My Skin Was His Cruelest Canvas Chapter 1

I was born a "Butterfly Child." My skin is as fragile as a monarch’s wing—thin, translucent, and prone to tearing at the slightest touch.

When my family’s estate crumbled into bankruptcy, I went to the only person who could save us: my husband, Colin. He was the king of the city’s tech scene, a man who built an empire on cold logic.

Instead of a check, Colin took me to a dimly lit, high-end tattoo parlor in the Meatpacking District. He leaned against the leather chair, an arched brow mocking my desperation.

“One million for every tattoo,” he said, his voice like silk over gravel. “How much do you need, Maya?”

I knew this was his pound of flesh. He was punishing me because I’d dared to touch his precious little plaything, Lexi. I knew my skin couldn’t handle the needle. I knew it would be agony.

But I nodded anyway.

The first tattoo—a predatory, demonic sigil—was inked into the softest, most private skin of my thigh. I bit my tongue until it bled to keep from screaming.

The second, the word “MINE” in jagged script, was carved into the small of my back. The ink mixed with a steady flow of blood that wouldn't stop.

By the time the tenth tattoo was finished, my body was a map of infection and trauma. My consciousness was slipping away into a grey haze.

Colin didn't stay to help me up. He simply tossed a thick stack of bills onto my trembling chest.

Ten million Vietnamese Dong. In US dollars, it was barely four hundred bucks.

This time, I didn't scream. I didn't beg. I gathered the crumpled bills and looked up at him with a ghost of a smile.

“Thank you, Colin. This is enough.”

Enough to buy my mother a decent urn.

* * *

As I reached for the last bill, Colin’s polished Oxford boot pinned my hand to the floor.

“What did you call me?” He reached down, his fingers catching my chin in a bruising grip. “Usually, you’re so fond of calling me ‘husband.’ Why the change of heart?”

The pain from my skin was like a thousand hot needles. I kept my eyes down. For the first time in our marriage, I didn't look for the man I used to love.

“Give me the divorce papers, Colin. I’ll sign them.”

There was a time when a single tear from me would have broken him. But Colin’s eyes were cold, devoid of the tenderness that had once defined us.

He chuckled, a dry, hollow sound. “Divorce? I spent years nursing you back to health, Maya. I didn’t fix you just to let some other man break you in.”

He let go of my face as if he were bored. “From now on, you’re moving into the guest wing. Lexi is moving into the master suite. She’s delicate. She gets cold easily.”

I didn't fight him. I just nodded.

I stumbled out of the tattoo shop, my thin coat fluttering in the biting Manhattan wind. I counted the money again.

He’d given me an extra hundred.

I turned back, intending to return it—I wanted nothing more from him than exactly what I’d ‘earned.’ But through the glass door, I heard the tattoo artist’s excited voice.

“Mr. Sharon, the livestream just hit ten million viewers!”

The world tilted. The air left my lungs.

The shame hit me like a physical blow—the realization that my most private agony had been broadcast to the world. Every word etched into my skin felt a hundred times more painful now.

I have Epidermolysis Bullosa. To the world, it’s a medical curiosity. To Colin, it used to be something he guarded with his life. He’d once spent three days in the rain outside a specialist’s office in Switzerland just to get me a consultation. He’d suppressed his own desires for eight years, never touching me for fear of hurting me.

It wasn't until my condition stabilized that we shared our first night together. He had held me like I was made of starlight, whispering, “I will protect you with my life, Maya. Always.”

But then he met Lexi, a college athlete. She was vibrant, resilient, and unbreakable. She was everything I wasn't.

In their bed, he told her, “Lexi, I’d give my life for you.”

Back in the shop, I heard Colin’s voice again, sharp and calculating. “Did you catch her face?”

“No, sir. Per your instructions, we kept the camera below the neck. The ‘anonymous’ tag worked perfectly.”

I fumbled with my phone, my fingers slick with blood. I found the link.

The words on my body hadn't been Colin’s choice. They were the results of a live poll.

“Property,” “Used,” “Trash”...

Filth. I was covered in verbal filth, and the screenshots were already viral. The internet was playing a guessing game: Who is the faceless girl with the butterfly skin?

Colin’s shoulders relaxed. “If Maya would just learn to be obedient, I wouldn't have to go to these lengths,” he said casually. “Lexi will see the screenshots. It’ll show her she’s the only one who matters. Maybe she’ll finally stop being mad at me.”

I walked away into the freezing night. My husband knew better than anyone that my skin was at its limit. I could never endure the laser treatments to remove these tattoos. These scars—these insults—were my new permanent skin.

I didn't go back to the penthouse. I hailed a cab and gave the driver an address in a neighborhood Colin wouldn't recognize.

After the bankruptcy, my mother had moved from our estate into a "micro-apartment"—a five-by-five-foot room people in the city called a coffin flat.

As the cab pulled up, I saw the flashing lights of an ambulance.

Two paramedics were wheeling a gurney out. The figure on it was covered from head to toe in a white sheet.

A cold dread settled in my marrow. My hand shook as I dialed my mother’s number.

A split second later, the custom ringtone I’d recorded for her began to play from beneath that white sheet.