Chapter 1

Marisol

Through my life above sea as a mermaid, I had always seen posts online with the heading "Am I the Asshole for—" and I would've laughed so hard if you told me I'd soon have my own story to tell.

I was about to enter my husband's office, beaming, with a sleek box bag in my hand. Julian had always hated lunchboxes, said they made him look like a school boy, so I'd found an alternative so I could still bring him food.

His company had just hit a major jackpot, and while he hadn't told me the details, I still wanted to be there for him in any way I could. So I brought food, enough to keep his energy up before his big meeting.

The tides seem so angry today, I noted, reaching for the door knob.

Julian's office overlooked the sea itself, close enough that on a normal day you could hear waves lapping softly against the pillars below. But I was standing outside the door, and they were this loud.

Unease spread through my chest, but I brushed it off and told myself I was overthinking.

Big mistake.

The second the door swung open, and unbidden, a gasp tore out of me as the bag slipped from my fingers, hitting the floor with a soft thud I barely registered, right as a loud smack reverberated through the room.

My hand flew to my mouth and my eyes welled with tears, blurring the scene in front of me as if trying to wash it away, but not fast enough.

Julian was buried inside his secretary, who was bent over his desk in nothing but an unbuttoned shirt. And the loud smack was him smacking her ass.

Her moans filled the room, mixing with the slap of skin against skin, and every sound of it sickened me down to my bones.

Neither of them noticed me standing in the doorway.

"Master!" She cried out as he hauled her upright, her back arching flush against his chest. "Do I feel better than your wife?"

He laughed, breathless, dripping with a hunger I hadn't felt aimed at me in longer than I wanted to admit. Who was I kidding? I’d never received that kind of hunger from him ever in our marriage.

"A thousand times better, baby." He smacked her hip and sank his teeth into her collarbone. "This pussy is mine. You understand me? You feel too fucking good to let go."

"Julian." My voice came out smaller than I meant it to, cracked in all the edges. "Is this the big meeting you told me about?"

A lone tear slid down my cheek. Internally, I was shaking with poisonous hurt and rage. It felt like the whole of me was dying. Maybe because it was the whole of me that loved him. But I was so numb in the moment that all the rage was just bottled in, doubling the damage.

I had given this man six years of my life, and I hadn't given him small things either. I had sealed away The Abyssal Grace—the power the sea gave me, and highest honour that could be bestowed on a mermaid—so I could love him without my crown getting in the way. I had bent the tide to his will, commanded every ship flying his colors safely home through storms that should have swallowed them whole, all so his empire could grow fat and comfortable on an ocean that answered to me and me alone.

And this was what he did with it. He took the sword I'd handed him with my own two hands and buried it in my back.

They sprang apart like they'd been scalded. Julian shoved himself between me and her, zipping up with jerky, panicked hands, and Celeste scrambled to fix her shirt behind him, smoothing her hair down like that would erase what I just saw.

She stepped up beside him instead of behind him. That told me everything. This definitely wasn’t the first time.

"Marisol." Julian said my name carefully, like I was a bomb he wasn't sure how to defuse. "This isn't what it looks like."

A broken laugh clawed its way out of my throat. "I burnt my hands in the kitchen while cooking for you. I backed you up with everything and abandoned my family for you. Yet, this is your fucking big meeting!?."

"Baby, let me explain—"

"Don't." My whole body shook, my voice climbing with it. "Don't you dare call me that right now. Do you have any idea what I gave up for you? Any idea at all?" He didn't. He never would. He thought I was just a devoted wife who'd married up, who cooked and packed his lunch and waited at home like a good little decoration. He had no idea what I'd buried at the bottom of the ocean the day I married him, or what it had cost me to keep it buried.

Julian ran a hand through his hair, that same boyish, sheepish gesture that used to make my knees weak when we were dating. Now it just made my skin crawl. How had I ever found that charming? It looked pathetic on him now, a grown man trying to charm his way out of getting caught with his mistress bent over his desk.

"You're overreacting." He actually had the nerve to sigh, like I was the inconvenience here. "It's not that deep, Marisol."

Celeste finally found her voice, tilting her chin up with a smirk that made my blood boil. "Honestly, you should've knocked." Her eyes raked over me, dismissive, like I was beneath her. "But I suppose that's what happens when all you're good for is folding laundry and packing lunch boxes."

My palm was moving before I knew it, aimed straight for her smug little face, but Julian caught my wrist mid-air and yanked me back so hard my shoulder screamed in protest.

Then his other hand closed around my throat.

"Julian—" I choked, clawing uselessly at his fingers. My hair had come loose from its clip, falling wild around my face, and my cheeks burned hot from the lack of air more than the humiliation, though there was plenty of that too. Tears streamed freely now, blurring him into a smear of a man I no longer recognized. "Please—let go—"

For one breath, his grip eased, and something in me stupidly, desperately hoped he'd come back to himself.

He hadn't.

He dragged me toward the window instead, his hand still locked around my throat, and shoved the glass open with his free arm. The wind screamed in, twelve floors of empty air waiting hungrily beneath us, and my heart dropped somewhere far below my feet as understanding hit me a half second before he lifted me clean off the ground.

"Did you ever love me?" I don't know why that was the question I chose. Not why, not how could you. Just that, five words to hold six years of my life, because I needed the truth before whatever came next.

Julian laughed right in my face, his expression smug. “You were always a liability Marisol. I only married you cause everyone wanted me to. I’ve never felt love towards you.”