2. Jade
— ? —
Jade
I don’t sleep.
For hours, I lie in the darkness of our bedroom - his bedroom, really, because nothing in this house has ever truly been mine - staring at the ceiling while my mind replays every moment, every glance, every suspicious absence that I was too blind to question.
The shadows shift across the walls as the night crawls forward, and I lie perfectly still, cataloging the wreckage of my life.
Three years. I gave him three years of my life.
I rearranged my dreams to fit the shape of his.
I learned to cook the foods he liked, to laugh at jokes that weren’t funny, to shrink myself into the version of a wife his family would find acceptable.
I gave up my job, my apartment, my independence.
I molded myself into someone I barely recognize anymore, someone quiet, someone agreeable, someone who smiles on command and never asks too many questions.
I gave him everything.
And this is what I get. A betrayal. A sister’s perfume lingering on his collar like a ghost I was too naive to see. Whispered phone calls he takes in other rooms. The way he looks at her when he thinks no one is watching, the way he never looks at me.
The front door opens around four in the morning.
I hear his footsteps in the hallway, careful, measured, deliberately quiet.
The footsteps of a man who thinks he’s getting away with something.
The bathroom door clicks shut, and a moment later, water runs through the pipes, the sound carrying through the walls of this too-big house like a confession.
He’s washing her off.
The thought arrives with clinical detachment, like I’m observing someone else’s tragedy. He’s standing in our bathroom, using our soap, our towels, scrubbing away the evidence of my sister’s body so he can slip into bed beside me with clean hands and a guilty conscience he’s learned to silence.
I wonder if he thinks about me at all when he’s with her. I wonder if he ever did.
When the bathroom door finally opens, I close my eyes and slow my breathing.
The mattress dips as he climbs in, and I feel him settle on the far edge - as far from me as he can get without falling off entirely.
He doesn’t reach for me. Doesn’t whisper goodnight.
Doesn’t check to see if I’m awake, if I’m okay, if I’m still breathing.
Within minutes, his breath evens out into the steady rhythm of peaceful sleep.
He sleeps like a man with nothing on his conscience. Like a baby, innocent and unburdened.
And I lie there beside him, watching shadows crawl across the ceiling as the sky slowly lightens from black to gray to the pale pink of another dawn I never asked for.
My hand rests on my stomach, on the small swell of life growing inside me, and I think about all the ways a person can be trapped - by love, by fear, by a future that’s already been written without your consent.
***
The days that follow pass in a blur of performance.
I cook meals Donald barely touches, making his favorites out of habit while my own appetite shrivels to nothing.
I sit across from him at dinner and make small talk he responds to with monosyllables, his attention always drifting to his phone, to the television, to anywhere that isn’t me.
I smile when I’m supposed to smile. I nod when I’m supposed to nod.
I sleep in a bed that feels less like a sanctuary and more like a coffin each night - lying rigid in the darkness, listening to him breathe, wondering how I ended up here.
And through it all, Vivian texts me.
Checking in on you, sis! How are you feeling?
Just thinking about you! Pregnancy treating you okay?
We should get lunch soon! Miss you! ??
I stare at each message until the words blur, my thumb hovering over the keyboard while bile rises in my throat.
I imagine her typing these words with one hand while the other rests on my husband’s chest. I imagine her smiling to herself, pleased with her own performance, congratulating herself on maintaining the illusion.
I’m good! I type back. Just tired.
Yeah, the nausea is rough. But manageable!
We should get lunch soon! Miss you too!
Every lie tastes like ash. Every exclamation point is a small death. But what else can I do? If I confront her now, without evidence, she’ll deny everything. She’ll cry. She’ll twist it around until I’m the crazy one, the jealous sister, the hormonal pregnant woman who’s imagining things.
So I keep playing the game. I keep smiling. I keep pretending everything is fine while the walls close in around me, inch by inch, day by day.
I am paralyzed. Frozen. Trapped in a life that’s already over but hasn’t officially ended yet, a ghost haunting my own marriage, waiting for someone to finally pronounce it dead.
And then Damian texts me.
How are you holding up?
Four words. Simple. Direct. No pretense, no performance, no carefully crafted cheerfulness designed to maintain an illusion.
