Tom was the perfect husband—on the surface. With his charisma and thoughtful gestures, it was easy to fall for him. But behind closed doors, he’d explode over the smallest things: how I breathed, how I made tea, how I asked simple questions. I blamed work stress, told myself it would pass—until I discovered a calendar in his office. Every red dot marked a night he’d started a fight and vanished. It wasn’t random. It was planned.
I tracked the pattern. The next dot was in five days. So I waited—sweet, supportive, silent—until he predictably erupted over nothing and stormed off. This time, I followed him to a dingy building labeled “Personal Power & Boundaries for the Modern Man.” Inside, I heard his voice. He was teaching other men how to manipulate their partners with calculated emotional abuse. My blood ran cold.
