Most people who knew Alexandra Roberts saw she had the perfect life.
The mansion in the hills. The handsome, successful husband. The designer clothes and charity galas and everything money could buy. They saw the smile she’d perfected, the gracious nod she’d mastered, the way she could make small talk for hours without saying anything real.
They didn’t see the bruises she covered with foundation. They didn’t see the way she measured every word before speaking, catalogued every expression that crossed Marcus’s face, lived in constant calculation of his moods and desires.
Her husband Marcus’s business associates saw the perfect wife and hostess, who knew her place and when she was expected to quietly leave and give them the room to discuss the businesses Marcus had investments in.
She used to help Marcus manage his office, but even that, he had made her give up. It wasn’t proper for her to be so involved in his work, he said. He wanted her to manage the household and be available for when they had children. Marcus wanted kids for the image, not because he really wanted them.
They definitely didn’t see the 1974 Harley-Davidson Shovelhead hidden at the back of the third bay of their four-car garage, under a tarp Marcus never bothered to lift. Her father’s bike. Her inheritance. Her secret.
Most people who knew Alexandra Roberts would have been shocked to learn that she could rebuild a carburetor, that she’d once raced dirt bikes with boys twice her size, that before Marcus had reshaped her into his vision of the perfect wife, she’d been the kind of woman who fixed her own problems.
But that woman was still in there, sleeping under years of fear and control and it was time to wake up, the weather had cleared and spring was warming up the country, time to make a move.
Her father’s leather jacket hung in the back of her closet like a promise she’d made to herself years ago. Marcus had wanted her to throw it away, said it was “inappropriate for a woman of her position”, but she’d hidden it behind the designer clothes he’d chosen for her. The worn leather still smelled like motor oil and Old Spice, still carried the ghost of the man who’d taught her that a woman should know how to handle herself.
“Especially a woman with spirit like yours, Lexi-bird.”
The Harley Davidson Shovelhead sat waiting in the garage like a sleeping beast. Marcus thought it was just another piece of junk from her father’s estate, something too sentimental to sell but too worthless to matter. He had no idea it was her escape route. He had no idea that the perfect wife he’d “created” had a way to disappear.
She hesitated, her hand on the doorknob. There had been good times—hadn’t there? Moments of tenderness, shared jokes, the comfort of the familiar. Those fragments of happiness made her pause, made her question. But beneath them lay the pain, the control, the humiliation, the violence. For five years, Marcus had been her entire world, and he had provided for her every need. Staying, though, meant surrendering everything, giving up who she was at her core, her very soul. With that realization, she set her shoulders and walked out the door.
The bike started on the first kick, just like her father had promised it always would.
Read more of Lex’s story on February 14, 2026.
TJ Lewis 