“Mrs. Creed?” she repeated softly, almost mockingly.
Slowly, she lifted her tear-filled eyes toward him. Mascara stained her cheeks. Her lips trembled uncontrollably as she stared at the man standing over her like a stranger.
“Is that supposed to make me feel grateful?”
Her voice shook harder with every word.
“Is that all I am to you? A woman you handed your last name to out of pity?”
A bitter laugh escaped her trembling lips.
“So you can stand there feeling generous for throwing a title at me like charity?”
Her tear-filled eyes locked onto his.
“Like I’m some beggar who should be thankful just because you let me call myself Mrs. Creed?”
She swallowed painfully, her breathing turning uneven.
“What do I actually have, Elias?”
Her voice cracked.
“Tell me… what do I really have as your wife?”
She pushed herself upright slightly, though her body still trembled badly. One hand clutched her chest while the other wiped furiously at the tears that wouldn’t stop falling.
Her eyes turned redder and redder.
“I gave up everything for you,” she whispered painfully. “Everything.”
Her lips quivered.
“My pride. My self-respect. Even my dignity.”
The humiliation in her voice became unbearable.
She looked away for a second, like even saying the next words aloud destroyed something inside her.
“I begged you to sleep with me.”
A tear slid down her chin and dropped onto the floor between them.
“Do you even understand how humiliating that feels?” she whispered brokenly.
Her voice cracked apart completely.
“I begged my own husband to touch me… to want me…”
She let out another shattered laugh, shaking her head weakly as more tears spilled down her face.
“Was even that still not enough for you?!” she screamed suddenly.
The sound echoed violently through the room.
Elias visibly stiffened.
His back went rigid. His shoulders locked. Every muscle in his body tightened as though her words had struck somewhere he refused to acknowledge.