Chapter 13 Angelina
thirteen
Angelina
The click of my bedroom door opening pulled me out of the dreamless dark. It was soft, deliberate, the kind of sound that sends ice through your veins when you've learned what men do in the dark.
I didn't move. Didn't breathe. Didn't do anything except lie there with my heart slamming against my ribs while footsteps crossed my bedroom floor.
Pretend you're asleep. Make your breathing slow. Don't give him a reason to—
The thoughts came from somewhere old, somewhere I thought I'd buried. Three years of marriage taught me how to make my body go soft and still, how to fake the rhythm of unconscious breathing, how to become invisible in my own bed.
Adrian never touched me when I was sleeping. He wanted me awake, wanted to see my face, wanted the fear in my eyes when he—
Stop. That's not Adrian. That's Cole.
But my body didn't care what my mind knew. My body remembered hands in the dark, remembered the sound of a bedroom door opening when it shouldn't, remembered what it cost to be caught awake.
So I lay there. Frozen. Counting heartbeats while Cole's silhouette crossed my room and disappeared into the bathroom.
He worked in darkness. I heard soft sounds I couldn't identify. The click of plastic, the whisper of something being moved, the careful movements of a man who knew exactly what he was doing. Two minutes. Maybe three.
Then he came back through my bedroom. Paused at the door. His gaze landed on my face. I felt it like a physical weight, the heat of his attention pressing against my closed eyelids.
He's checking if you're awake. Don't move. Don't breathe.
Ten seconds. Fifteen. Then the door clicked shut, and his footsteps retreated down the hallway, and I was alone in the dark with my heart trying to crack through my sternum.
I didn't sleep after that.
I lay there until the sky shifted from black to gray to the pale gold of a May morning, running scenarios in my head like case files I couldn't close.
What was he doing in my bathroom? What could possibly require him to move through my space at three in the morning without asking permission?
Nothing made sense. Nothing I was willing to consider, anyway.
He was checking the window locks. Sweeping for bugs. Making sure the bathroom was secure.
At three in the morning? In the dark? Without telling you?
Maybe he heard something. Maybe there was a threat.
Then why didn't he wake you?
The questions circled without landing, and by the time my alarm finally gave me permission to stop pretending I might fall back asleep, I still didn't have answers. Just the memory of his silhouette crossing my room and the soft click of plastic I couldn't explain.
I move through the morning routine on alert.
Aware of every object, every surface, everything that might have been touched or moved or changed.
The bathroom looks the same as always. Chesca's bubble bath on one side of the counter, my skincare products on the other.
Purple toothbrush in its unicorn holder. White towels on the rack.
Nothing out of place. Nothing wrong.
You're being paranoid. He probably just—
My hand reaches for the pill pack.
Same spot as always. Right corner of the counter, where I leave it every morning so I don't forget. I picked it up without thinking, thumb finding the corner to pop out the daily dose—
The burr is gone.
I stop. Turn the pack over in my hands.
Same brand. Same pharmacy label. Same number of pills missing for this point in my cycle. Everything identical down to the last detail.
Except for the sharp little ridge of plastic that always catches my thumbnail. The manufacturing defect that's bothered me for weeks. The annoying, familiar imperfection that's been part of my morning routine for so long I stopped consciously noticing it.
Gone. The edge smooth and perfect. New.
This is not my pack.
Understanding crashes through me. I stand there frozen, the pack clutched in my hand, while my brain rearranges every piece of evidence from the night before.
3:07 AM. Cole in your room. Cole in your bathroom. The click of plastic.
He switched your pills.
The pack slips from my fingers and clatters against the porcelain sink. I grip the counter and stare at my reflection in the mirror.
He's trying to get you pregnant.
The thought arrives fully formed, ugly and undeniable. Last night we had sex. This morning he switched my birth control. The math isn't complicated.
One pill might not matter. But over time it would—
And that's not the point anyway. The point is that he came into my space while I was sleeping. Touched my things without permission. Tried to make a decision about my body, about what goes into it, about what might grow inside it… without asking me.
I hadn't taken today's pill yet, the routine interrupted by the wrongness my subconscious had been screaming about since I woke up. But I would have if I hadn't been suspicious. And tomorrow. And however many days this pack sat there with its smooth corners and its lies.
