Chapter 2

The officer couldn't help asking, "A man with no conscience like that—how good could he really have been?"

I didn't answer. I just kept crying.

Finn really had been good to me once.

Every month he handed over his whole paycheck.

I never wasted a cent of it.

I put it away for him.

Most of my own paycheck went in too.

I kept thinking that one day, if the chance came, he could start some small business of his own.

But once I got pregnant.

Everything changed.

He stopped handing over his paycheck, and cursed me for sitting at home doing nothing when there was nothing wrong with my hands or feet.

Then it got worse.

Even the food I ate, he counted down to the smallest detail.

What I could eat each day, how much I could eat.

He wouldn't let me take a cab when I went out, said I couldn't earn a single cent and only knew how to spend.

Once I walked to the hospital for a prenatal checkup.

A motorbike came shooting out of an alley and nearly ran me down.

I told him about it.

I wanted him to understand how dangerous it was for me to go to my checkups like that.

I was hoping he'd give me a little money so I could take a cab.

Instead he called me a drama queen.

Said I was blind, a motorbike that big coming out of an alley.

How could I not see it? Couldn't I get out of the way?

I didn't argue with him.

I just felt wronged, and my heart ached.

The tears wouldn't stop.

When he saw me crying, he called me a jinx, said I cried all day and dragged his luck down with me, that it was my fault his manager was always chewing him out.

Nothing I did ever pleased him.

Every day he was either picking a fight with me.

Or cursing at me.

To this day I still can't quite understand.

What the reason was.

That turned him into someone so different.

The afternoon of the second day after I was taken to the station.

My in-laws heard and rushed over, hiring a lawyer to bail me out.

Coming out of the station.

On the way home.

They spent the whole ride cursing their own son for having no conscience.

Once we got home.

Finn had the day off and wasn't at work. He'd ordered himself takeout and was eating while he played his game.

He looked up and saw us.

He frowned. "Mom, Dad, why did you go and bail her out?"

"You little punk, has that game rotted your brain?"

"She's your wife, and she's carrying your child."

"Over a piece of fish."

"You called the cops on her?"

Finn looked completely indifferent. He curled his lip. "Mom, Dad, this is between me and my wife. I'm teaching her how to be a decent, law-abiding person."

"What if the baby's born and grows up learning to steal like her?"

"So stay out of it. I know what I'm doing."

"If there's nothing else, you two should go."

Finn waved a hand, shooing his own parents out.

His mother was shaking with rage, her eyes red. "Finn, what has gotten into you?"

"She's your wife."

"How can you treat her like this?"

"If you break her heart, she'll leave you. Will you wake up already?"

Finn shrugged, unbothered.

"Oh, come on, it's fine."

"She has no one but me to depend on now."

"Go ahead, ask her."

"Would she dare leave me?"