A Widow's Poison, A Wife's Rebellion novel Chapter 140

The air at the estate was thick with tension and the lingering, acrid smell of gasoline as the butler frantically called for an ambulance.

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In the car, Fairfax instinctively reached for Starla’s hand, but she flinched away, leaving his hand to close on empty air. A hollow ache spread through his chest.

“During that year at the estate,” he began, his voice strained, “did she often try to hit you?”

They had lived with his family for the first year of their marriage. He was at the office during the day and never noticed anything amiss when he came home at night.

The real conflict, he thought, had started after she lost their first child. It was because of that loss that he had moved them out. But hearing her say “many times” today, he finally understood that behind the facade of peaceful evenings, countless battles had been fought during the day.

And he, in his ignorance, had known nothing. He had assumed all the friction with his family had started after they moved, a result of their elders’ displeasure. But it had been happening all along.

Starla didn’t answer. She was methodically wiping the hand that had touched Darleen with a wet wipe, her neutral expression a mask for deep disgust.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked again.

“Tell you?” She scoffed. “The house was thrown into chaos after an outsider arrived. You would have just sided with them and called me immature, wouldn’t you? Besides, we barely knew each other back then.”

“What do you mean, we barely knew each other?” he snapped, stung by her words. They were husband and wife. How could she say that?

“It’s not that I never had expectations for you,” she said, her voice softening slightly before she paused. “When you moved me out of the Yelchin estate, you were so resolute. I truly believed that with you protecting me, your family couldn’t touch me.”

Back then, she had thought like most women: what did the elders’ disapproval matter? She wasn’t marrying them.

But then, his mother and sister had taken the house he’d bought for them, along with everything else he’d given her.

Worse still, when it came to Brinley, he had seamlessly sided with his family. She had seen their scheme for what it was, but when she told him Brinley was responsible for her miscarriage, he hadn’t believed her.

This last time was the final straw. He hadn’t believed she was pregnant, listening instead to a bribed doctor who claimed she would struggle to conceive again. That, she could not forgive.