Page 43 of Shattered Echoes

I watch him as he takes another sip, swirling the wine in his mouth. “I think you’re strong enough. You made mistakes, sure, but who doesn’t, right?”

He cocks a brow at me. “What do you think you’re doing? Make no mistakes. This isn’t about me. This is about you, and don’t you dare try to deflect? What’s going on?”

I sit back and drain my glass, stretching it to him for a refill. He chuckles and fills the glass, then leans back. He seems content to allow the silence to stretch between us, sipping his wine.

“I just had to get out of there,” I whisper. “Felt like I was being buried alive, and the house felt like a tomb… and it was suffocating me. I…I didn’t know where else to go, so I came here.”

He nods, but remains quiet. How much can I tell him? How much would he be able to take? He drains his glass and fills it back up, topping my empty one, the soft clinking of bottle on glass the only sound in the room. He settles back again and watches me, his eyes filled with encouragement.

And so, I tell him everything. It pours out of me like a flood. I say more to him than I did, even in therapy. And he just sits there, quiet, drinking in every word.

“You know, he used to enjoy calling me names,” I confess, my voice a whisper while the past bubbles up to the surface. “Awful things. Things no one deserves to hear.”

The design studio is a war zone, papers and sketches strewn across every surface. I'm hunched over my drafting table, trying to meet a looming deadline.The angry tapping of his foot punctuates the gentle hum of my computerbehind me. He insists on coming to get me after work now, convinced I'm having an affair even though I've given him no reason to think that.

"This place is a goddamn mess," he spits out, his voice dripping with disgust. "How do you expect to get any actual work done in this pigsty?"

I flinch at the venom in his words, my shoulders tensing. "I was just trying to finish up the Bryson account proofs," I mumble, not daring to meet his gaze. "They need them by tomorrow morning."

He sneers, his once handsome face twisting into an ugly mask of contempt. "Or maybe you were too busy chatting up that sleazy art director again. Don't think I didn't notice the way he was undressing you with his eyes at the last company dinner."

Tears sting my eyes as the familiar, baseless accusations wash over me. "That's not true. I would never..."

My voice trails off as he advances towards me, his body taut with inexplicable rage. In a swift motion, he sweeps his arm across my drafting table, sending my work—hours and hours of painstaking effort, fluttering to the ground in a cyclone of crumpled paper.

"You're nothing but a lying, cheating whore!" he roars, his face contorted into an inhuman mask of fury. His hand lashes out, connecting with my cheek with a sickening crack.

The force of the blow sends me reeling backwards, my hip slamming into the edge of the table. White-hot pain blossoms through my body as I crumple to the floor and curl into a ball, cradling my throbbing hip as I stare up at him in shock and fear.

This isn't the first time he's lashed out, but it still leaves me shaken to my core. How did the man I married become this angry, abusive stranger?

"Look at the mess you've made," he snarls, nudging the scattered papers with the toe of his shoe. "You're fucking useless."

Tears stream down my face as I scramble to gather up the crumpled sketches and proofs. "I'm s-sorry," I stammer through ragged breaths. "I'll have to clean it up and stay late to re-do everything."

He has his own successful businesses, making his obsession with monitoring my every move at work even more baffling and worrying. I flinch at his scathing words, feeling small and worthless. I want to protest, to defend myself, but years of walking on eggshells around his tirades have left me cowed into submission.

Leaving that hell was an option that I had considered every day since I married Ricardo Lorde, but I feared both Father and Ricardo… What he would do to me if I left kept me that long. I am afraid of him, and I don’t want to end like the Amato girl. I am hopeless and too timid to take that bold step and put an end to all the abuse.

He lets out a derisive snort. "Like that's going to fix the damage you've already done? You've probably lost your firm and that client with your incompetence."

Fixing me with a look of pure loathing, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his wallet, extracting a few crumpled bills. He tosses them at me, the dirty cash fluttering to the ground.

"Here, why don't you take your whore money and get out of my sight?" he spat. "Go do whatever cheap thrill makes you feel better about being such a worthless failure. Getting married to a piece of shit like you was only for the health of our family businesses. Cheap slut."

This demeaning act of paying me like a prostitute buy, even though I've never asked him for anything financial since our marriage. I don't need to understand his insults for them to reinforce my growing feelings of shame and diminished self-worth. I wasn’t sure which hurt more, knowing that he was right about the reason he married me or the fact that hearing him say that only proved my father’s disregard for me.

I ignore the crumpled bills, my cheeks burning with humiliation. Grabbing my purse, I slink out of the studio, the weight of his contempt like a leaden anchor dragging me down. I can hear his mocking laughter echoing down the hallway as I stagger to the elevator, bloodied and broken. My few remaining colleagues pretend not to notice the unmistakable signs of abuse.

That's the day I decided. That's the last time I ever allow myself to be diminished and dehumanized by the man I once vowed to love forever.

I fall silent. That memory is one of the hardest for me to remember. Getting abused like that at work, by a man so powerful and wealthy, everyone else pretends they saw nothing. Fresh tears spill down my cheeks, and Antonio pulls me close, wrapping his arms around me. His embrace is so powerful, but I allow him, melting into it.

My sorrow feels like something alive. By letting down my walls, I allow my nightmares to assault me while I am awake. Antonio is a solid shield through all that, though, and his touch anchors me. It doesn’t stop me from feeling, but it helps me get through.

We stay like that for a long time, my ragged breaths evening out as I draw strength from his solid presence. When I pull back, he cups my face in his calloused hands, brushing away the tear streaks with the pads of his thumbs.

There’s something in his eyes that I don’t recognize. It looks like guilt, and it breaks my heart. How dare he? How dare he feel guilty for the crimes of a monster? This is not on him. Why does he feel the need to make this his failing?

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