I came home carrying diamonds for my mistress and found my wife,

"Get off him, Damien," Maren commanded.

Her voice wasn't shaking. It was steady, lethal, and colder than the Atlantic wind whipping off the cove.

I slowly backed away from the man on the ground, keeping my body between him and the steps where Maren stood. Blood was running freely down my left cheek, dripping off my chin onto my soaked shirt. My ribs screamed with every breath I drew.

The man scrambled backward on his hands and knees, staring at the twin barrels of the shotgun.

"I'm leaving," the man choked out, his voice hoarse. "I'm gone."

"Tell whoever sent you," Maren said, her voice dropping into a register that made the hair on my arms stand up, "that the federal prosecutor in Chicago already holds the complete source code and the bank account records. If another stranger sets foot within ten miles of this cove, those files go public to the press and the SEC within five minutes. Run."

The man didn't wait. He scrambled to his feet, stumbled through the trees toward his car, and within seconds, the roar of an engine tore through the quiet night, tires spitting gravel as he fled toward the main road.

The cove went silent again, save for the crash of the waves and the sound of Noah weeping inside the house.

Maren didn't lower the gun.

She shifted her aim, the barrels pointing squarely at my chest.

The woman I had loved—the woman I had betrayed with cheap words and dirty hotel sheets—looked at me down the sights of a shotgun, and there was no recognition in her eyes. Only a terrifying, impenetrable wall of stone.

"You brought him here," she said, her voice barely a whisper against the wind.

The accusation felt worse than the iron to my skull. "No, Maren. I swear to you on my life. I found out Vance’s people were tracking you. I drove all night from Chicago. I came to stop him."

"You led them to us three months ago, Damien!" she cried out, the composure cracking for a single, agonizing second, revealing the bottomless well of fury and grief beneath. "You brought Cassie into our lives! You brought her to our home! You let her hold my son at the company picnic while you smiled at her across the lawn!"

I fell to my knees in the gravel.

My head was spinning from blood loss, my chest burning from cracked ribs, but the pain inside me was so vast it swallowed everything else.

"I know," I whispered, the tears mixing with the blood on my face. "I know what I did. I am a monster, Maren. I was vain, stupid, and blind. I destroyed everything you gave me."

Maren stared at me, the barrels of the gun trembling slightly.

Inside, Noah’s cries grew louder.

She took a slow, shuddering breath, lowered the shotgun, and uncocked the hammers with a dull click.

"He needs to be fed," she said, her voice shutting down again, locking the emotion away behind iron bars. "Come inside before you bleed to death on my porch. But if you take one step toward that nursery without my permission, Damien, I will finish what that man started."

She turned and walked into the cottage, leaving the door open.

I pulled myself up, leaning against the broken railing, and crossed the threshold into the warm light of the cottage.

The interior was simple, clean, and smelled of lavender and cedar. There were no expensive leather couches, no modern art, no grand chandeliers. But on the small table by the window lay Noah’s blankets, neatly folded. On the bookshelf sat the framed picture of Maren holding our son the day he was born—with my side of the photograph cleanly severed and removed.

Maren was sitting in an old rocking chair by the woodstove, Noah cradled against her chest, nursing quietly under a muslin blanket.

She didn't look up at me as I stood in the doorway, dripping blood onto the braided rug.

"There's a first-aid kit in the bathroom," she said coldly. "Clean yourself up. You look pathetic."

I walked into the small bathroom, gripping the sink as the room tilted. In the mirror, I saw the ghost of the man who had walked out of his mansion carrying diamonds four months ago. My face was pale, bruised, smeared with mud and gore.

I cleaned the wound on my temple with antiseptic, not caring about the sting. I taped a thick gauze pad over the gash, bound my cracked ribs with an elastic bandage from the kit, and washed the blood from my hands.

When I stepped back into the living room, Maren had put Noah into his portable crib. He was fast asleep, his tiny thumb tucked into his mouth.

I stopped ten feet away, staring at him. My whole world, breathing softly beneath a yellow blanket.

"He has an arrhythmia," I said quietly, the words trembling.

Maren was sitting at the wooden table, a mug of tea between her hands. She finally looked up at me, her eyes dark, rimmed with exhaustion.

"How do you know that?"

"Burke told me. The retired postmaster." I took a ragged breath. "I... I remember you asking me to go to the scan. In August. I lied to you. I told you I had a client dinner."

Maren let out a short, hollow laugh that cut deeper than a razor. "You don't have to confess your itinerary, Damien. I had the private investigator's log. I know you were at the vineyard with her while the cardiologist was telling me my son might need beta-blockers before his first birthday."

I dropped into the wooden chair opposite her, unable to hold myself up any longer.

"Why didn't you confront me, Maren? That day. Why didn't you scream at me? Why did you stay and cook dinner for me that night?"

Maren leaned forward, her gaze locking onto mine with an intensity that pinned me to the chair.

"Because if I screamed, I was just another angry wife," she whispered. "And angry wives lose custody battles to wealthy, powerful men with high-priced attorneys. If I broke, you would have used your money to take Noah from me. So I stopped being your wife, Damien. And I became Noah’s mother. I spent every day planning, calculating, and securing our future so that when the hammer fell, you wouldn't have a single piece of ground left to stand on."

She sat back, her face devoid of pity.