Chapter 7

He couldn’t quite figure out when all that hatred started brewing inside him— Maybe it was just that twisted satisfaction, watching Emma’s always-calm face finally crack under his cruel dominance, revealing that helpless fear she tried so hard to hide. "Ethan, let me go! What’s the point of this? Can’t we just talk like normal people for once?" Emma struggled, using up every ounce of her frail strength to push him away. Her body was still battered from yesterday. She honestly couldn’t take another round of this kind of torment. The sharp pain mixed with humiliation swept through her—it hurt too much to even cry. From resisting to eventually lying there, motionless, she slowly gave up. His aggression didn’t slow in the slightest, but Emma’s mind wandered somewhere far off— She started thinking about the old days— How she once insisted on marrying him, loving him with everything she had. Wasn’t it all just one big, pathetic joke now? Loving someone who never loved you… It’s like wearing shoes that don’t fit—the more you endure, the more they cut. She had no clue how many times he’d used her like this. But once he got off and walked away, everything below her waist felt numb and dead. Ethan lit a cigarette, clearly irritated. He glanced at her—laying there so limp she couldn’t even twitch—but those wide, vacant eyes were still staring straight at him, filled to the brim with loathing. It annoyed the hell out of him. He tossed a crumpled tissue her way. "What the hell are you thinking about now? Didn’t get enough, is that it?" Emma’s throat trembled, and she slowly turned her face toward him. "I was just wondering… what kind of man were you when Sophie used to love you?" Ethan froze. "!!!" "You knew Sophie?!" He yanked her up by the collar, eyes blazing. "How the hell do you know about her?! Answer me!" "I was your wife for three years. Digging into your past doesn’t exactly take Sherlock Holmes." His grip tightened until she couldn’t breathe. "You were digging into me? Emma, wow—figures." Memories hit him like a tidal wave, every piece falling into place, laced with irony so thick it made him sick. "No wonder you wore that white dress the first time we met. No wonder you gifted me that book, The Mountains Echoed by Hussein. No wonder you knew what team I root for and whose philosophy I admire!""Emma, do you really think pretending to be Sophie would make me love you like I loved her? You seriously think copying her scent, her style, her everything—like some pathetic knockoff—is going to change how I see you? The things that belonged to us… you have no right to even touch them! Even if I like girls like Sophie, it’d be someone like Clara—pure, genuine—not someone like you! You got that?!" Ethan clenched her throat with one hand and shoved her against the icy wall, completely merciless, like he wanted to crush her down to her bones. "Cough, Ethan… have you ever thought… if Sophie could see what you've become, she’d be heartbroken…” Of course Emma got it. From the second she saw Clara, with those eyes almost identical to Sophie’s, she knew why Ethan suddenly cared. Love was just that unreasonable, and when paired with bias, it could cut deeper than a knife. "Shut up!" Ethan barked, yanking her forward and slamming her back against the wall again. Pain pulsed in her chest—sharp and suffocating. Emma curled in on herself, struggling to breathe. She slid down the wall, coughing violently. Ethan paced hard across the floor, then stalked back over, grabbed her again, and forced her over the contract. "Sign it!" "I won’t..." "Hold the pen!" He jammed the pen into her hand, his fingers locking around hers in a painful grip—like every nerve in her hand was being crushed. The pen scraped erratically across the pristine paper, scribbling out barely legible lines— Just as Ethan thought she was giving in, Emma suddenly coughed up a mouthful of blood, soaking the paper in a wave of red. Startled, Ethan instinctively turned sideways and brushed away the warm splatter on his cheek. In that split second, Emma jerked free and staggered into the bathroom. Click. She locked the door behind her, then dropped to her knees by the toilet, retching again and again. The blood… deep red, spreading like doom she couldn’t run from. Her ears seemed to echo with that doctor’s warning— Last winter’s pneumonia had already been a bad sign. If symptoms like coughing up blood appeared…it likely meant heart valve failure from long-term deterioration. Five years. Emma clutched her chest and slowly slid down to the floor... This was probably it. Her limit. She didn’t even know how much longer she could stay by his side.