She stared at him with loathing. If they were getting everything out in the open, then she didn’t have to pretend to be the adoring wife anymore. “I knew you chose me because I was pretty enough to fit into your world, but uneducated enough to go along with your plans. Well, guess what?” She pushed herself off the floor and stood on shaking legs. “I never trusted you, which is why I named someone else as the beneficiary of my shares.”

He stared at her in shocked silence for a moment, then lashed out, slapping her so hard her head rocked back. She expected the vicious attack though and stayed on her feet.

“Who is it?” he demanded.

She shook her head. “I’m not that stupid.”

“Your father?” he shouted the question. “It has to be him. You don’t have anyone else.”

“Don’t I?” she asked, arching a brow.

Of course she’d named her father as her heir. She would have done it anyway, even if she loved her husband. Demir had plenty of money, but her father had next to nothing. If anything happened to her, she wanted her father taken care of. She’d known Demir wouldn’t approve, so she hadn’t told him. Now she had to bluff for her life.

He grabbed her by the throat again, shaking her. “Tell me who you named!”

“Never!” she snarled.

“Then I guess it doesn’t matter if you live or die, the outcome is the same. I’m down one wife and all her shares in my company.”

She forced a smile to her lips and mouthed the words, “Our company.”

If she was going to die, then she’d do it pissing off her loser of a husband. He thought she was so naïve… that day he found her selling oysters alongside her father and asked her out, she’d agreed solely based on the money he exuded. She wanted out of poverty and he was her ticket, it didn’t matter that she didn’t love him.

As his fingers tightened and the realization set in that this was it, she made peace with herself. She’d done some shitty, fucked up things in her life, but she wasn’t a bad person. She’d wanted to lift her dad out of the hellhole of poverty he lived in, and she wanted to save Yasmin from the same fate as Volkan’s first wife.

Of course, making peace didn’t mean she had to go peacefully. She was going to make damn sure if Demir used his brute strength to kill her that she got a few licks in.