Chapter 3

Days turned into a week since he'd found me.

My soul drifted through the apartment, a silent, unseen guest.

Jack moved as if in a daze, but only when he was alone.

With Sophia, he was attentive, almost desperate in his affection.

"Jack, honey, are you sure you're okay?" Sophia asked one evening, her voice dripping with concern. She ran a perfectly manicured finger down his cheek. "You seem... distant."

"Just stressed from work," he lied, forcing a smile. "This new game launch is a beast."

He never went back to the basement.

He told Mark I'd packed a bag and left. "Said she needed space. Women, you know?"

Mark looked skeptical. "She didn't say goodbye? Not even to me?"

"She was upset, Mark. You know how Emily gets."

Upset. That's what he called it.

I remembered everything.

Ten years.

We met in a college art club. I was sketching, he was trying to design characters for a game idea he had.

He was charming, ambitious. I fell hard.

I poured my savings into his dream, his first small game studio. My art, my concepts, they were the backbone of his early successes.

He promised me the world. He promised me forever.

I remembered the joy when I saw those two pink lines on the pregnancy test.

Our baby. A symbol of our love, I thought.

I'd rushed to tell him.

He'd been on a call with Sophia. She'd recently re-entered his life, a ghost from his high school past, now a moderately successful game streamer.

He'd looked at me, at the test, and his first words were, "Are you sure it's mine?"

Sophia had been whispering poison in his ear for weeks.

"Emily seems so... friendly with everyone, Jack. You know, at those industry parties."

His doubt had been a knife to my heart then.

Now, it was just another piece of the rotten puzzle.

He'd killed me. He'd killed our child.

And he was meticulously erasing me from his life, while Sophia eagerly took my place.

The police hadn't been called. No one was looking for me.

To the world, Emily Jones had simply vanished.

Jack went into the storage room one afternoon. He had a can of air freshener.

He sprayed it around, his face tight with disgust.

He didn't look at the trunk.

He just tried to mask the smell of my decay.

Sophia, meanwhile, was picking out new curtains for the living room.

"These will brighten the place up so much, don't you think, sweetie?" she chirped, holding up a swatch of fabric.

Jack nodded, his eyes empty. "Whatever you want, Sophia."

She was redecorating my grave.