Victoria's POV
I look at the white pill in my hand and know something is wrong.
The bottle says it's my antidepressant. The same one I've taken every morning for two years. But this pill looks different. Slightly bigger. A different shade of white.
My heart beats faster.
I hold it up to the window, looking at the tiny letters stamped on the side. The numbers don't match the medication label. Not even close.
"Victoria?" Marcus's voice cuts through my bedroom door. "Did you take your medication yet?"
I freeze. He never asks about my pills. Never. He just counts them every night to make sure I swallowed them all.
"Almost," I call back, trying to sound normal. Trying to sound like the broken, obedient wife he's turned me into.
My hand shakes as I quickly hide the wrong pill in my pocket. I grab an old pill from the back of my nightstand drawer—one I'd quietly saved weeks ago—and pop it in my mouth. I take a sip of water but don't swallow. When I hear Marcus's footsteps walk away from my door, I spit it into a tissue.
I've been trying to take these pills for three weeks now. At first, it was just a feeling. A whisper in my gut that something wasn't right. The fog in my brain was getting thicker, not smaller. I couldn't remember easy things. Couldn't think clearly. Couldn't even remember Daniel's face some days.
My baby boy. My beautiful seven-year-old who drowned two years ago while I was inside getting ice for my birthday party.
The guilt still crushes me every morning.
But now that the medication fog is clearing, I'm starting to remember things. Strange stuff. Wrong things.
Things about the day Daniel died.
I walk to my bathroom and lock the door. My reflection in the mirror startles me. I look like a ghost. Thin. Pale. Dead eyes. I'm only thirty-two, but I look fifty.
This is what sadness does, I tell myself. This is normal.
Except nothing about my life is normal anymore.
I pull the wrong pill from my pocket and compare it to the ones still in the bottle. They're definitely different. Someone switched them.
Marcus switched them.
But why? What are these pills really doing to me?
I wrap the wrong pill in toilet paper and hide it in the tampon box under the sink. Marcus never looks there. Then I splash cold water on my face and try to calm down.
Maybe I'm being nervous. Maybe the pharmacy just gave me a different generic name. That happens sometimes, right?
But Marcus's voice asking about my pills echoes in my head. He never asks. He just counts.
Unless he's expecting something different to happen today.
I grip the edge of the sink. My wedding ring catches the light. I remember when Marcus put it on my finger nine years ago. He'd looked at me like I was the most valuable thing in the world.
Now he looks at me like I'm a problem he's trying to solve.
No. Like I'm a project he's studying.
The thought makes my skin crawl.
I unlock the bathroom door and step into my bedroom. Our bedroom. Except Marcus hasn't slept here in two years. He moved into the guest room the week after Daniel's wake. Said he needed space to grieve.
But he didn't cry. He just became cold. Distant. A stranger wearing my husband's face.
I grab my phone from the nightstand. No messages. No missed calls. I have no friends left. They all moved away after Daniel died. They didn't know what to say to me, so they said nothing at all.
My parents won't talk to me either. They never approved of Marcus. They said he was too controlling, too ambitious, too fake. When I married him anyway, they cut me off totally.
I'm alone. Completely alone.
Exactly how Marcus wants me.
The realization hits me like ice water. This isn't a mistake. Marcus has been separating me on purpose. Controlling my pills. Controlling my therapist—who he picked for me. Controlling everything.
But why?
I walk downstairs, my bare feet silent on the wooden floors. The house is too big, too empty, too cold. It used to be filled with Daniel's laughing. His toys. His energy.
Now it's a museum of grief.
I find Marcus in the kitchen, drinking coffee and reading something on his laptop. He's beautiful in that polished, professor way. Dark hair graying at the temples. Sharp eyes. Expensive clothes. Everyone at the university thinks he's bright and charming.
They don't know what he's really like.
"Good morning," he says without looking up. "How did you sleep?"
"Fine," I lie.
"Any dreams?"
The question is lighthearted, but something about it feels like a test. Marcus is a psychology professor. He's always analyzing people, always watching for responses.
"No dreams," I say.
He finally looks at me, and I see it. That cunning look in his eyes. Like he's upset.
What was he expecting? What were those wrong pills meant to do to me?
"I have a late meeting tonight," Marcus says, closing his laptop. "Don't wait up."
He's had late talks every night for two years. I used to think he was avoiding me because he blamed me for Daniel's death.
Now I wonder if something else is going on.
"Marcus," I say before I can stop myself. "Do you hate me?"
He pauses at the kitchen doorway. For a moment, his mask slips, and I see something cold and strange underneath.
"I don't hate you, Victoria," he says softly. "I just don't think about you much at all anymore."
The words cut deeper than any scream could.
He leaves for work, and I'm alone again in the empty house.
I go back upstairs and stare at the pill bottle on my nightstand. My hand reaches for my phone. I need to call someone. Tell someone. But who would believe me? I'm the sad, crazy widow who let her son die. Who takes pills for sadness and can't remember what day it is half the time.
No one would believe Marcus is doing something to me.
Unless I find proof.
I grab the pill bottle and head toward Marcus's home office. The door is locked—it's always locked now—but I know where he hides the extra key. I used to clean his office every week before Daniel died.
Before I became too broken to be useful.
My hands shake as I open the door and step inside.
The office looks normal. Desk. Bookshelves. Filing boxes. But when I open the desk drawer, I find something that makes my blood run cold.
A notebook. My name written on the top in Marcus's neat handwriting.
I flip it open and start reading.
Subject 13: Victoria Chen
Day 742: Subject continues to show predicted deterioration. Memory loss going as planned. Increased medication dose should speed timeline. Subject stays unaware of observation.
My hands start to shake so hard I almost drop the notebook.
Subject? Timeline? Observation?
I flip through more pages. Detailed notes about my actions. My feelings. My fall. Written like I'm a lab rat, not his wife.
And at the bottom of today's entry, one line that stops my heart: Final phase starts tonight. Subject will not live to morning.
I hear the front door open downstairs.
Marcus is home.
But he just left five minutes ago.
Unless he knew I would look in his office.
Unless this is all part of his plan.
I hear his footsteps on the stairs, slow and deliberate. Coming toward me.
I'm stuck.