CALLAHAN POV
Ten seconds. That's how long it would take me to kill Morgana Thrace.
Three seconds to stand from this damned wheelchair. Four seconds to cross the ballroom. Two seconds to snap her neck. One second to make it look like she fainted.
I counted it out in my head while Vesper wheeled me to our car, her hands shaking on the handles. She thought I couldn't feel it. The trembling. The rage she kept buried under that perfect smile.
My wife was good at pretending. Almost as good as me.
The driver opened the door. Vesper moved to help me from the wheelchair to the backseat—same routine we'd done a thousand times. Her hands touched my arm, my shoulder, supporting weight I didn't need supported.
I wanted to grab her wrist. Pull her down onto my lap. Show her exactly what a "dying cripple" could do.
Instead, I let myself lean on her. Weak. Helpless. The role I'd played for five years.
She settled into the seat beside me, staring out the window. Silent. Her violet eyes were distant, lost somewhere I couldn't follow.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
I pulled it out. Text from Seraphine, my right hand in the shadows: MORGANA UPDATE: Hired PI firm. Got your medical records. Financial statements. Marriage contract. She knows something's wrong. Moving fast.
My jaw clenched. I typed back with one hand: How fast?
Planning to file fraud lawsuit Monday. She has evidence. Not enough to prove anything, but enough to start investigation.
Monday. Three days from now.
Morgana wouldn't live to see Monday.
I glanced at Vesper. She was still staring out the window, but I saw her reflection in the glass. Tears sliding down her cheeks, silent and endless.
Something cracked in my chest. Something dangerous.
"I'm sorry you endure this because of me," I said quietly.
Her laugh was bitter, broken. "It's what I signed up for."
"You signed up to play wife to a dying man. Not to be humiliated by your own family."
"Same thing, isn't it?" She wiped her eyes roughly. "Everyone knows why I married you. The money. The contract. I'm exactly what Morgana says I am."
"No." The word came out harder than I meant it to. "You're not."
She finally looked at me. Those violet eyes—God, they destroyed me every time. "Then what am I, Callahan? Tell me. Because I don't know anymore."
Mine. The word screamed in my head. You're mine. You've been mine since the day you signed that contract. Since before that, if I'm being honest.
But I couldn't say it. Not yet. Not while she still thought I was dying. Not while she still saw me as the wheelchair, the medical reports, the public invalid.
"You're stronger than any of them," I said instead. "You sacrificed everything for your father. Your education. Your future. That's not weakness, Vesper. That's love."
"Love." She laughed again, sharper this time. "My father hasn't spoken to me in two years. Isolde acts like I don't exist. Morgana steals my work and calls me a whore. Some love."
The car pulled up to our building. Penthouse tower. Sixty floors of steel and glass reaching into the sky.
My empire. My fortress. My cage.
Vesper helped me into the wheelchair again—hands gentle, touch careful. She'd gotten good at this over five years. Knew exactly how to support me without making it obvious. Knew how to play the devoted wife.
She didn't know I felt every single touch like fire on my skin.
We rode the elevator in silence. I watched her in the mirrored walls. Watched the way she held herself together with pure stubbornness. Watched the tears she refused to let fall again.
My phone buzzed.
Seraphine: Orders?
I typed one-handed: Tomorrow night. Standard protocol. Make it loud.
The elevator doors opened to our penthouse. Vesper wheeled me inside.
"Do you need anything?" she asked. Polite. Distant. The question she asked every night.
"No. Thank you."
She nodded and turned toward her bedroom—the east wing, as far from mine as possible. That was in the contract too. Separate spaces. Separate lives.
I watched her walk away. Watched her shoulders shake with sobs she thought I couldn't hear.
It took everything in me not to stand up. Not to follow her. Not to kick down that bedroom door and tell her the truth.
I'm not dying. I'm not weak. I'm the monster the whole city fears, and I've been watching you for five years, and I want you so badly it's killing me.
But control was how you survived in my world. Control was how you won.
So I wheeled myself to my study and locked the door.
Then I stood up.
I walked to the window—my real view of the city, not the one from a wheelchair. Pulled out my real phone, not the one Vesper saw. Dialed.
"Seraphine. Morgana Thrace. Tomorrow, 11 PM. She'll be leaving her office late—she always does on Fridays. Make it look like a robbery gone wrong. No—" I paused. "Actually, make it a message. The Architect's signature. Twenty-seven cuts. I want everyone to know."
"Understood. Any particular reason for the signature?"
I looked at the closed door of Vesper's bedroom across the penthouse. "She hurt my wife. She needs to suffer for it."
I ended the call and pulled up the security feed. Camera in Vesper's room—she didn't know about it. She was sitting on her bed, face in her hands, crying.
My control cracked a little more.
I opened my laptop and accessed Morgana's schedule. Tomorrow night, she'd be working late at the office. Alone. Vulnerable.
Perfect.
I started typing the execution plan, detailing every step. Every cut. Every—
A sound made me freeze.
Footsteps. In the hallway. Coming toward my study.
Vesper's footsteps.
I had three seconds to get back in the wheelchair. I launched myself toward it—
The door handle turned.
"Callahan? I heard voices. Are you—"
The door opened.
Vesper stood there in her nightgown, eyes red from crying.
And I stood there by the window. Fully upright. Perfectly balanced. No trembling. No weakness.
Our eyes locked.
Time stopped.
I saw the exact moment the truth hit her. Saw her face go white. Saw her take a step back.
"You—" Her voice cracked. "You're standing."