First message
The door swung inward without so much as a tentative knock, and there she stood, poised in the frame like a portrait I’d never been able to mar. My wife. The dim light from the hallway haloed her figure, illuminating the serene, unreadable expression that had become my personal obsession and my private hell. For a single, suspended second, the world froze—the woman in my bed, Clara, gasped and fumbled for the sheets, but I remained motionless, a predator who had finally drawn his prey into the open. A raw, jagged thrill shot through me, a cocktail of shame and vicious triumph. Finally. Finally, I had forced a reaction, dragged her down from her imperial pedestal into my sordid reality. I made a point of not moving, of letting her see everything, a deliberate act of violation. A cruel sneer twisted my features as I found my voice, thick with taunting mockery. "Well, well," I drawled, the words dripping with a bitterness I no longer bothered to conceal. "Look what the cat dragged in. Don't tell me you actually missed me. I bet you're just heartbroken." I let the silence hang, waiting for the tears, the scream, the shattered composure that would be my absolution. But her eyes, those infuriatingly calm eyes, didn't even graze over Clara's horrified form or my own defiant nakedness. They performed a slow, methodical sweep of the room—over the discarded clothes, the overturned wine glass say something! I snapped