Chapter 2 - The Good Wife
Gabriel laughed again, though it sounded slightly uncomfortable. “You don’t see the point in telling your own wife that you can hear?”
Dominic exhaled, the sound of a man completely unbothered by his own monumental deception.
“If she thinks I can’t hear without the devices, she doesn’t expect conversation,” Dominic stated smoothly. “I get to come home, shut out the noise, and relax without having to listen to her talk about her day.”
Something deep inside my chest cracked. The sheer, suffocating cinematic realism of the betrayal paralyzed me in the hallway.
Then, Dominic continued.
“I married Emma because she’s the exact kind of woman a man in my position is supposed to marry. She’s calm. She’s discreet. She runs the estate flawlessly. She handles my mother’s endless medical appointments without complaining.”
A heavy, agonizing pause filled the study.
“She makes a good wife,” Dominic said.
Not the woman he loved. Just a good, quiet, manageable wife.
Then, Gabriel mentioned a name that made my blood turn to absolute ice. Vanessa Reed.
Dominic’s voice softened immediately. The cold, calculating tone vanished, replaced by a warm, intense reverence I hadn't heard in years.
“Vanessa’s different,” Dominic whispered softly. “She’s a songbird. She was never meant to be trapped in a quiet house playing the dutiful wife.”
I stood outside that heavy wooden door holding the hearing aids he hadn’t actually needed in three years. Every whispered goodnight. Every pathetic apology I made for dropping a plate or making too much noise. Every desperately lonely evening sitting in silence.
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He had heard all of it. He had simply chosen not to answer.
👉 I didn't burst into the room to scream, because I had a much more lethal plan to execute.
