Never Marry?I Bring Him to Heel

A sharp, biting cold sliced through the darkness, forcing Faye's eyes open.

The first thing she registered was pain. A searing, rhythmic throb shot up her right arm, pulsing in time with a heartbeat that was fading far too fast. Her wrist burned where the blade had gone deep. She could feel the ragged edges of the wound, the kind of cut that was meant to end things permanently.

Her vision swam into focus.

Red. Everything was a sick, clouded red. The bathwater was thick and lukewarm, clinging to her skin like a shroud. Her right arm lay limp at her side, draped over the edge of the tub, and from the fresh gash on her wrist, blood still wept into the water in lazy, dark ribbons. Near the porcelain rim, an empty pill bottle rolled softly against the edge. She caught a glimpse of it through the murk. Empty. She had swallowed every last one.

A primal instinct seized her: sit up, breathe. But her limbs were dead weight, unresponsive. Her body slid back down, and the bloody water rushed over her face. She choked, a bitter metallic taste flooding her mouth.

Then the fragments of memories that did not belong to her came. They hit her like shards of glass, slicing through her consciousness.

She saw herself. No, not herself. The other Faye. On her knees. Clinging to a man's pant leg, her voice cracked and raw.

"Bowen, please. I'll die if you leave me. I really will."

His face was cold as marble as he looked down at her without a flicker of emotion.

"Then just die."

The words echoed in the hollow of her new mind, sharp and merciless. He had said it. He had actually said it. And the original Faye had taken him at his word.

Panic, raw and primal, ignited a spark in her dying core.

Survive.

With a strength she did not know she possessed, she slammed her left hand against the slick porcelain rim of the tub. Her knuckles went white, the strain vibrating up her arm. She dragged herself upward, inch by agonizing inch.

More memories flooded in. The handsome face. Bowen Combs. His cold, dismissive eyes. The crisp, cruel pages of a document he had shoved across the table at her just days ago. The heading at the top was printed in bold black letters: Petition for Dissolution of Marriage. She had refused to sign it then. She had begged him not to make her.

And voices, sharp as broken glass, mocking her.

"A woman like you is worthless."

The name hit her like a physical blow. Bowen Combs. Her husband. The man who had taken everything she had given him, her strategies, her business insights, her sleepless nights, and claimed it all as his own.

She remembered how it had started. A chance meeting with Walter Combs, the dying patriarch of the Combs family empire, three years ago. She had been sixteen, working a summer job at a café . The old man had struck up a conversation, and within an hour, he had seen something in her. A mind like a steel trap, he had called it. He asked her questions about business, about markets, about strategy-and she had answered them all without hesitation. He told her she was wasted on coffee orders. He told her she belonged in a boardroom.

That was when he made her the offer. Marry his grandson, Bowen, and save the company that was crumbling under mediocre leadership. In return, she would have a family, a name, a future that her small-town life could never give her. To a girl who had grown up with nothing, it had sounded like a fairy tale. She had believed she could earn their respect. She had believed her talents would be valued. She had believed Bowen would eventually learn to love her.

She had been wrong. She had been so terribly wrong.

She saw herself, the other Faye, hunched over a laptop at four in the morning, the screen's pale glow the only light in the study. A dozen pages of market analysis spread across the desk. Her fingers cramped from typing. Her eyes burned from exhaustion. And upstairs, Bowen slept soundly, dreaming of the applause that would come his way.

She had built his empire. Every acquisition. Every boardroom victory. And he had never once spoken her name.

Walter had kept the marriage in place. He had been the only one who saw her value, the only one who understood that she was the reason the company was still standing. But Walter was gone now-dead just a month ago, his last breath barely cold before Bowen started moving pieces on the chessboard. With Walter dead, there was no one left to stop him. No one to remind him of the deal that had saved his company.

Now Bowen was bringing home his first love, Isabelle Sterling. For that, this Faye had to be erased.

The words of his mother, Evelyn, and his cousin, Tiffany, echoed in the chambers of her new mind.

"Rust Belt trash."

"Country bumpkin."

The original Faye, drowning in a sea of humiliation and heartbreak, had chosen the only escape she could see. She had sliced open her wrist. She had swallowed the pills. She had wanted to disappear.

But now, another Faye was here.

