Episode 70: She is not happy!
The silence in the living room was suffocating. Alice had finally drifted off, her small head heavy against Sarah’s shoulder. Across from them, Andrew sat on the edge of the chair, looking like a man who had been hollowed out. He cleared his throat, his hand shaking as he ran it through his hair.
"I’m going to tell you as much about me as I need to tell," he began, his voice a low, gravelly rasp. He spoke of swaying outcomes in foreign cities and "doing what needed to be done" for the government. "I get paid from an account that technically doesn't exist. I’ve saved that money. But I want my photos to pay for our daughter’s college... because it’s pure. It’s not tied to my past."
Sarah felt a cold, sharp spark of fury. She wasn't some helpless bystander. She was a woman who had built her own success, a cybersecurity expert with three major apps to her name. She had her own fortune—money that didn't have a single drop of blood on it.
"You think I care about your hidden accounts, Andrew?" she whispered, her voice trembling with restrained rage. "I have more than enough to put Alice through college. I didn't marry you for security. I married you because I thought I knew who you were."
She was gearing up for a fight, expecting him to defend the money or the secrecy. Instead, Andrew looked her directly in the eyes. His gaze was raw, stripped of all the military coldness.
"I know why I fell in love with you," he said, his voice perfectly shaky, vibrating with a vulnerability that hit her harder than any shout could have. "Do you... do you remember why you fell in love with me?"
The question hung in the air, bruising and heavy. Sarah flinched, the wind taken completely out of her sails. She didn't have an answer—not one she wanted to admit while she was this angry.
"I need to put her down," she said, her voice cracking as she turned away. "Don't follow me."
She walked into the nursery, her movements robotic. She laid Alice in the crib, lingering to watch the baby’s peaceful face. When she finally emerged, she heard the heavy, uneven thud of Andrew’s boots on the stairs. He was heading for the master suite. Sarah followed a moment later, her footsteps silent.
She stood in the doorway of the bathroom, watching as the steam began to billow out from the massive walk-in enclosure. It wasn't just a shower; it was a miniature room of glass and stone, designed for luxury that felt grotesque in this moment. Andrew had already stripped, his clothes discarded in a heap near the glass door. Her breath hitched. The right side of his jeans was sodden with blood, seeping from a deep, jagged wound in his leg. His shirt was ruined, stained from both sides where the knife had pierced him.
Through the glass and the rising mist of the steam jets, she saw him. The enclosure was filling with heat from every direction, water beating down from the ceiling and walls. The "assessment" was horrific. Virtually no part of his body was untouched. His back was a map of purple and black bruises—the signature of the cliff fall. His shoulders were mottled with deep, plum-colored marks, and his ribs were a mosaic of trauma.
Every wound—the slashes on his arms, the puncture in his leg—had been stitched up with a grim, functional precision, but the skin around them was angry and swollen. He looked like he had been broken and put back together by a blind man. He was in massive, agonizing pain, yet he’d stood downstairs and asked her if she remembered loving him without a single complaint.
He stood in the center of that glass room, head bowed, oblivious to her watching him. The heat and the steam seemed to finally strip away the last of his strength. His hand reached for the stone bench, his fingers slipping on the wet surface.
Suddenly, his knees buckled.
The combination of blood loss, the trauma of the fall, and the crushing weight of his confession finally won. Andrew let out a soft, broken groan as he collapsed, his body sliding down the glass wall. He hit the floor of the steam room with a dull, wet thud, the water splashing over his face as he slumped into the corner, unconscious, leaving Sarah standing in the doorway with the silence of the house screaming in her ears.
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