He Thought I Complained About His Size. I Meant My Snake.

§PROLOGUE

I was in my private online forum, crafting a post with the kind of focus usually reserved for bomb defusal.

I'm at my wit's end with this one, I typed, my fingers flying across the keyboard.

He’s so thin, like, pinky-finger thin.

Is it normal for them to be this… limp? So weak he can’t even hold his head up?

A sudden, violent bang echoed through the room as my bedroom door was thrown open.

My husband, Rhett Montgomery, stood there, his jaw tight, his knuckles white on the doorknob.

"Don't think for a second," he hissed, his voice a low growl that vibrated with barely suppressed rage, "that saying things like that will get my attention!"

He slammed the door shut, leaving me staring at the wood, my heart hammering against my ribs.

I glanced down at the glass terrarium on my dresser.

Inside, Pip, my new baby ball python, was curled into a tiny, unmoving knot.

I sighed.

This was going to be a problem.

§01

Our marriage contract was cold, clean, and brutally efficient, much like the man who’d presented it to me on our wedding night.

One year.

That was the deal.

I would play the role of the dutiful Mrs. Montgomery to help him secure controlling interest in his family’s company, Keystone Holdings.

In return, he would provide the alliance my family’s struggling business desperately needed, plus a generous settlement upon our "amicable" divorce.

The most important clause, underlined in black ink, was Clause 7: No emotional entanglement.

No feelings.

No intimacy.

No problem, I had thought.

Three months in, we were excelling at that part.

We lived as ghosts in the same sprawling estate, two ships passing in the night with nary a ripple.

He worked, he went to the gym, he played golf.

I read, I managed the house staff, and I secretly tended to my small collection of exotic pets.

It was a perfectly hollow, perfectly stable arrangement.

Until Pip.

An hour after the first door-slamming incident, I was on a call with the vet.

"Yes, his body is just… very soft," I explained, my voice hushed as I paced my room.

"Limp. And he seems to have no strength at all, he can't even lift his head..."

The door to the hallway creaked.

I froze.

I heard the distinct sound of Rhett’s footsteps pausing outside my room, then continuing down the hall.

My blood ran cold.

He’d been listening.

Later that evening, I was at my vanity, researching high-protein diets for malnourished reptiles, when the door swung open again.

No knock.

Never a knock.

"What were you talking about on the phone?" he demanded, standing stiffly in the doorway.

"I was at the hospital," I lied smoothly, my mind racing. "A check-up."

"I see," he said, his voice dripping with ice. "And the doctor confirmed it?"

"Confirmed what?"

"That it's a… pre-existing condition," he ground out, the words sounding like they were physically painful for him to say. "From before you met me."

I just stared at him, utterly baffled.

"Yes," I said slowly, deciding to just agree with whatever insane narrative was playing out in his head. "It's a genetic thing. Nothing to be done."

His expression hardened into something unreadable.

"Fine," he clipped, and then he was gone.

I was beginning to think my husband was losing his mind.

§02

The next evening, I was halfway through dinner, a blessedly solitary affair, when I heard the shower in his master suite turn off.

I braced myself.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, he descended the grand staircase.

Wearing nothing but a low-slung white towel wrapped around his hips.

I choked on my quinoa.

Download the novellia app, Search 【 884591 】reads the whole book.