This Faye looked at the wound on her wrist. Deep. Savage. A cut meant to end a life, not to beg for attention. The pills had done their work too. The original Faye had been thorough. She had not wanted to survive.

Too bad. I am here now.

The confusion in her eyes hardened into something glacial. She could not die. Not like this. Not while these monsters got to live their perfect lives, built on her blood and her brilliance.

She gritted her teeth, the sound loud in the silent, steam-filled room. She hauled her drenched, shivering body over the edge of the tub. She landed with a wet thud on the cold marble floor, leaving a smear of red behind her.

Her legs trembled as she pushed herself up, gripping the vanity for support. The corner of the marble counter dug into her hip, a dull ache that barely registered against the fire in her wrist.

She finally looked up. Into the mirror.

The woman staring back was a ghost. Skin as white as bone, lips tinged with blue. Her face was caked in heavy, garish makeup. Thick foundation. Exaggerated black eyeliner that swept toward her temples. Mascara clumped and smeared. She looked like a cheap doll, a caricature of a woman trying too hard.

She had worn this face every day for Bowen. Painted herself into something he might find acceptable. Erased her own youth. She was only nineteen years old now, for God's sake. She had made herself look older, more sophisticated, more worthy.

The original Faye had spent three years turning herself into what he wanted. And he had still thrown her away.

But the eyes staring back from that painted face were not the eyes of a victim. They burned with a cold, terrifying fire.

Revenge.

Her movements were clumsy, but deliberate. She ripped a strip from the thick terrycloth robe hanging on the door and wrapped it tightly around her bleeding wrist, pulling the knot secure with her teeth and her left hand.

A sharp, impatient knock rattled the bathroom door.

"Ma'am? Mr. Combs and the family are waiting downstairs. For the papers."

A slow, chilling smile touched Faye's lips. The papers. Of course. The Petition for Dissolution of Marriage. The document that would legally erase her from his life. The same document she had refused to touch three days ago, the same one she had wept over until the ink blurred.

She turned on the faucet, the rush of water deafening. She splashed the icy stream onto her face, washing away the tears and blood that were not entirely her own. Her fingers scraped at the thick foundation, the smeared eyeliner, the mask of desperation.

It did not all come off. But enough. Enough to see the sharp, clear lines of her own face beneath. Young. Fierce. Dangerous.

Her gaze fell on the oversized, ornate medicine cabinet. She swung it open. Inside, among expensive, barely used creams, sat a first-aid kit. She pulled out antiseptic wipes and a roll of clean, white gauze.

She unwrapped the makeshift bandage. The sting of the antiseptic on the open wound was a welcome shock, a sharp, clean pain that cut through the fog. Each searing wipe was a reminder. Each wrap of gauze, a promise.

She looked back at her reflection, at the woman with the burning eyes.

She knew this face was not entirely her own. The original Faye had died in that bathtub, her last breath bubbling up through bloody water. But her name, Faye Barnes, belonged to this body now. And this body's debts, its grief, its unfinished business, those belonged to her too.

"Your debts," she whispered, her voice raspy. "I will collect them."

"Your life," she promised, "I will live it well."

She walked out of the bathroom, ignoring the bloody water still pooled on the floor. She strode to the walk-in closet.

And stopped.

It was a sea of gray. Sweaters in charcoal and ash. Slacks in dove and slate. Dresses in muted, lifeless tones, all chosen to match his taste, to make her invisible, to erase every trace of the vibrant, ambitious girl she had once been. This was a wardrobe designed by a woman who had given up her own identity to become an accessory.

A wave of fury, raw and untamed, washed over her. She swept an arm across a rack, sending a cascade of cashmere and silk tumbling to the floor.

She wanted to burn it all.

Then, in the very back of the closet, tucked away like a forgotten secret, she saw it. A simple black dress. It was a dress the original Faye had bought before her marriage, a piece of her old self she had never had the courage to wear in this house.

The fabric was a heavy crepe, the cut clean and severe. It was a dress that did not ask for permission.

She pulled it on. It fit perfectly, skimming her body, the hem falling just above her knees. It showcased a frame that was slender but not fragile, a strength that had been hidden under layers of beige wool.

She took a deep, steadying breath. Her eyes in the mirror, still smudged with the remnants of that desperate makeup, blazed with something new.

She opened the bedroom door and walked out.