Fractured Oath (Tainted Souls #4)

PROLOGUE LANA

I stand at the window of our bedroom—Gabriel's bedroom, really, since he chose everything in it—and watch rain streak the glass. The ocean churns below, waves eating themselves against the cliffs. It's past midnight. The house sleeps around me, every part of it holding their collective breath.

Gabriel is downstairs. I heard him pour another scotch ten minutes ago, the crystal decanter clinking against the glass in that particular way that means he's past careful and approaching cruelty.

My phone buzzes on the nightstand.

I freeze. The sound cuts through the quiet house like a blade. It's past midnight—who would text this late? I reach for it, but before my fingers touch the screen, I hear Gabriel's footsteps on the stairs. Fast and purposeful.

He heard it too.

The bedroom door opens without knocking. Gabriel never knocks anymore.

"Who's texting you at this hour?" he asks, and it's not a question. He's already crossing to the nightstand, reaching past me to grab my phone before I can.

I watch him unlock it—he knows my passcode, insisted I give it to him two years ago "for emergencies"—and read whatever message just came through. His jaw tightens.

"A gallery opening next week," he says, his voice dangerously quiet. "At midnight. They're sending you invitations at midnight."

It's probably automated. A mass email converted to text. But I know better than to explain that.

"Who else are you talking to?" He scrolls through my messages now, looking for evidence of the betrayal he's convinced exists.

Finding nothing, he tosses my phone onto the bed with disgust. "Because this—" he gestures at me, the phone, the room, "this secrecy, this distance—it's just given me the excuse I needed. "

"Excuse for what?"

"To have the conversation you've been avoiding." His voice carries that false gentleness he uses when he's building toward something worse. "Who is he? Because there is someone, isn't there, Lana? There must be. Otherwise, why would you lie?"

I hadn't lied. I'd simply stopped telling him where I went every Tuesday afternoon. The gallery visits. The café where I sat alone and read books he'd never approve of. The long walks through The Margin where no one knew my face or my husband's net worth.

But to Gabriel, privacy is dishonesty. Silence is betrayal.

"What do you want me to say?" I ask, and I hate how small my voice sounds. How practiced at submission.

"The truth would be refreshing." He reaches out, tucks a strand of hair behind my ear with fingers that linger too long against my jaw. The gesture looks tender. It's not. "Who have you been seeing?"

"No one."

"Liar." His hand drops away. He walks to the door, pauses, looks back. His eyes are red-rimmed from the scotch, but his hands are steady. That's the thing about Gabriel—he never loses control. Even drunk, he's calculating. "Downstairs. Now. We're going to have this conversation properly."

"It's late—"

"I don't care what time it is." His reflection catches in the window, he looks handsome, always handsome.

Strong jaw. Perfect teeth. The kind of face that photographs well at charity galas.

"You don't get to decide when we talk, Lana.

That's not how this works. Unless you'd like me to come back and carry you? "

He would. I've seen him carry furniture he decided was in the wrong room, seen him manhandle the housekeeper's son when the kid accidentally broke a vase. Gabriel is strong, and he likes you to remember it.

So, I follow. Barefoot, wearing the silk nightgown he prefers, I follow my husband down the curved staircase into the heart of what was once my home—the house my parents built when I was twelve, filled with their dreams of family dinners and grandchildren running through the halls.

They left it to me when they died, and Gabriel moved in after the wedding. Within six months, he'd stripped out every trace of warmth they'd built into these walls and replaced it with museum-quality coldness. Everything white, cream, and glass. Expensive things arranged just so. Including me.

I wear what he chooses. I attend what he schedules. I smile when he needs me decorative and disappear when he needs me gone.

Five years of this. Five years of diminishing myself piece by piece until I'm not sure what remains.

The kitchen gleams in recessed lighting, all marble and stainless steel. Gabriel's made himself comfortable at the island, his scotch glass refilled, the decanter within reach. Another glass sits empty beside his—waiting for me, presumably, though I won't drink. I need to stay sharp.

"Sit," he says, as he picks up his glass, gesturing to the barstool across from him.

I sit.

He studies me for a moment, swirling the amber liquid in his glass. The ice clicks softly. Outside, the storm is building, wind rattling the windows. The weather report predicted gale-force winds tonight. Dangerous conditions. They recommended staying away from the cliffs.