I stare at my phone for a full minute, watching the cursor blink in the empty reply field. My heart is doing something strange in my chest - beating faster than it should, warming in a way that feels dangerous.
Not great, honestly.
His response comes almost immediately, like he’s been waiting.
Do you need to talk?
I should say no. I should keep my distance, maintain the boundaries that propriety demands. He’s Donald’s brother - still a Castillo, still connected to this web of money and power and secrets that I’m trapped in. Still potentially dangerous in ways I can’t afford to ignore.
But he’s also the only person who’s been honest with me in months. The only one who looked at me at that party and saw something real, not Donald’s wife, not Vivian’s sister, not a prop in someone else’s story, but me. Jade. A person worth warning. A person worth saving.
Can we meet?
Coffee at the place on Third? 30 minutes?
I’m out the door before I can talk myself out of it, my coat half-buttoned and my hands trembling with something that feels terrifyingly like hope.
***
Damian
She looks like hell.
That’s my first thought when I see her walk into the coffee shop - this dingy little place I chose specifically because no one in my family would be caught dead here.
She looks like someone who hasn’t slept in days, which she probably hasn’t.
There are shadows under her eyes that makeup can’t quite hide, and she’s thinner than she was a week ago, like the stress is eating her alive from the inside out.
But God, she’s still beautiful.
The thought comes unbidden, unwanted. I shove it down.
There’s something else about her today, too. A hardness in her jaw that wasn’t there before. A sharpness in her eyes that speaks of sleepless nights spent turning pain into something stronger.
Good, I think. She’s going to need that.
“Hey.” She slides into the seat across from me, wrapping her hands around the coffee I ordered for her. “Thank you for meeting me.”
“You don’t have to thank me.” I’m already sick of her thanking me, like I’m doing her some kind of favor instead of being exactly where I want to be. “How are you really?”
“Terrible.” She laughs, but there’s no humor in it.
“I can’t stop thinking about them. Every time I close my eyes, I see...
” She shakes her head, and a strand of dark hair falls across her face.
My fingers itch to brush it back. I grip my coffee cup harder instead.
“I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Donald to say something or Vivian to slip up, but they’re both just acting normal. Like nothing’s wrong.”
“They think you don’t know.”
“I know.” Her grip tightens on the coffee cup, and I watch the delicate bones of her knuckles press white against her skin.
She has beautiful hands. I need to stop noticing these things.
“And I can’t decide if that’s better or worse.
At least if they were honest, I could...
I don’t know. React. Do something. But this fake normalcy is killing me. ”
The morning light catches her eyes as she looks up at me, and I lose my train of thought for a moment.
They’re this impossible shade of brown, warm, like honey held up to the sun.
I’ve noticed them before, of course. At the wedding.
At family dinners where I had to watch my brother ignore her while I couldn’t stop stealing glances.
Stop it. Focus.
“Have you thought about what you’re going to do?”
“That’s all I think about.” She meets my eyes, and I see the fear underneath the exhaustion.
Even exhausted. Even terrified. Even with mascara slightly smudged beneath her left eye - she’s the most stunning woman I’ve ever seen.
And I hate myself for thinking it. “But every option seems worse than the last. If I confront them, I lose the element of surprise. If I leave, I have nothing - no money, no support, nowhere to go. And if I stay...” She presses a hand to her stomach, almost unconsciously.
“I’m not just thinking about myself anymore. ”
The baby.
Donald’s baby.
I haven’t asked about it. Haven’t wanted to pry into something so personal. But now, watching her hand rest protectively over her abdomen, something twists in my chest. Something that feels too much like longing for a life that isn’t mine.
“What are you afraid of?” I ask quietly.
“Everything.” Her voice cracks, and the sound goes through me like a blade.
I want to pull her into my arms. I want to tell her I’ll burn down anyone who tries to hurt her.
I want things I have absolutely no right to want.
“That Donald will take the baby if we divorce. That he’ll destroy me in court - you know how powerful his family is.
That Vivian will twist everything and make me look crazy.
I have nothing, Damian. No money of my own.
No family except the sister who’s stabbing me in the back. ”
She bites her lower lip, and I have to look away.