A breakup buys an investigation.” I lay there in the dark and felt the shape of it settle over me.
He had not needed to hurt me in any way the world could see.
He had needed something quieter and, in its way, worse: he had needed me diminished, sidelined, recast as fragile — a woman too unwell to marry, too delicate to question, too medicated by her own stress to be believed if she ever did.
And he had begun, three days earlier, by checking me into this very clinic, so that there would be a record.
Chapter 3 — Kept, Not Loved
“At least treat her decently,” Gabriel said.
“Get her real doctors.
Help her actually recover.”
“There’s no need,” Christian said, and I have never heard warmth and cruelty sit so close together in one voice.
“If she’s seen as fragile — if the story is that my poor Genevieve had a breakdown before the wedding — that’s better for me, not worse.
I’ll take care of her forever.
A private home.
