Introduction

The rain lashed against the window, mirroring the fresh bruises blooming on my skin.

I lay on the cold bathroom tile, my breath a shallow, ragged gasp; another "accident" Mark would explain away.

He stood over me, bored and callous, reminding me our son would be late for dinner-as if I chose to be broken on the floor.

My sister, Chloe, bright and oblivious, called from the front door, offering ice cream, a lifeline I couldn't grasp.

"Ava's not feeling well," Mark lied, his voice dripping with fake concern for her ears, sealing me away.

My last chance gone, a profound cold enveloped me, deeper than the tile, as my life ebbed away, thinking of Leo who' d never see his mother again.

Then, the pain vanished, replaced by an eerie lightness; I was standing, looking down at my own lifeless body.

I watched, a silent phantom, as Mark called someone, casually planning to claim double indemnity on my life insurance, describing my death as a convenient "fall."

He felt no grief, only calculation.

The next morning, he made Leo dinosaur pancakes, telling him Mommy was "very tired," twisting my absence into abandonment.

Later, I saw him systematically erase me-tossing my treasured memories, even ripping apart the novel my grandmother gave me, a symbolic execution of my very existence.

He wasn't just disposing of my things; he was annihilating any proof of who I was.

I floated there, a ghost of a life brutally taken, haunted by the chilling clarity of his calculated cruelty.

I had to find a way to make him pay.