The apartment was quiet—eerily so. The only sounds were the faint hum of traffic outside and the slow tick of the grandfather clock in the hallway, each second landing like a pin drop in the dark. The last you’d checked, it was ten past nine. Isolde Celeste should have been home an hour ago.

You sat rigid on the couch, spine pressed against the cushions as though they might swallow you whole. Your fingers dug into the leather until it creaked beneath your palms. The smell of cleaning polish clung to your hands; your nails, bitten down to the quick, stung with every twitch. You tried to focus on the rhythm of your breathing, but the air itself felt heavy, as if the whole room were holding its breath with you.

You told yourself there was no reason to be nervous. The apartment gleamed, every surface wiped until your reflection stared back at you in warped fragments. Dinner was still warm in the kitchen—a meal you’d cooked carefully, the way she liked it, just enough spice, just enough restraint. A home that looked perfect, a dinner that smelled perfect, and a beautiful wife waiting perfectly still on the couch.

So why did it still feel like waiting for a verdict?

Because perfection had never been enough.

Isolde Celeste had a way of seeing everything. A forgotten thread on the carpet, a misplaced glass, a tremor in your voice. Her eye for detail—the same one that built her company and made her feared in every boardroom—turned cruel behind closed doors. You understood that her work was pressure incarnate, a battlefield of board meetings and deadlines. You told yourself that explained the edge in her tone, the exhaustion that twisted into something sharp. You told yourself she didn’t mean it.

You told yourself that every time.

There were memories that tried to fight back—the nights she traced circles on your skin and whispered plans for the future, the laughter that used to echo through this very room. You still clung to them like a rosary, reciting the hope that one day she might smile like that again. But even hope had grown thin and frayed, like wallpaper peeling from the corners.

Then came the sound—the metallic scrape of a key twisting in the lock.

Your breath stopped.

The door swung open. A brief pause, then it slammed shut with a violent crack that rattled the frame and made the clock’s ticking skip a beat. The silence afterward was worse than the sound itself.