For the next three months, Gabriel visited me exactly four times.

Not once did he ask whether I was in pain.

Not once did he ask whether I could move my fingers.

Every visit was about Natalie.

“Have you thought about your apology?”

“No.”

“You nearly ruined her reputation.”

I looked at my bandaged hands.

“And what did you ruin?”

Gabriel’s expression hardened.

“You still think you’re the victim.”

After that, I stopped speaking to him completely.

The doctors operated on my hands twice.

The damage was severe, but not hopeless.

My right hand recovered partial movement first.

My left was slower.

The first time I managed to hold a pen again, it slipped from my fingers after three seconds.

I stared at it on the floor.

Then I asked the nurse to pick it up.

I tried again.

Four seconds.

The next day, six.

A week later, I could write my name.

Clara Bennett.

Not Clara Cross.

Bennett.

The nurse smiled.

I cried.

That signature became the first thing my damaged hands created after Gabriel destroyed them.

And I used it to sign my divorce petition.

But Gabriel knew nothing.

I had instructed my lawyer to wait until the day I left.

Meanwhile, Natalie visited me.

She came alone.

She wore white.

Of course she did.

She closed the hospital-room door and looked at my hands.

“What a shame.”

I said nothing.

“You were talented.”

Still nothing.

Her smile widened.

“Gabriel told me you’ll apologize when you recover.”

I slowly raised my eyes.

“You know what happened.”

“Of course.”

She sat beside my bed.

“I knew exactly where the chapel cameras couldn’t see.”

My heart began pounding.

Natalie leaned closer.

“I scratched myself.”

She touched her neck.

“I fell deliberately.”

Then she smiled.

“And Gabriel believed me before you could even open your mouth.”

I wanted to reach for my phone.

But she noticed.

“Looking for this?”

She lifted it from the bedside table.

“You should be more careful.”

Then a voice came from the doorway.

“She doesn’t need to be.”

Natalie froze.

My rehabilitation nurse, Anna, stood there.

Beside her was my lawyer.

And behind them was a hospital security officer.

Natalie’s face drained of color.

My lawyer quietly raised his phone.

“Would you mind repeating that?”

Natalie jumped to her feet.

“You recorded me?”

“No.”

He pointed upward.

“The hospital installed a new security camera yesterday.”

For the first time, Natalie stopped smiling.

She rushed out.

I thought that was the end of it.

It wasn’t.

Two days later, my lawyer discovered something even worse.

The chapel had supposedly contained no useful footage.

That was a lie.

A camera across the corridor had captured part of the incident.

The original recording showed Natalie entering alone.

Eleven minutes later, I entered.

Then the footage captured her blocking the doorway when I tried to leave.

A reflection in the chapel’s glass panel showed enough.

Natalie grabbing me.

Me pushing her hands away.

Natalie deliberately scratching her own neck.

Then throwing herself onto the floor seconds before footsteps approached.

My lawyer asked the obvious question.

“Why wasn’t this shown to Gabriel?”

The hospital administrator went silent.

After pressure from our legal team, we got the answer.

Someone had requested that the recording be removed from the incident report.

That person was Natalie.

But she hadn’t done it herself.

She had used Gabriel’s assistant.

The same assistant who had called Gabriel and told him I had “attacked” her.

For three months, Gabriel had never investigated.

He had never asked.

He had simply believed the first story that gave him permission to punish me.

That mattered more to me than Natalie’s lie.

Because she had deceived him.

But Gabriel had chosen cruelty.

No lie had forced him to do that.

On the morning of my discharge, I dressed slowly.

Buttoning my coat took almost five minutes.

I refused help.

When I finally finished, my mother was waiting downstairs.

Gabriel thought my parents lived overseas.

He didn’t know my mother had quietly returned two months earlier.

He knew surprisingly little about the woman he had married.

My lawyer handed me the final documents.

“Are you certain?”

I looked back at the hospital.

“Yes.”

At 10:15 a.m., the divorce papers were delivered to Gabriel’s office.

At 10:20, my phone began ringing.

