She hadn’t slept. Her shift wasn’t until noon, but she had needed to get out of that house away from Leo, away from the suffocating silence that now loomed between them like a third presence.

She passed by the pediatrics wing, then the ER, her mind spinning with fragments of last night’s confrontation with Mrs. Kavinsky. The words still echoed in her ears: "You're not the victim, Lily. You're the wife. Start acting like it." She had wanted to scream. Instead, she’d gone numb. But that numbness had festered overnight into something darker. And now, seeing Kella strutting through the staff corridor like she owned the hospital, that something clawed...