Chapter 10
Weeks had passed, but nothing in me moved. Not my fucking heart, not my hands, not even my appetite. I’d walk around the estate like a ghost in my own skin, nodding when someone spoke, grunting if they pushed, but otherwise silent. Detached. Soulless.
At night, when the whole place finally went quiet, I’d lock myself inside the study nobody uses anymore. Not even Elodie went near it. She hated the dust, hated the cold floor, and hated that Danica used to read there. That was the point.
I cleaned that room myself. Cleared the shelves. Tossed out the old ledgers and decoy books. I laid out a dark silk cloth over the table and started building something I didn’t even understand at first.
Her photos.
The one where she wore my leather jacket and smiled like she owned the world. The one on the beach, barefoot and sunlit, hair blowing wild in the wind. The one she took of herself when she was one month pregnant and glowing.
I placed her old hairbrush beside the frame.
And right there in the center… the ultrasound.
I didn’t even know she kept it. Not until I found the file inside her old folder behind a stack of unused stationary. Paper was folded behind it. At first I thought it was just appointment notes, but then I saw her handwriting.
unfolded it slowly, and the second I read the first line, my hands fucking shook.
‘I know you’re my fiancé, Harvick. You’re not Jeremiah, no matter how many times you lie to my face. I heard you and your mother. I heard everything. You chose Elodie over me. You didn’t even link. I feel sorry for the child I aborted. But I feel more sorry for myself–for believing you. For giving everything to someone who never planned to stay…”
The words blurred, but I didn’t blink.
sat down with the paper in my hand and a bottle in the other, and I drank until my stomach urned and my vision burned and the goddamn walls spun. I drank until the sun came up and I was still staring at her name like I could bring her back by sheer fucking will.
When I woke up on the floor the next day, Elodie was standing in the doorway.
!
At first, I didn’t react. I rubbed my face, blinked, and sat up slowly. My head was pounding like a war drum and the air felt thick with something wrong.
She stepped inside without permission. Her heels tapped the wood, her eyes darted across the makeshift shrine, and I saw it.
The fury. The disbelief. The jealousy.
“Elodie, don’t-”
She turned on me like a storm.
“You built a shrine,” she snapped, voice shrill and shaking. “You’re fucking obsessed with her. She’s dead, Harvick! She’s dead and I’m the one who’s here! I’m the one who stayed! I’m the one
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who held your hand while she sold your goddamn legacy to strangers!”
“Elodie-
“No, you don’t get to say my name sweetly and think I’ll shut up. I gave you everything. My time. My body. My tears. I let you ruin me, and you still want her?! Even after everything?! Even after she murdered your baby-”
“Don’t fucking talk about her like that.”
I didn’t raise my voice, but it came out like a knife.
She laughed. Bitter. Unhinged.
“You built her an altar, Harvick. You kept her picture. You kept her fucking brush. You’re pathetic.
And that’s when it happened.
I didn’t even remember crossing the room, but I was suddenly there–hands around her throat pushing her against the wall.
Her eyes went wide. My breath came out ragged.
I didn’t squeeze. I didn’t crush. But my grip was tight enough to make her feel what she forgot who the fuck I was.
She whimpered. Gasped. And I saw the flash of fear in her eyes.
I let go. Just like that. She slid down the wall, coughing, eyes wet, chest heaving.
“Elodie,” I said quietly, coldly, “I’m sorry.” She looked up at me like I’d slapped her. I didn’t wait fc her answer. “Just… get out,” I said.
She didn’t move. So I stepped closer. Voice low, sharp.
“Get the fuck out and let me have some peace!!!”
This time, she ran.
ELODIE’S POV
If only I didn’t love Harvick and his wealth… I would’ve left him already. Watching him spiral like a lunatic over a woman rotting in the ground is exhausting. He doesn’t eat. He barely speaks. He doesn’t fuck me. He just sits there like some dead king mourning a crown he lost to fire. It’s pathetic. It’s insulting. And it makes me want to scream.
But I don’t.
No. I play my role.
I bring him soup I didn’t cook, with a hand placed sweetly over his shoulder. I tuck a blanket around him when he falls asleep on the couch, muttering her name under his breath like a fucking widow. I pretend to cry softly when his mother checks on us, and I hold her hand with my most trembling voice and whisper, “I’m worried for him, Mother. He’s not okay.”
She always sighs and pats my cheek and says, “You’re such a good wife, Elodie. Thank you for staying by his side.”
And I smile back like a saint.
They all think I’m so gentle. So pure. So giving.
4:47 pm
They don’t see me when the lights go off and I sneak down the hall.
They don’t hear me when I open that cursed room. Danica’s old bedroom, the one she poisoned with her scent and her memories.
They don’t know that I’ve been throwing her things out one by one every night but tonight, I brought the maids.
All seven of them lined up like obedient little rats, and I told them in my softest, most fragile voice, “Please help me clean her room. It’s too painful for Harvick to see. We’ll keep it a surprise.”
They nodded like fools. I told them to start with the dresses. The black ones, the silks, the nightgowns she probably wore for him. I told them to toss her damn books too. The ones with her handwriting in the margins like she was some poetic little princess. Her lipsticks. Her tea cups. Even the brush she used when her hair still had shine.
I sprayed the sheets with my perfume and changed the pillows. I sat on her side of the bed and looked around the empty shell of what used to be hers.
Then I smirked. “She’s dead. And I’m still here.”
I leaned back on my hands and kicked one foot over the other, satisfied. “That makes me the
winner.”
I stood slowly and stared at the mirror, fixing my hair.
“Poor Danica,” I whispered to my reflection. “Died and rotten. Well… thank you, bitch.”
I smiled.
“You died just in time.”
