Bound to Him: A Spirit's Dark Return

The last time I heard my boyfriend Arthur' s voice, he was telling me to stop being so dramatic. I had been kidnapped by a man he' d bankrupted, and I was begging for my life.

"This is a new low, even for you," he said, his voice cold with annoyance. "I don' t have time for these games."

He hung up on me to deal with a work crisis for his partner, Genesis. My kidnapper, realizing no ransom would ever be paid, strapped a bomb to my chest and left me to die.

The explosion killed me, but it didn't set me free. Instead, my spirit became tethered to Arthur, a cruel, invisible chain forcing me to follow him.

I had to watch as he investigated the murder of a "Jane Doe," never once suspecting the unrecognizable victim was me. He saw my final text message-the one telling him I was pregnant-and called it a sick, manipulative lie before blocking my number and erasing me from his life.

I was a ghost, bound to the man whose indifference was my death sentence, forced to watch him grieve for a stranger while cursing my name.

I thought this was my eternal punishment. But a year later, I overheard his new fiancée, Genesis, bragging to her friends. And I finally learned the truth about who really sent my killer to my door.

Chapter 1

Elia Carpenter POV:

The last time I heard Arthur' s voice, he was telling me he was done with me, right before the world dissolved into a flash of white-hot light.

A rough hand clamped over my mouth, the stench of stale cigarettes and sweat filling my nostrils. My arms were wrenched behind my back, the zip-tie biting into my wrists until my fingers went numb.

"Scream and I' ll break your jaw," a voice rasped in my ear.

I was shoved into a chair in the center of a damp, concrete room. The man who' d dragged me from the parking garage stepped back into the dim light. His face was gaunt, his eyes hollowed out pits of despair. I recognized him from the news articles Arthur used to leave open on his tablet. Fuller Durham. The contractor Arthur had systematically bankrupted.

"You know who I am," he said. It wasn' t a question. "And you know who did this to me. Arthur Thompson. Your brilliant, ruthless boyfriend."

My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic bird trapped in a cage.

Fuller paced in front of me, his movements jerky, agitated. "He took everything from me. My company. My house. My family. It' s only fair I take something from him."

He knelt down, his face uncomfortably close to mine. "You' re going to call him."

"No," I whispered, the word barely a breath.

He laughed, a dry, rattling sound. He pulled a cell phone from his pocket, its screen cracked. "Oh, you will. You' ll call him, and you' ll tell him I have you. You' ll tell him I want the ten million he stole from me, or he' ll never see you again."

He unlocked the phone and shoved it against my ear, his fingers digging into my cheek. The phone rang once, twice, then a third time before Arthur' s voice came through, clipped and impatient.

"What is it, Elia? I' m busy."

His tone was a familiar bucket of ice water down my spine. I swallowed against the lump in my throat. "Arthur," I began, my voice trembling. "Listen to me. I' m in trouble."

"Trouble?" He sighed, the sound heavy with exasperation. "What now? Did you forget to pay the credit card bill again? Genesis is having a major issue with the foundation plans for the Zenith tower, and I have to deal with it. Whatever your drama is, it can wait."

Panic clawed at my throat. "No, it' s not that. Arthur, I' ve been kidnapped."

There was a beat of silence on the other end. For a heart-stopping moment, I thought he understood.

"Kidnapped," he repeated, his voice flat with disbelief. "Elia, for God' s sake. This is a new low, even for you. I don' t have time for these games."

"It' s not a game!" I cried, tears blurring my vision. "His name is Fuller Durham. He wants money. Please, don' t come here. Just call the police. Don' t-"

Fuller snatched the phone away from me, his eyes blazing with a strange mix of fury and disappointment. He put it on speaker.

"You hear that, Thompson?" Fuller snarled into the phone. "Your girlfriend is begging for her life."

