Chapter 1

1.

I completely fell apart when Soren transferred the entire seventy-five-thousand-dollar bonus―our down payment money―to that waitress for her heart surgery.

I grabbed the nearest bottle of whiskey and hurled it against the wall. Expensive amber liquid and shards of glass exploded everywhere. I screamed at him, using every vicious word I could think of.

"Get out! Take your fucking diseases and get the hell away from me!"

"I wouldn't give a damn if you and that woman dropped dead in a Chicago gutter!"

"You're nothing but a bastard! A piece of shit! A hopeless fucking loser!"

Soren just sat there on the leather sofa, listening, and calmly stubbed out his cigarette with his bare fingers. He looked up and let out a cold laugh.

"Yeah, and you're such a saint, Clara."

"Funny, I seem to remember you getting naked with me on a twin bed in a dorm room when you were eighteen, then walking around campus with a baby bump."

The trust I once gave him had become a knife he used to gut me.

He didn't know.

The moment he spat those words, I had already sentenced our marriage to death in my mind.

And I had already given up on the second child we were expecting.

...

A dead silence fell over the living room.

Our friends, who had come for our Christmas Eve party and were now trying to break up the fight, covered their mouths in shock.

Only the person closest to you knows exactly how to hurt you the most.

I can still remember that day in the communal girls' bathroom in college, seeing our first baby turn into a pool of blood in the grimy shower stall.

We were just two broke students who couldn't afford a proper clinic. All we had was enough money for some unsafe pills.

The bathroom reeked of mildew, an endless tearing pain ripped through my stomach, and eighteen-year-old Soren just held me, crying until his voice was raw.

"I'm sorry, Clara. It's all my fault. I'm a bastard, it's all my fault..."