From Ashes: The Unwanted Wife's Return

Ellie Gilbert POV:

The hours that followed were a blur of pain and violation, a black hole of terror that consumed everything. Time ceased to exist. There was only darkness, the stench of stale beer, the brutal hands, and the gut-wrenching finality of my own despair. They used me, broke me, and when they were done, they dumped me like a piece of trash in a desolate alley, the transfer from Jace finally having come through.

One of Jace's lower-level security men found me. He didn't rush to help. He stood a few feet away, his face a mask of undisguised disgust, as if I were something unclean. He spoke into his wrist communicator, his voice clipped. "I've found her. She's... compromised."

Compromised. Not hurt. Not traumatized. Compromised. Like a business deal gone wrong.

Jace arrived. He wasn't alone. Fallon was with him, clinging to his arm, her eyes wide with a kind of morbid, theatrical horror. She was wearing one of his pristine white shirts, a clear signal of their newfound intimacy.

He took one look at me-my torn clothes, the bruises blooming on my skin, the vacant look in my eyes-and the faintest flicker of pity in his expression was instantly replaced by revulsion. The same disgust I had seen on his employee's face. I was dirty. I was spoiled. I had been touched by other men, and in his possessive, twisted mind, that made me worthless.

"Get her up," he commanded his men. "Take her back to the penthouse. Clean her up."

He didn't touch me. He didn't even speak to me. He turned his back and led Fallon away, his arm a protective shield around her, whispering reassurances that the ugly sight was over.

Back in the penthouse, I stood under the scalding spray of the shower for over an hour, scrubbing at my skin until it was raw, trying to wash away the filth, the memory, the feel of their hands. But it was useless. The stains were on the inside.

When I emerged, wrapped in a robe, Jace was waiting in my bedroom. The room had been put back in order, but the violation lingered in the air.

"This is a mess, Ellie," he said, his voice cold and accusatory. He paced the room, running a hand through his perfect hair. "The media is going to have a field day with this."

I stared at him, my voice a dead thing. "I was raped, Jace."

He flinched, the word itself an offense to his delicate sensibilities. "Don't be so crude," he snapped. "What's done is on you! If you hadn't been so difficult, so dramatic... The situation would have never escalated. Fallon was terrified!"

The sheer, breathtaking injustice of his words finally broke through my shock. A volcanic rage, hot and cleansing, erupted from the core of my being.

"On me?" I shrieked, my voice raw. "You threw me to the wolves, Jace! You dressed me up as your whore and served me on a platter to save her! You left me there to be torn apart while you were posing for the cameras, playing the hero!"

A flicker of guilt, of shame, crossed his face. He knew it was true. "That's not-"

"Don't lie!" I screamed, advancing on him, my grief and fury making me fearless. "You disgust me. You stand there in your thousand-dollar suit, with your philanthropist reputation, pretending to be a saint, but you are a monster. You are the vilest, most hypocritical creature I have ever had the misfortune to know. You and your precious Fallon deserve each other. You are two sides of the same worthless coin."

He stared at me, for the first time, looking truly shaken. He had never seen this side of me. The consultant was gone. The loving wife was dead. All that was left was a woman with nothing to lose.

He turned and fled the room, unable to face the truth I had thrown at him.

I walked back into the bathroom and turned on the shower again. But this time, I wasn't trying to wash anything away. I was performing a baptism. I methodically took every bottle of shampoo, every conditioner, every expensive cream and lotion he had ever bought for me and emptied them down the drain. I took the plush towels, the silk robe, everything that carried his scent, his touch, his memory, and dumped them into the overflowing bathtub.

As the water swirled, carrying the last vestiges of my old life away, I felt a strange sense of peace. The love was gone. The hope was gone. But in their place, something new was growing. A cold, hard certainty. I was finally, irrevocably, free of him.