11. Only Mine to Punish

11. Only Mine to Punish

Tania rounded on Caleb the moment she found him. “You did this.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You knew. You sat there last night and listened to me talk about it, and you already knew.”

He didn’t deny it fast enough. That silence told her everything.

Something in her chest gave way completely. She grabbed the nearest vase off the side table and hurled it at the floor, glass exploding across the tile.

Sophia appeared in the doorway almost instantly, drawn by the noise, and rushed toward the mess like she couldn’t help herself. A shard caught her palm as she reached down, a thin line of blood welling up.

“She’s trying to kill me!” Sophia shrieked, cradling her hand. “Somebody call the police! She’s lost her mind!”

Two officers arrived within the hour. Tania didn’t fight them when they came for her. She simply turned and looked at Caleb one last time before they led her out, her eyes burning with something far past anger.

 

• • •

 

Nicole arrived just as the officers were walking Tania out to the car, his eyes going wide with disbelief.

“She did what?”

“She smashed a vase,” Caleb said flatly. “Sophia got cut.”

Nicole looked between him and Sophia, who stood dabbing at her palm with visible satisfaction. “Why are you turning her into a monster, Caleb? She used to be the calmest person I knew.”

Sophia opened her mouth to say something sympathetic. Nicole didn’t even glance her way.

“I’m done watching this,” Nicole said, and left without another word to either of them.

Once she was gone, Caleb turned on Sophia. “Why did you call the police? That wasn’t your call to make.”

Sophia’s satisfaction curdled fast into something closer to fear. She slipped away to a corner of the room and made a quiet call of her own, terrified that Caleb might march down to the station and bail Tania out within the hour, leaving her to answer for the accusation alone.

Caleb was already on the phone with someone else, his voice low and even, the kind of calm that had nothing reassuring in it.

Sophia caught only fragments of what he said. Enough to go pale. Enough that she didn’t sleep at all that night.

 

• • •

 

The cell was cold, the blanket thin, and Tania spent most of the night staring at the ceiling, mourning a company that no longer existed and a dream that had lasted exactly as long as it took someone to make one phone call.

“Can I make a call?” she asked the officer on duty.

“No calls.”

Later that night, the cell door opened, and three women stepped inside, each one built like they did this for a living. Tania barely had time to stand before the first blow landed.

She curled in on herself, absorbing hit after hit, her vision starting to blur at the edges, when the cell door slammed open again.

Caleb stood in the doorway, and whatever calm he’d carried out of the estate was gone entirely.

“Amputate their arms,” he told the guard flatly. “All three.”

The women were dragged out screaming. Caleb crossed the cell and pulled Tania up by the arm, more careful than his voice suggested.

“You’re only mine to punish,” he said.

Tania looked up at him, blood at the corner of her mouth, and found something in herself steady enough to answer. “I hate you. Monster.”

 

• • •

 

Caleb took her straight to the hospital. Dr. Jeff came running the moment he saw the state of her, his usual calm cracking at the edges.

“What happened to her?”

No one answered. Dr. Jeff didn’t push further, moving instead to put her on a strict new round of medication, quietly keeping the worst of her numbers from the man pacing outside the room.

When Tania finally opened her eyes, Caleb was sitting in the chair beside her bed, arms crossed, that same cold amusement back in his expression.

“I never knew you had a thing for middle-aged men,” he said.

Tania closed her eyes again, letting the words land, letting them hurt exactly as much as they wanted to and no more.

“Your words don’t hurt me anymore,” she said quietly. “Do you know whose words still affect me, Caleb? Only the people I actually care about.”

 

• • •

 

Caleb stormed out of the hospital minutes later, Marcus hurrying to catch up with him.

“Sir, your arm, you shouldn’t be driving—”

Caleb didn’t stop. He drove straight to the cemetery instead, a bundle of white lilies sitting on the passenger seat, and knelt in front of his mother’s grave the way he did every time something inside him felt like it was cracking apart.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, arranging the flowers with his one good hand. “I married the enemy’s daughter. I let her get under my skin. I let her control every single thing I feel.”

He stayed there long after the flowers were arranged, staring at his mother’s name carved into the stone.

“Isn’t this family cruel?” he murmured. “Isn’t it cruel that I can’t stop loving the one person I’m supposed to hate?”