Bonus Scene
GAGE’S POV IN THE DEVIL’S WIFE
The harsh winter air blasted my face as I stood on Ian’s porch. My breath fogged in hard bursts, each more uneven than the last as I pounded on his door.
“Ian!”
I hit it again, and the wood vibrated beneath my fist. Part of me hoped it would break under the force of my rage. Anything to douse the inferno of pain roaring through me.
Kayla’s betrayal had lodged in my throat like a stone, refusing to move. The shock of it. The utter disbelief that after all of my careful conditioning, she’d still fallen into the trap of her unyielding love for my brother.
No amount of coaxing or coercion could override it, and that was my biggest failure. Heat burned behind my eyes, and I blinked back the evidence of my weakness, furious that a single tear would even consider forming.
I punched the door again. “Open up! I know you’re in there!”
The lock finally clicked, and when the door creaked open, my world tilted sideways. Deep down, I hadn’t wanted to believe Kayla when she said he was sick.
But Ian stared back at me like an apparition wearing my brother’s face. For a beat, I couldn’t breathe. A gray sheen of death bathed his skin—the kind of sick I remembered from Eve’s hospital room.
Hollowed-out cheeks.
Bony shoulders sagging underneath a shirt that used to fit.
Washed-out hazel eyes, rimmed by weariness.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him. Months ago? A year? He’d been inconsequential, a footnote in Kayla’s past. But now my wife had dragged him out of the graveyard of things that should remain forgotten, shoving him dead center in the middle of our marriage.
Rage pulsed through me so hot I tasted metal.
Pushing past him, I stepped into a dim living room that felt colder than the fucking porch, even though the heater hummed through the vents.
The space reeked of the ordinary. Couch against a nondescript wall, a worn armchair with its faux leather cracking.
A modest TV, muted to some medical drama.
No photos or books or plants, just a shell of a home like the man who existed inside these walls.
“I figured you might show up,” he said, tone resigned to the inevitable.
Because no one put their goddamn hands on my wife without enduring my wrath.
The door shut behind me, and when I turned to face him, all the fury I’d carried from my basement—from Kayla’s trembling confession—detonated at once.
“I could kill you right now!”
“Give it a few weeks and you won’t have to.” Ian let the words hang there, as if dying wasn’t a big deal.
My hands balled into fists. “Do not test my patience right now.”
“I’m not. Just stating facts.”
That cracked something open inside me. Something raw and unwelcome. Fucking pity…maybe even sympathy.
Never empathy.
Not for him.
“You had no right to drag Kayla into your life.” I stepped closer until a hint of my wife’s perfume wafted off him. For five anguished seconds, I held my breath to keep from choking the fragile life from him.
That scent had been designed specifically for her, and now it was on him.
“I didn’t tell her about my illness, and I sure as hell didn’t ask her to come here.”
“You didn’t have to. All you’ve ever done is breathe, and she comes running.”
He lowered himself onto the arm of the couch, rubbing his fingers against his temple. The gesture was clumsy, as if his hand and brain weren’t communicating properly anymore.
“I didn’t ask her to touch me.”
“But you didn’t stop her either.”
Thick silence rotted the space between us, until he finally lifted his guilty eyes. “It wasn’t like Liz, okay? I’ve always regretted what happened back then, but this…it wasn’t about sex.”
“She had her hand on your dick. What else was it about?”
“Desperation. A way to say goodbye.”
“Spare me the poetic bullshit.”
He shifted, and the movement sent a tremor up his left arm. “You don’t have to believe me.”
“Oh, I don’t.” I started pacing, as if movement could dispel the claustrophobic space. “You’re a master at turning your failures into tragedies. Somehow, they always end up being my problem.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Fair?” I huffed a humorless laugh. “You think I give a shit about fair?”
“No, I suppose you don’t. The way you treat her isn’t fair, yet she always chooses you.
” He ground his molars, and the first spark of life entered his eyes since I set foot in his house.
“Even today, unable to accept my diagnosis, she chose you.” Ian swallowed, wincing.
“She came because she was scared. Not because she wanted me.”
Stopping suddenly, I let the weight of my shadow fall over him. “You think that makes it better?”
“No, but it’s the truth.”
The room seemed to shrink even more. The faint hum of the heater, the muted dialogue from the TV, the smell of stale takeout—all of it pressed in, suffocating the air I forced into my lungs.
He lifted his gaze again, eyes glassy with a mixture of pain and a pathetic form of resignation. “You can be angry and blame me, but you can’t pretend she didn’t choose you every damn time.”
I stared at him for several long seconds, my thoughts swirling. If I let the bastard die now, it would only make him a martyr in her memory.
“Get up,” I said.
He blinked, dazed. “What?”
“Up.” My voice left no room for argument. “Pack whatever shit you need.”
He pushed himself off the couch, but his knees buckled on the first attempt. I grabbed his arm, more out of irritation than concern, and held him upright.
He tried to pull back. “What are you doing?”
“You’re going to a treatment center.”
He stared at me as if I’d spoken in another language. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“Why the hell would you—?”
“Because if you die now,” I said, voice slicing through his protest, “she won’t move on. She’ll drown in her grief, and I refuse to let her suffer for your goddamn surrender.”
“So this isn’t about saving me.”
“It’s never been about you, and it never will be. Kayla belongs to me. Her grief belongs to me, and I won’t let you take up that space in her heart or her mind.”
He looked away then, shoulders collapsing inward as he absorbed every cruel syllable.
When he finally spoke, his voice was barely there. “If I agree to this…will you let me see her before I go?”
“No.”
“And if I refuse?”
I crowded his personal space and iced my tone enough to freeze the air. “Then I’ll punish her for your stubbornness. As it stands, she’ll pay dearly for today’s mistakes, so I suggest you don’t test how far I’m willing to go.”
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