Page 225 of Wrong Marriage. Right Groom
His chest rose and fell heavily.
“Do you think for one fucking second I like the way I am?” The words tore out of him, raw and jagged.
“This weight I carry every day—the nightmares that won’t let me sleep? You think I enjoy being this hollow shell? Especially when there’s no one I can trust enough to lay it all bare with. No one who can hold the darkness without breaking or running.”
He laughed, bitter and broken, the sound echoing like a gunshot in the quiet room.
“You want to be my wife so badly. And God help me, I long for you sometimes—ache for you in ways that make me hate myself more. But the way you act, the way you react... it’s everything I despise in a woman.”
“Like a frightened child demanding constant reassurance instead of standing beside a man who’s drowning in blood and memory. I can’t love you like this. Hell, I don’t even know if I’m capable of it anymore.”
The album stayed gripped in his hand, knuckles pale and straining.
“If you want a divorce, bring the papers. I’ll sign them right now. Stop threatening to leave and just do it. Then you can go back to being exactly what you always wanted to be—the nanny. Safe. Separate. Unburdened by a monster like me.”
For a heartbeat, the violence simmering behind his eyes threatened to erupt—he could have thrown it, shattered the lamp, put his fist through the wall.
The mafia boss in him knew how to destroy.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he simply stared at me. A long, heavy, devastating stare that stretched far beyond comfort.
It held everything unsaid: the love he couldn’t give, the pain he couldn’t share, the reverence for a dead woman that still ruled him more than any living one ever could.
Then, without another word, he turned.
His broad back rigid, his hand trembling under the weight of memories he refused to let go of, he walked back into Zara’s space.
He moved toward her belongings with a slow, deliberate care that didn’t belong to a man moments away from fury. It belonged to someone entering sacred ground.
Someone returning to ritual.
He gathered the scattered photographs from where I had been holding them, aligning the edges with precise attention, smoothing them as though even the slightest wrinkle might dishonor what they represented.
The albums were closed carefully.
Closed like sealing something fragile and irreplaceable.
Then he moved to the silk scarf I had touched.
He picked it up gently, smoothing the fabric between his fingers before refolding it with meticulous precision.
Every crease was corrected. Every edge aligned perfectly.
The cashmere throw followed.
Folded slowly and reverently.
Then the pregnancy journal.
His hand lingered for a moment longer on that one.
Just a fraction of hesitation.
Then he closed it carefully and returned it to its exact place, as if the position mattered more than anything else in the room.
Every action was tender.
