The grieving, collapsed man of a moment before was gone entirely, and in his place stood someone rigid, and calm, and utterly without remorse, and in the narrow beam of the penlight, I watched his hand slide beneath his suit jacket and draw out a small object I could not, at first, identify.

Then I understood what it was.

And I understood, all at once, that the tears and the flowers and the collapse had all been a performance, and that my husband had not come to my hospital room to beg forgiveness.

He had come to finish what he had started.

Chapter 8 — Too Resilient

“You always were too resilient, Nora,” Julian whispered, his voice low and stripped of every trace of the emotion he had just performed.

“Selina told me you wouldn’t die from two simple wounds.