Arthur' s voice came back, colder than I' d ever heard it. "I hear my girlfriend pulling another one of her desperate stunts for attention. Genesis just told me a structural engineer forged his credentials, and we might have to halt construction. That' s a real crisis. This pathetic little play of yours is not."

The words hit me harder than a physical blow. A crisis for Genesis. A drama for me.

"I' m warning you, Elia," Arthur continued, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "You hang up right now and stop this nonsense. If you make me look like a fool by involving the police in one of your little theatrical episodes, I swear to you, we are finished. For good."

Before I could even process the threat, another voice drifted through the speaker-a voice I knew as well as my own. It was Genesis Bentley. Her tone was laced with manufactured concern. "Arthur, darling, is everything okay? We need to get back to the schematics."

"It' s nothing," Arthur said, his voice instantly softening for her. "Just Elia being Elia."

The line went dead.

An eerie silence filled the room. Fuller stared at the disconnected phone in his hand, a slow, dawning comprehension spreading across his face.

He looked at me, not with anger, but with something that looked almost like pity. "He doesn' t care," he murmured, more to himself than to me. "He actually doesn' t care if you live or die."

The weight of that truth crushed the air from my lungs.

Fuller shook his head and gestured to a large, duffel bag in the corner. One of his accomplices unzipped it, revealing a horrifying tangle of wires, a digital timer, and blocks of C4.

They strapped the device to my chest. It was heavy, cold against my skin even through my blouse.

"My revenge was supposed to be against him," Fuller said, his voice distant. "Making him pay. But he' s already paid, hasn't he? By becoming the kind of man who wouldn't pay a dime for the woman who loves him. There' s no point."

He and his men walked toward the door without another glance in my direction. They were just... leaving.

The heavy steel door slammed shut, the bolt sliding into place with a definitive, metallic clang.

I was alone.

I stared down at the red numbers on the timer strapped to my chest. 10:00. 9:59. 9:58.

A single tear traced a path through the grime on my cheek. Then another. Soon, silent sobs were wracking my body, my shoulders shaking with the force of a grief so profound it felt like it was tearing me apart from the inside.

It wasn't the bomb I was crying for. It was the devastating, final clarity.

He never loved me.

The thought wasn' t an emotional outburst; it was a cold, hard fact settling in my soul. I saw it all now, a slideshow of a thousand tiny cuts. The way he always called Genesis his "partner" with a reverence he never used for me, his "girlfriend." They weren't just business partners; they were family friends, their lives intertwined since childhood.

When I first questioned their closeness, he' d called me insecure. "Genesis is like a sister to me," he' d said, his eyes so sincere I' d felt ashamed for ever doubting him. I believed him. I wanted to believe him. I' d loved him so much, I was drowning in it, blind to the fact that the water was poisoned.

Everything was always for Genesis. Every late night at the office, every canceled date, every holiday cut short. It was always some emergency that only he could solve for her.

I remembered my grandmother' s 80th birthday party. I had begged him to come, just for an hour. He promised. He was dressed, ready to go, when his phone rang. It was Genesis. She was stuck at a site in a bad neighborhood with a flat tire.

He' d looked at me, his expression apologetic but firm. "I have to go, Elia. She' s alone."

"Call her an Uber, Arthur! Call a tow truck! It' s my grandmother' s birthday!" I had pleaded.

"You don' t understand," he' d said, his voice chillingly calm. "It' s Genesis."

As if those two words explained and excused everything.

I had tried to rationalize it, telling myself that their work was demanding, that their bond was purely professional. I had lied to myself, over and over, because the truth was too painful to face.

The truth was that I was never his priority. I was a placeholder. A convenient, warm body to come home to when he wasn't saving Genesis from some manufactured crisis.

He never loved me. He never would.

My shaking fingers found my own phone in my pocket. Somehow, they hadn't taken it. The timer on my chest read 02:14.

I opened my messages, my thumb hovering over Arthur' s name. A thousand vengeful, hateful things I could write. A thousand pleas.

But what was the point?

