Chapter 2

Carroll began to play the part of a devoted husband. The change was sickeningly perfect. He drove me to my "chemotherapy" appointments, waiting patiently in the lobby with a stack of magazines.

He researched palliative care facilities, showing me brochures of sunny clinics by the sea. "Only the best for you, my love," he'd say, his voice dripping with feigned sincerity.

He filled the kitchen with expensive organic supplements and foul-smelling herbal teas that promised to "boost my immune system."

He did everything a good husband should do.

Except he continued to sleep in the guest room. He never touched me. The space between us was a cold, unbridgeable chasm.

One night, I walked past the guest room and the door was ajar. I saw him sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at a photo on his phone. It was her. Kandy. His face was a mask of longing and despair. It was both pathetic and heartbreaking.

My plan was working, but it was a fragile peace. I knew I couldn't keep up the charade forever. I was planning how to stage my miraculous "recovery" when she appeared.

She came to the house. She didn't ring the doorbell. She just walked in, her face pale and tear-stained.

She walked straight up to me and thrust a piece of paper into my hand.

It was a lab report. A positive pregnancy test.

She didn't say a word. She just burst into tears and ran out of the house.

Carroll stood frozen in the doorway, his face ashen. He didn't look at me. He didn't offer a single word of explanation.

He just started to move, his body lurching toward the open door.

"Carroll, don't," I said, my voice barely a whisper.

He kept walking, a man in a trance, desperate to follow her.

I grabbed his arm. "Don't you dare go after her."

He ripped his arm away, his face contorting with a rage I had never seen before. It was raw and ugly.

"Let me go, Helena!" he roared, his voice low and guttural. "She's pregnant! She's carrying my child!"

He glared at me, his eyes filled with such frustration, such unveiled hatred, that it felt like a physical blow.

"Why won't you just let me go comfort her?" he demanded, as if I were the one being unreasonable.

I saw it then, in the tight clench of his jaw and the frantic look in his eyes. He was already gone.

I wiped the tears from my own face with the back of my hand. I felt a cold, hard knot forming in my chest. A terrible, violent impulse flashed through my mind, and I had to physically shake my head to banish it.

I pushed down the question that screamed to be asked: Are you even sure it's yours? It wasn't time for that. Not yet.

"If you walk out that door now," I said, my voice shaking but firm, "you'll be a widower by morning."

It was my last card. My life for my marriage.

"I mean it, Carroll. Don't leave me to die alone."

He froze, his body rigid. He stared at me for a long, silent moment. The look in his eyes shifted from frustration to pure, unadulterated disgust.

"You're vicious," he spat, the word hanging in the air between us.

The word cut deeper than any knife. Vicious? Me?

I had built his career, managed his life, accepted a childless existence for his sake. I had faked a terminal illness, enduring the charade of my own slow death, just to keep him. And I was the vicious one?

Tears streamed down my face now, hot and unstoppable.

My threat had failed. The pregnancy, the promise of an heir, had won.

With a growl of frustration, he kicked at a small antique table by the door, sending a vase crashing to the floor.

"Then just die!" he screamed, his face a mask of fury. "I hope you die!"

He turned and stormed out of the house without a backward glance.

I watched his back disappear down the driveway. The engine of his car roared to life and then faded into the distance, leaving me in a silence that was absolute.

My hands were trembling so violently I could barely hold my phone. I dialed Jared's number.

"It's time," I whispered into the phone, my voice breaking. "Let's burn him to the ground."