He tried to put something in my body without my consent.
The words form slowly, each one landing like a verdict. Something in my body. Without consent.
Adrian used to—
No. I slam the door on that thought before it opens all the way. This is different. Cole is different. Cole would never hurt me the way Adrian—
Adrian used to hold me down. Used to force himself into spaces I didn't offer, treating my body like property he'd purchased with a ring and a promise. I spent three years learning that no meant nothing, that my consent was irrelevant, that resistance only made things worse.
I left him. Rebuilt myself. Took back ownership of every inch of skin and blood and bone.
And now Cole Tanaka has tried to take that ownership away.
It's different. He didn't force you. He didn't hold you down. You caught it before—
It doesn't matter.
The fury rises hot and sudden, cutting through the shock. It doesn't matter that I caught it. It doesn't matter that I haven't swallowed any of his fake pills. It doesn't matter that one missed dose wouldn't have done anything anyway.
What matters is that he tried.
What matters is that he walked into my bathroom in the dark and touched my things and made a choice about my body without asking me.
What matters is that he thought he had the right.
Violation doesn't require completion. Intent is enough. You know this. You've sentenced men for less.
My hands are shaking. I press them flat against the counter and force myself to breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth, the way my therapist taught me years ago when the panic attacks were at their worst.
Think. Don't react. Think.
I need these pills. Not for contraception, but for the hormonal regulation that keeps my body from destroying itself the way it tried to after Chesca was born. If I stop taking them, I'm back to the hemorrhaging that almost killed me.
He doesn't know that. Or does he? He's been watching for seven years. He knows everything.
Does he know why I take them?
I don't know. I don't know what he knows or what he thinks he knows or what gaps exist in his seven years of surveillance. I only know that he switched my pills and I caught him and now I have to decide what to do about it.
Call the police. Call Sal. Flush the pills and scream until someone makes him pay.
Or.
The thought surfaces slowly, cold and clear.
Or let him think you don't know.
I open the medicine cabinet. Behind the expired Tylenol and the half-empty prenatal vitamins I never threw away, a sample pack sits where I shoved it six months ago. Just in case you travel, Dr. Martinez had said.
Still sealed. Still mine. Still real.
I pop one of the real pills from the sample pack and swallow it dry.
Then I look at Cole's pack, still lying in the sink where I dropped it.
He thinks he's clever. Thinks he's playing a game I don't know about, moving pieces on a board I can't see.
He's wrong.
I pick up the fake pack, pop out one pill to flush down the toilet, and set it back on the counter, exactly where it was. Corner aligned with the tile edge, his arrangement, not mine.
Let him think I took it. Let him think his plan is working. Let him wonder, in a few weeks, why nothing has changed.
Figure out the rules before you decide how to play.
My reflection stares back at me. Pale, shaken, but with something harder underneath. Something that looks almost like the woman I used to be, before Adrian taught me that dangerous men always win.
They don't always win. Sometimes they just think they do.
I turn off the bathroom light and go to face the day.
An hour later, I'm trying to hold myself together.
The kitchen smells like coffee and scrambled eggs, and Chesca chatters about her spelling test while swinging her legs under the table, and everything looks normal if you don't know what to look for.
I know what to look for.
Cole stands at the counter with his own mug, watching me over the rim the way he always watches, patient, assessing every micro-expression I can't quite control.
Except now I know what he was doing at 3:07 this morning. Now I know what kind of man stands in my kitchen making small talk while his fake pills sit upstairs on my bathroom counter.
I hold his gaze. Let him see that I'm awake, that I'm present, that whatever he thinks he's getting away with, I'm paying attention.
He doesn't flinch. Doesn't look away. Just watches me with those dark eyes that give nothing back.
Does he know I know? Can he tell?
No. He thinks you're just tired. He thinks you're processing last night, the sex, the rejection before that. He has no idea.
Good. Keep it that way.
"Mamma?" Chesca's voice cuts through. "You're not eating."
I look down at my plate. The eggs Cole made sit untouched, slowly cooling into something unappetizing. I haven't been able to make myself take a single bite, the thought of putting anything he's prepared into my mouth makes my stomach turn.