The first thing I tasted was blood. It bloomed on my tongue, hot and metallic, a sharp contrast to the expensive Bordeaux we had consumed hours earlier.
The second thing I tasted was betrayal.
My husband, Richard, stood over me in the center of our cavernous master bedroom. The sleeves of his tailored crisp white shirt were rolled up precisely to the forearms, revealing the expensive platinum watch I had bought him for our third anniversary. His breathing was perfectly calm. His chest rose and fell with a steady, rhythmic grace, as if he had only accidentally knocked over a crystal highball glass instead of striking his wife across the face.
Behind him, the silver moonlight poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Monroe Estate, cutting his handsome face cleanly in half. It left one side bathed in a pale, almost angelic silver, and plunged the other into absolute, impenetrable black.
“You embarrassed me,” he said. His voice was not raised. It was a terrifying, conversational murmur.
I pressed one trembling hand to my left cheek. The skin was already tightening, radiating a pulsing heat beneath my fingertips. I looked up at him, my vision blurring slightly at the edges. “Because I said no?”
His jaw tightened, a small muscle ticking furiously beneath his ear. “Because my mother asked for one simple thing, Victoria. One incredibly simple concession to make our family whole.”
One simple thing.
I let the phrase echo in the cavernous silence of the bedroom. Move into our home. Take the master suite, the one we were currently standing in. Control the kitchen. Inspect my wardrobe for anything she deemed ‘inappropriate for a wife of standing.’ Comment on the subtle changes in my body. Whisper poison into Richard’s ear every evening that I was ungrateful, barren, useless, too modern, and far too cold to be a proper matriarch.
I had politely, firmly refused at dinner.
Richard had smiled through the dessert course, offering the waiter a generous tip. He had opened the passenger door of his Mercedes for me, kissed my temple, and driven us home in absolute, suffocating silence. He had been the perfect, loving husband all evening.
Then, the very moment the heavy mahogany front door clicked shut behind us, locking out the world, he became a violent stranger wearing my husband’s wedding ring.
