Chapter 4

Harper’s POV

I lifted both of my gauze-wrapped hands, holding them up between us.

The bandages were soaked through with dark red blood, stain upon stain.

"Ethan, my hands are shredded. Are you blind?"

My voice was completely hoarse.

Ethan looked out the window, avoiding my hands.

"This has to be done tonight."

"If you won't do it yourself, I'll have the guards hold you down and make you do it."

He stood up, his tone cold and rigid.

"Chloe hasn't kept food down all day. Ten pounds of shrimp meat. On the counter before dawn."

My eyes burned, but no tears fell.

"And if I'd rather die than peel them? Are you going to smash another porcelain set and force me onto my knees to pick it up?"

Ethan closed his eyes, inhaling deeply.

"Harper, just bear it for a little bit."

"Once Chloe recovers, once I've repaid the life I owe her, we can go back to how we were."

He stepped to the door, opened it, and threw one last sentence over his shoulder.

"The kitchen has the shrimp ready. Walk down there yourself."

The door slammed shut.

I sat on a wooden stool in the cold kitchen all night long.

Ten pounds of cooked shrimp piled into a massive stainless steel bowl like a mountain.

I used my bandaged fingers to strip the shells.

My fingernails tore from the beds. Sharp shell spikes jabbed into raw, bleeding flesh. Blood seeped into the pale shrimp meat.

I had to pause, using a toothpick to dig out the stained portions, toss them in the trash, and move on to the next.

By dawn, the bowl was finally filled with clean meat.

From the second-floor master bedroom, Chloe's voice drifted down.

"Ethan, this shrimp is delicious."

Ethan's voice was gentle: "If you like it, eat more. From now on, I'll have her peel it for you every day."

I sat on the freezing tile floor of the kitchen. All ten of my fingers were swollen like sausages, incapable of even bending.

Listening to their laughter upstairs, the sheer absurdity of it struck me as laughable.

Years ago, if I got a paper cut while cooking, Ethan would hold my finger and fuss over it for an hour.

Now, he could watch my hands bleed without flinching, demanding ten pounds of shrimp for another woman.

When a man’s heart changes, there really is no rhyme or reason to it.

The next morning, Ethan took Chloe to a luxury hot spring resort outside the city.

I saw it on Chloe's Instagram.

A photo of their fingers intertwined against a backdrop of pristine white snow.

The caption read: "Year seven, and I still love you best."

I stared at the screen for a full minute, feeling nothing at all.

I slipped off the wedding band from my ring finger, opened the desk drawer, and threw it into the deepest compartment.

Then I walked out the back door into the garden.

In the corner of the yard sat a small vegetable patch that Ethan had personally cleared for me years ago.

Back then, when he heard my dad loved growing tomatoes and herbs, he hired a landscaper the next morning to tear up the sod, telling me I could plant whatever made me happy.

A lot of green things used to grow there.

Now it was barren, choked with weeds.

I fetched a shovel from the shed, walked into the plot, and dug down, heave by heave.

I turned the soil completely over, severing the roots and weeds down to the marrow.

Then I hauled over two heavy bags of rock salt, sliced them open, and scattered thick handfuls across every inch of dirt.

By the time Ethan slammed the garden gate open and rushed in, the plot was covered in a grim, snowy white crust.

The back of his left hand was wrapped in gauze. I knew he had scraped it the night before helping Chloe by the pool.

"Harper, are you insane? What are you doing?"

I plunged the shovel deep into the mud and dusted the soil from my hands.

"The salt scorched the earth. Nothing will ever grow here again."

Ethan stared at the bleached, salted dirt. His lips moved, but not a single sound came out.