linda had never been one for gentle openings. "I didn't know you had it in you.""Hello to you too.""I'm serious. All t
Marcus’s POVThe video arrived on my phone at 3:47 in the afternoon while I was reviewing quarterly reports in my study, a task that had become rote and mindless enough to let my thoughts wander. Roland's updates had been coming in all week without anything alarming to report. Iris had gone to the grocery store exactly as she said she would, had met Maya for coffee at the time and place she mentioned, had attended a meeting at her publisher's office with no deviation from the itinerary she volunteered the night before. Every detail checked out, and some small part of me had begun to believe that maybe this could work, that maybe the surveillance and the tracking and the quiet verification of her every move were temporary measures that would eventually become unnecessary.The notification chimed and I opened it without urgency, expecting another routine confirmation of something she had already told me. What I saw instead made me set my phone down on the desk and stare at the wall fo
Iris's POVThe call from my publisher came on a Tuesday morning, three weeks after Marcus had opened the front door and given me a choice. Eleanor Vance herself was on the line, which was unusual. Eleanor didn't make personal calls to authors. She had assistants for that, layers of them, a whole bureaucracy designed to insulate her from direct contact with the people who wrote the books that kept her company afloat."Iris, I have an extraordinary opportunity for you," she said, her voice crackling with the enthusiasm of someone who thought she was delivering good news. "There's a potential collaborator who's been asking about you specifically. Very interested in the next book. Very interested in your process. I think a meeting could be extremely beneficial for your career.""What kind of collaborator?""A private investor with significant resources. He's been following your work closely and he has some ideas for expansion into other media. Film ri
Iris's POVThe first thing I did after Marcus went to bed that night was delete every message Victor had ever sent me. I sat on the bathroom floor with my phone in my hand and my back pressed against the cold tile, and I went through every thread, every text, every voicemail from every unknown number he had used to reach me. There were dozens of them, stretching back months, a digital record of an obsession that had consumed my life and destroyed my marriage and very nearly cost me everything I had left.My phone buzzed while I was deleting the last thread. A new message from a number I didn't recognize. "You've been silent for three days. Call me. Now."I deleted it without responding and blocked the number. Another message came through ten minutes later from a different number. "Iris, this isn't a game. Pick up your phone."I blocked that number too. Then another. Then another. He kept creating new accounts and new numbers and new ways to reach
Marcus's POVI watched her stand in the doorway with the afternoon sun framing her like something out of a dream I had once believed in, and I waited to see which way she would fall. The silence stretched between us, heavy with everything I had said and everything she hadn't yet decided, and I found myself studying her face the way I had studied the pages of her book, looking for clues, looking for truth, looking for something that would tell me whether the woman I married still existed inside the woman who had betrayed me.She didn't move toward the door. She didn't move toward me either. She just stood there with her hands trembling at her sides and her eyes fixed on some point between the threshold and the living room, and I realized she was waiting for me to take the choice back. She expected me to slam the door and lock the deadbolt and tell her the offer had expired. She expected cruelty because she had been living with cruelty for so long she had forgotten what mercy looked lik
Iris's POVHe left me alone with my confession for hours. I stayed on the couch because I didn't know where else to go, my legs drawn up beneath me and my eyes fixed on the study door that had clicked shut behind him with a finality that echoed through the empty rooms. The house was silent except for the occasional creak of the floorboards overhead and the distant hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen, and every minute that passed without him emerging felt like a small eternity. I had spilled every secret I had been carrying for months, every terrible choice and every weak excuse, and he had given me two words before walking away. The waiting was unbearable. Not knowing what he was thinking or what he planned to do, not knowing if he was calling a lawyer or packing my bags or simply sitting in that study with his head in his hands, was worse than any punishment he could have devised. I’ve spent two days trapped in this house with his silence, and thought that was the worst thing he
Iris’s POV The mall was way too loud for a Tuesday afternoon. Music blasted from three different stores at once, a baby was screaming somewhere near the food court, and a teenager walked past me yelling into her phone about someone named Derek who had apparently "liked her story but didn't text ba
Iris’s POV The alarm rang relentlessly like it had something personal against me. I groaned, reaching out blindly until my fingers found my phone and silenced it. For a second, I stayed there, staring at the ceiling, trying to remember why I had willingly chosen to be awake at this hour. Then
Iris’s POV Marcus did not rush the question. He moved through the kitchen with the same steady rhythm he always had, rinsing the last plate, setting it aside, drying his hands with a kind of quiet focus that would have looked ordinary to anyone else. To me, it felt like he was giving himself t
Iris’s POV For the first time in weeks, the house felt…strange. That strange quiet way that comes after a storm passes but the air still feels charged, like something might crack open again if you breathe too hard. Marcus moved around the living room, humming under his breath, flipping through







