**CHAPTER 9**
AVA'S POV
The silence after Lisa left was worse than the screaming.
I stood in the kitchen with my skirt still pushed up on one side and Marcus’s c*m sliding down my thigh, staring at the door like she might walk back through it and take it all back. She didn’t. The rain kept falling. The house felt too big.
Marcus didn’t try to comfort me. He just looked at me for a long second, then said, “Go clean up.”
I didn’t move.
“Ava.”
“She hates me.”
“Yes.”
The way he said it — flat, unsurprised — made something ugly twist in my chest. I wanted him to feel even a fraction of what I was feeling. He didn’t. He just walked past me, grabbed a glass of water, and drank it like we hadn’t just destroyed his daughter.
I showered until the water went cold. When I came out, he was s
