Ethan
I knew something was wrong the moment I saw her face. She came home late, her eyes red-rimmed and her body radiating a bone-deep weariness that had nothing to do with a long day at the office. She was a brilliant prosecutor, a warrior. But that night, she looked like a soldier who had just surrendered.
"I'm off the case," she said, her voice a flat, hollowed-out version of itself. She wouldn't look at me.
"What?" I said, stunned. "Olivia, what are you talking about? The grand jury is tomorrow. You're winning."
"It's over, Ethan," she said, her voice breaking. "I can't do it."
I went to her, trying to pull her into my arms, but she flinched away, wrapping her own arms around herself as if she were trying to hold herself together. "Talk to me," I pleaded. "What happened? What did they do?"
She wouldn't answer. She just stood in the middle of our living room, a ghost in our own home, and shook her head, tears streaming down her pale cheeks. Seeing her like this, so broken and defeated, was a thousand times worse than any physical blow. They had gotten to her. They had found a way to break her.
And I knew, with a sickening certainty, that it had something to do with me.
I let her go, my mind racing. She wouldn't tell me, but I had my own sources. My own army. I walked into my office and closed the door. I called Jake.
"Something's happened," I said, my voice grim. "Olivia just dropped the case. They got to her. I need to know how."
"I'm on it," Jake said, his voice all business. "Give me an hour."
It was the longest hour of my life. I paced the office like a caged animal, my rage and fear a toxic cocktail in my gut. While I waited, I made another call, to the ex-Mossad agent who was running my security team.
"I want eyes on my wife," I said. "24/7. And I want a full-court press on Michael Connolly. I want to know who he's talking to, where he's going, everything. No more subtlety. The gloves are off."
An hour later, Jake called back. "I've got it," he said, his voice tight with anger. "I was able to pull the phone records from the main line at the DA's office. An untraceable number called her office this afternoon. I can't get the audio, but I can get the metadata. The call was routed through a series of burner phones, but the origin signal… it pinged off a cell tower less than a mile from your office at the foundation. They were watching you, Ethan."
My blood ran cold. They had threatened me to get to her. They had used me as a weapon against my own wife. The sheer, diabolical cruelty of it took my breath away.
I hung up the phone, my hands shaking with a rage so pure it was almost clarifying. This was my fault. My campaign to discredit Connolly, my economic warfare—it had made me a target. And they had used that target to shoot her down.
I walked back into the living room. Olivia was curled up on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket, staring into the empty fireplace. She looked small, and fragile, and utterly defeated.
I sat down beside her, my heart aching. "They threatened me, didn't they?" I said softly.
Her head snapped up, her eyes wide with shock and fear. "How did you…?"
"It doesn't matter," I said, my voice gentle. "I know. And I know why you did it. You did it to protect me."
Sobs wracked her body, the raw, painful sound of a fighter who had been forced to surrender. I pulled her into my arms, and this time, she didn't resist. She clung to me, her tears soaking my shirt, her body trembling.
"I couldn't lose you," she whispered, her voice muffled against my chest. "I couldn't."
"You won't," I said, my voice a low, fierce promise. "You will never lose me."
I held her for a long time, rocking her gently, my own heart breaking for her. She had been willing to sacrifice her career, her life's ambition, for me. The depth of her love, of her loyalty, was a humbling, staggering thing.
But as I held her, my grief began to curdle into a cold, hard resolve. She had surrendered to protect me. But I had made no such promise. She was a prosecutor, bound by the rules of the law. I was not. They had threatened my wife. They had broken my world. And they thought they had won.
They had no idea who they were dealing with.
"It's not over," I whispered into her hair, my voice a vow. "This is not over."
She had tried to fight them with the law. I was going to fight them with everything else. I was going to burn their world to the ground. This wasn't about justice anymore. This was about vengeance. And I was just getting started.