I turned it off.

At 11:00, my mother and I boarded a flight.

Destination: Copenhagen.

Years earlier, before marrying Gabriel, I had been offered a position at an architectural rehabilitation institute there.

They had heard about my injuries.

They couldn’t promise I would design professionally again.

But they offered me treatment.

Research work.

A beginning.

That was enough.

While my plane crossed the ocean, Gabriel finally watched the hospital footage.

I learned the details months later.

Apparently, he watched it three times.

The first time, standing.

The second, sitting.

By the third, he couldn’t look at the screen when Natalie scratched herself.

Then my lawyer played her hospital-room confession.

Natalie’s own voice filled his office.

“I scratched myself.”

“I fell deliberately.”

“Gabriel believed me before you could even open your mouth.”

Afterward, Gabriel said only one thing.

“Where is my wife?”

My lawyer placed the divorce papers before him.

“She isn’t your wife anymore.”

Gabriel came to the hospital anyway.

My room was empty.

The flowers were gone.

The closet was open.

The only thing left behind was my wedding ring.

I had placed it beside the bed.

Under it was a note.

Three words.

“You chose this.”

Gabriel reportedly stood there for almost an hour.

Then he went looking for Natalie.

But she had already disappeared.

Not because she feared Gabriel.

Because the police were looking for her.

During the investigation, they discovered that Natalie had transferred money from an account belonging to her late husband shortly before his death.

Large amounts.

Gabriel’s brother had supposedly died in a highway accident two years earlier.

Now investigators weren’t so certain it had been an accident.

Three weeks after I arrived in Denmark, my lawyer called.

“Clara, there’s something you need to know.”

I was in rehabilitation, practicing drawing straight lines with a mechanical brace attached to my wrist.

“What happened?”

“They reopened your brother-in-law’s death investigation.”

I stopped drawing.

“Because of Natalie?”

“Yes.”

“And there’s more.”

My lawyer hesitated.

“The police recovered deleted messages from her phone.”

“What messages?”

“Messages between Natalie and the man who drove the vehicle that struck her husband.”

My stomach tightened.

“She knew him?”

“Apparently.”

I stared at the unfinished line on the page.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because your name appears in their conversation.”

My fingers went cold.

“My name?”

“There’s a message from Natalie dated eight months before her husband died.”

He read it to me.

“Once Daniel is gone, Gabriel will take responsibility for me. The only problem will be Clara.”

I couldn’t speak.

My lawyer continued.

“There are dozens more.”

Natalie hadn’t begun hating me in that chapel.

She had been planning to remove me from Gabriel’s life for years.

But then he said something even stranger.

“Clara, the police found evidence that someone else knew what Natalie was doing.”

“Who?”

“They haven’t confirmed it yet.”

That evening, someone knocked on my apartment door.

My mother was asleep.

I approached cautiously.

A man stood outside.

I recognized him immediately.

Gabriel’s former driver.

He looked exhausted.

Terrified.

I opened the door only a few centimeters.

“How did you find me?”

“Mrs. Cross—”

“Bennett.”

He swallowed.

“Ms. Bennett, I need five minutes.”

“No.”

“It’s about the night Gabriel attacked you.”

My body stiffened.

“I know Natalie lied.”

“That isn’t what I came to tell you.”

He glanced down the hallway.

Then he pulled a small flash drive from his pocket.

“I was driving Mr. Cross that night.”

“So?”

“He received two calls before arriving at the hospital.”

“One from his assistant.”

“Yes.”

“And the other?”

The driver looked directly at me.

“That’s the problem.”

He pushed the flash drive through the opening.

“I recorded conversations in the car for security purposes.”

My heart began pounding.

“What’s on this?”

“The second call.”

I stared at him.

“Who called Gabriel?”

His answer made my blood run cold.

“His brother.”

I stopped breathing.

“That’s impossible.”

Daniel Cross had been dead for two years.

The driver nodded slowly.

“That’s what I thought too.”

Then he whispered:

“But I heard his voice myself.”