Chapter 5
Caleb didn’t stay on the island every hour of the day. Meetings pulled him away for long stretches, and Tania learned to treasure those hours. She would walk down to the water alone and sit in the sand until her thoughts went quiet.
She was there one afternoon, watching the waves come in, when a shadow fell over her.
“Gabriel.”
He sat down beside her without asking. “I followed the news. I had to see you.”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“I don’t care.” He reached over and took her hand. “Tania, I love you. I’ve loved you since college. Let me take you away from him.”
She tried to pull her hand back, but he held on and pulled her into a hug instead, his arms tight around her.
Then she saw Caleb walking toward them across the sand.
Tania shoved Gabriel back and slapped him, hard, the sound sharp over the noise of the waves.
“Don’t touch me again,” she said, loud enough for Caleb to hear.
Gabriel stumbled back, one hand pressed to his cheek. He didn’t argue. He didn’t look angry either. As Tania walked away toward Caleb, Gabriel watched her go, and something in his face softened instead of hardened.
She had slapped him to protect him. He was sure of it. And somehow, that only made him want her more.
• • •
Caleb’s business partners arrived on the island for a week of meetings, and every one of them assumed Tania was simply his wife, nothing more. They complimented the couple constantly. “You two make it look easy,” one of the wives said one evening, squeezing Tania’s arm.
Tania smiled and said nothing.
That night, Caleb hosted a dinner outdoors, torches lit along the beach, wine glasses refilled again and again by quiet staff. Tania drank more than she meant to. By the time the guests were gone, the world had gone soft and tilted at the edges.
She found Caleb alone on the patio.
“You destroyed me,” she said, and shoved his chest with both hands. “You destroyed me and you don’t even care.”
She hit him again, weaker this time, her fists barely landing before her legs gave out. Caleb caught her before she hit the ground.
She cried into his shirt until she fell asleep in his arms, and he carried her inside and laid her down on the bed.
He didn’t stay. He walked out to the balcony instead and stood there for a long time, looking out at the dark water.
He still loved her. He hated that he still loved her. And somewhere underneath both of those things sat the plan he’d built for her over the last two years, a plan he wasn’t ready to let go of yet.
• • •
Tania woke up with a pounding head and the smell of soup drifting in from the kitchen.
She followed it, and found a bowl already waiting on the counter. One spoonful in, she stopped.
This tasted exactly like something Caleb used to make her, back when they were newly married and he still cooked for her on weekends.
“Who made this?” she asked the staff member clearing dishes nearby.
The woman looked confused. “You did, ma’am. Early this morning. Don’t you remember?”
Tania didn’t remember. She set the spoon down, unsettled, and went looking for Caleb instead.
She found him out on the terrace. Sophia sat beside him with the baby in her lap, and Caleb was leaning down, making faces at the baby, laughing at something small and quiet.
Then Sophia noticed Tania standing in the doorway.
She reached over and rested her hand on Caleb’s arm, leaning into him, smiling like she belonged there.
Tania didn’t say anything. She turned around, walked straight to the nearest bathroom, and locked the door behind her.
Her stomach turned. She dropped to her knees over the toilet and threw up, and when she wiped her mouth, there was blood on the back of her hand.
• • •
Caleb found her in the bedroom an hour later, still pale, still shaking slightly.
“Let me go,” Tania said quietly. “Let me go live somewhere else. Let Sophia have you. I’m tired, Caleb.”
“Never.”
“Why not? You clearly want her.”
Something cold moved behind his eyes. “Does it hurt? Good. If jealousy could kill you, I’d let it.”
He didn’t know Sophia was standing just outside the door. She heard every word, and it planted an idea.
The next afternoon, Sophia left the baby with Tania and disappeared, claiming an emergency call she needed to take alone. She left a diaper bag on the counter too, already packed with a bottle of formula.
The baby wouldn’t stop crying. Tania picked her up and rocked her gently, humming something low, until the crying finally settled into small hiccups against her shoulder.
She warmed the bottle from the bag herself, feeding the baby slowly, watching her tiny fingers curl around Tania’s own. For a moment, she let herself imagine this was her own daughter, the one she’d lost, given a second chance.
Sophia burst back into the room only minutes later.
“What did you give her?” Sophia snatched the baby out of Tania’s arms. “What was in that bottle?”
“The formula in the bag. The one you left.”
“She’s allergic to that brand! Everyone knows that!” Sophia was already running for the door, the baby beginning to wail again in her arms. “You did this on purpose!”
• • •
The baby began throwing up within minutes, her small body shaking with each wave of it. Caleb scooped her up and ran for the car, Sophia close behind him, both of them speeding toward the small clinic on the other side of the island.
Sophia cried the entire drive, and once they arrived, Caleb held her while the doctors worked, murmuring that it would be alright, that Sia would be fine.
When he finally came back to the villa hours later, his face had changed into something Tania barely recognized.
He crossed the room and gripped her by the throat, pinning her against the wall.
“You tried to kill her,” he said, low and shaking. “You’re no different from your mother. A murderer. It runs in the blood.”
“Caleb, I didn’t know, the bag was already packed, I would never—”
He wasn’t listening. His grip only tightened until she couldn’t get another word out.
His phone rang. He let her go to answer it. Sophia’s voice came through the speaker, small and frightened, saying she didn’t trust the local doctors, that she wanted Sia flown somewhere better.
Caleb left within the hour.
Tania found out later, from one of the staff, that he’d also canceled the rest of his business meetings on the island entirely and flown back to the country with Sophia and the baby, without a single word to her.