This house was built on the cliffs.

"Do you know what I did today?" Gabriel asks. He's using his boardroom voice now, the one that makes venture capitalists nervous. "I had lunch with Malcolm. You remember Malcolm, don't you? My attorney?"

I remember Malcolm. Slick hair, expensive suit, the kind of lawyer who gets rich helping rich men stay rich.

"Malcolm told me something interesting," Gabriel continues. "Apparently, if a marriage dissolves, certain assets can be... contested. Particularly inherited wealth that was never properly protected."

My stomach goes cold. The house. My parents' house, the only thing I have that's truly mine.

"You're talking about prenup modifications," I say.

"I'm talking about protecting what's mine." He drains half his scotch in one swallow. "Because that's what you are, Lana. Mine. The house is mine because you're mine. Your time is mine. Your body is mine. And whoever you've been giving those things to—"

"I haven't given anything to anyone."

"Then why are you so secretive?" He slams the glass down hard enough that I flinch. There it is—the crack in his composure. "Why do you come home smelling like coffee? Why do I find receipts for bookstores in neighborhoods we don't visit? Why, Lana?"

Because I needed something that was mine. Because I was suffocating. Because if I didn't carve out some small space where Gabriel couldn't reach, I was going to disappear completely.

But I don't say any of that.

"I wanted privacy," I tell him instead. "That's all. Just a few hours a week where I didn't have to account for every breath."

"Privacy." He laughs, bitter and harsh. "You want privacy in our marriage?"

"I want to exist."

The words escape before I can stop them. They hang in the sterile kitchen, too honest, too raw.

Gabriel goes very still.

Then he stands, moves around the island with terrifying calm. I should run. Every instinct screams at me to run. But there's nowhere to go—not in this house he's made into a prison, not in this life he's made into a cage.

He stops in front of me, close enough that I can smell the scotch on his breath, see the fury barely leashed behind his perfect facade.

"You exist because I allow it," he says softly. "Everything you are, everything you have—it exists because I permit it. Do you understand?"

I understand that I've married a monster. I understand that no amount of submission will ever be enough. I understand that this moment, right here, is the edge of something I can't come back from.

"Gabriel—"

"Stand up."

I stand because not standing would be worse.

"He reaches past me, opens a drawer I rarely use—the one where we keep the good knives, the expensive Japanese steel he bought to impress dinner guests who never venture into the kitchen. His hand hovers over them, and for one horrible second, I think he's going to choose one."

But he closes the drawer.

"Walk," he says instead, gesturing toward the glass doors that lead to the back terrace. "We're going outside."

"It's storming—"

"I don't care."

The glass doors slide open with a whisper, and the storm rushes in. Wind tears through the kitchen, scattering the papers Gabriel left on the counter, sending his scotch glass skating across marble. Rain hits my face like thrown gravel.

"Gabriel, please—"

But he's already outside, standing on the flagstone terrace that extends twenty feet before dropping away to nothing. Beyond the terrace, there's a decorative iron railing—more art installation than safety feature—and beyond that, three hundred feet of air and rock before the ocean.

I follow because he's waiting and because turning back now would only make things worse. The silk nightgown plasters itself to my skin within seconds. The rain is cold, driving, and merciless.

Gabriel stands at the edge of the terrace, one hand on the railing, his cashmere robe already soaked through. He looks back at me, and his eyes have gone flat in a way I've never witnessed. It’s not rage, it’s emptiness, like he's made a decision, and the emotion has already drained out.

"Do you know what else Malcolm said?" he shouts over the wind. "He said most wives in your position would be grateful. Grateful for the life, the status, the security. But you—" He laughs, and the sound gets torn away by the storm. "You act like I'm holding you prisoner."

I am a prisoner. My own house—the one inheritance Gabriel couldn't buy—has become a cell he's furnished and controlled until even the walls don't feel like mine anymore.

But I don't say that. Instead, I move closer, trying to pull him back from the edge because even now, even hating him, I don't want him to fall. That's the sickness of it—five years of conditioning makes me reach for him even when every nerve screams to run.

"Let's go inside," I say, raising my voice against the wind. "We can talk tomorrow when we're both—"

"When we're both what? Sober? Calm?" He turns fully to face me, his back to the drop. "I am calm, Lana. This is a calm me. You want to see me not calm?"