CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 3
Ethan rushed me again.
Wild.
Angry.
Predictable.
I caught his wrist before the belt could come near me, pivoted my hips, swept his leg, and sent him down onto the carpet with a hard thud.
The air left his lungs in one stunned breath.
For one second, he looked less like a dangerous man and more like a spoiled child who had discovered the world could say no.
I stepped back immediately.
I had no interest in hurting him.
I wanted him away from me.
“Get out,” I said.
His face twisted with humiliation. “You hit me.”
“You attacked me.”
“I’ll tell everyone you went crazy.”
I glanced at the smoke detector above the dresser.
The tiny lens hidden inside it caught the warm lamp light.
My father had installed security in every property he owned after a tenant once threatened him during an eviction dispute. When he left me this house, he left the cameras too.
Ethan had called it paranoid.
Now it was evidence.
“That,” I said, “would make for a very interesting story.”
For the first time, real fear crossed his face.
Then his expression changed.
It became colder.
He grabbed his phone from the floor and called his mother.
“Mom,” he said, breathing hard. “She’s gone crazy.”
Margaret answered immediately.
“Then follow the plan,” she said. “Before she realizes why you married her.”
Everything inside me went still.
Ethan froze.
He had put the call on speaker by mistake.
I slowly reached for my own phone on the nightstand and pressed record.
Margaret’s voice dropped lower.
“Get her signature tomorrow. Once the properties are transferred into your name, no one will care what happens inside that marriage.”
My finger hovered over the save button.
May you like
Ethan turned toward me.
This time, he wasn’t smiling.
