Chapter 2

The ride back to the penthouse I shared with Mark was silent. The driver, a man who had worked for Mark for years, didn' t look at me in the rearview mirror. I was just part of the scenery, a fixture in the life of his powerful boss. When I walked through the door, the sound of tinkling laughter hit me first. It was Emily.

She was lounging on the white leather sofa as if she owned it, her shoes kicked off on the expensive rug. Then I heard a sharp crack, followed by a theatrical gasp.

"Oh, no! Oh, my goodness!"

I walked into the living room. On the floor, in a dozen sharp-edged pieces, was the abstract sculpture Mark had given me on our first anniversary. It was a swirling, interlocking form, meant to represent two people becoming one. It was the only gift from him that I truly cherished.

Emily was on her knees, pretending to gather the pieces, her eyes wide with feigned distress. "Sarah, I am so, so sorry. I just barely brushed against the table, and it… it just fell."

Mark rushed to her side, pulling her up and into his arms. "It' s okay, Em. Don' t worry about it. It' s just a thing." He shot a glare at me. "It was in a stupid place anyway."

He held Emily, stroking her hair, whispering reassurances. He didn' t even look at the shattered remains of his gift to me. My gift.

A memory surfaced, sharp and clear. Mark, presenting the sculpture to me in this very room. "This is us, Sarah," he had said, his voice soft with a love I thought was real. "Two separate parts, but stronger together. Unbreakable."

The word echoed in my mind now, a bitter, hollow joke. Unbreakable.

To prove his point, to show Emily how little it meant, Mark walked over to the largest remaining piece of the sculpture. He picked it up, and with a deliberate, violent motion, he smashed it on the floor. The sound was like a gunshot in the quiet room. More sharp, glittering fragments scattered across the marble.

My breath caught in my throat. He was not just breaking an object; he was pulverizing our past, grinding every good memory we ever had into dust to impress another woman.

A bitter laugh threatened to escape my lips. He was so predictable. His world revolved around power and appearances. I was a possession, and the sculpture was a symbol of that possession. Now that he had a new, shinier prize in Emily, the old one was worthless. It had to be destroyed.

I turned and walked to the kitchen closet, my movements stiff and robotic. I pulled out a dustpan and a small broom. I walked back into the living room and knelt, beginning to sweep up the shards. Each scrape of the bristles against the floor felt like it was scraping against my own raw nerves.

As I swept the last of the glittering dust into the pan, my gaze fell on my flat stomach. I was cleaning up the pieces of a broken sculpture. A tangible loss. But the other loss, the one no one could see, was a wound that would never fully heal. Two broken things in one day. One was just glass and stone. The other was a life that never got to begin.