He grabbed my hair and jerked my head back.
“You’re still my wife,” he hissed. “Everything you have belongs to me.”
Pain shot through my scalp. My lip struck the edge of the table, and I tasted blood.
Vanessa laughed from the doorway.
Adrian leaned closer. “Sign the papers, Isabella.”
I met his eyes and smiled through the blood.
“Touch me again,” I whispered, “and I’ll show everyone exactly who you are.”
He laughed.
Then I grabbed my father’s heavy glass paperweight and slammed it down onto his wrist.
Adrian screamed, loud enough that Vanessa stopped laughing.
He staggered back, clutching his arm, shock written all over his face. I had never hit him before. Not once. For seven years, he had mistaken my silence for weakness. He thought obedience defined me. He thought fear was love.
He was wrong.
“Are you insane?” he shouted.
I stood slowly, still shaking, still bleeding, but no longer afraid in the same way. The paperweight remained in my hand, slick against my palm.
“No,” I said. “I’m finished.”
Adrian lunged at me again, but this time I was ready. I stepped aside, and he crashed into the dining table, knocking over the vase my mother used to fill with yellow roses every Sunday. It shattered across the floor.
That sound hurt more than anything he had done.
