Cut From the Same Cruelty[Full Story Available On Amazon]

Prologue

The rain started the same night Elena Voss stopped believing in forever.

She wasn't supposed to be home. That was the whole point ,Damian's assistant had told her the merger dinner would run until midnight, maybe later, and Elena had planned to surprise him with the ultrasound photo tucked in her purse. Twelve weeks. She'd wanted to see his face when she told him.

Instead she stood in the doorway of their bedroom, keys still in her hand, listening to a laugh that wasn't hers coming from behind a door that had never once been locked against her.

She didn't open it right away. She stood there long enough to memorize the sound ,the low murmur of her husband's voice, warm in a way it hadn't been warm with her in months. Long enough to feel something inside her go very, very quiet.

When she finally pushed the door open, Damian didn't even have the decency to look afraid. He looked *inconvenienced*. Like she was an appointment he'd forgotten to cancel.

"Elena—"

"Don't." Her voice came out steadier than she expected. Steadier than she felt. "Don't say my name like you still have the right to."

The woman in the sheets ,young, polished, unmistakably one of the junior associates from Cross Industries ,had the sense to look ashamed. Damian didn't.

Elena looked at him for a long moment. Really looked. Five years of birthdays remembered late, anniversaries spent on speakerphone, a miscarriage she'd bled through alone in a hospital room while he was "in a meeting" — she watched all of it rearrange itself behind her eyes into something she finally understood.

She hadn't married a good man who made one mistake.

She'd married this. All along.

"I'm going to go," she said quietly, and something about her calm made Damian's face falter for the first time. "And when I come back, Damian, I need you to understand something."

She set her purse down. Took out the ultrasound photo. Set it face-up on the dresser, where he'd see it every morning getting dressed for the rest of his life.

"You didn't just lose a wife tonight."

She turned to leave, pausing only once, in the doorway, to look back at the man who'd taught her ,patiently, thoroughly, over five careful years ,exactly how far cruelty could be dressed up as love.

"You forgot where I came from, Damian. You forgot whose blood is actually in mine."

She smiled. It did not reach her eyes.

"You're about to remember."