I deleted his contact. Then I opened a new message and typed my final words to him.

My fingers moved with a strange, calm certainty.

I know you don' t care. But I was pregnant. You were going to be a father.

I hit send.

Then I added one last message, a final, freeing release.

I hope we never meet again. In this life or the next.

I closed my eyes as the timer hit zero.

Elia Carpenter POV:

There was no pain.

One moment, I was a girl strapped to a bomb in a concrete room. The next, I was... nothing. A wisp of consciousness floating in the quiet, dusty aftermath.

Below me, where my body had been, was a scene of utter devastation. A crater in the floor, blackened walls, and scattered, unrecognizable fragments of what used to be me.

I should have been horrified. I should have been screaming. Instead, a profound sense of peace washed over me. The constant, aching weight of trying to be enough for Arthur, of feeling invisible, was gone. I was free. Death was not an end; it was a release.

I drifted aimlessly through the ruined building, a silent observer in a world I no longer belonged to. Time seemed to have no meaning. Hours, or maybe days, passed in a gray, formless haze.

Then, I felt a pull. A tether. It was faint at first, then stronger, drawing me back to the epicenter of the explosion as the wail of sirens grew louder.

Arthur Thompson arrived with the first wave of forensic investigators.

He stepped out of his car, dressed in a crisp, dark suit, his face a mask of professional detachment. He was here as an architect, a consultant for the city on structural integrity after explosions. The irony was a bitter pill I no longer had to swallow.

"What have we got?" he asked the lead detective, his voice all business.

"Jane Doe. Looks like she was the target. Bomb was strapped right to her. Messy," the detective grunted, pointing toward the crater.

Arthur nodded, his gaze sweeping over the scene. He walked closer, his expensive shoes crunching on the debris. He looked down at the scorched floor, at the few pathetic remnants the blast had left behind.

I floated beside him, a strange, desperate hope flickering within me. A stupid, human hope that refused to die even after I had.

He' ll know. Even like this, he' ll know it' s me. He' ll see something, a piece of my favorite blue blouse, the locket he gave me... and he' ll know.

And when he knows, he will crumble. The perfect, composed facade will shatter, and he will finally, finally feel the weight of what he has lost. What he threw away.

He crouched down, his expression clinical. "The device was high-grade C4. Professional job. The blast was directed inwards, minimizing structural damage to the load-bearing walls. Smart. They wanted to contain it."

He pointed at a small, melted piece of metal. "See that? The casing is military-spec. This wasn' t some amateur."

He stood up, brushing dust from his trousers. He didn' t look at what was left of me again. He saw a crime scene, a puzzle to be solved. Not the woman who had shared his bed for three years.

He didn't recognize me. He didn' t even consider it could be me.

The last, foolish ember of hope inside me turned to ash. Of course he didn' t know. To him, I was just a nuisance who had been pulling a "dramatic stunt" a few days ago. I was an inconvenience he had already decided to cut from his life. Why would he even think to look for me here?

The medical examiner' s team arrived and began the grim task of collecting what was left of me. They placed the fragments into a body bag. As they zipped it shut, I felt that strange tether pull taut.

I was being drawn along with the bag, a spectral passenger on my own final journey. I was bound to him. To Arthur.

In the car on the way back to the precinct, his best friend and colleague, Kadin Cooper, sat in the passenger seat.

"Any word from Elia?" Kadin asked, his voice gentle.

Arthur stared out the window, his jaw tight. "I haven' t checked. Probably a hundred missed calls and a novel' s worth of angry texts. I swear, Kadin, I' m at my limit with her."

Every word was a nail in my coffin, sealing me in this cold, dark reality. I was a ghost, and I was still suffocating.

"Arthur, maybe you should just call her," Kadin urged. "She sounded genuinely scared when her father called me. He said she' s been missing for two days."

"She' s not missing," Arthur scoffed, pulling out his phone. "She' s punishing me because I had to work. It' s what she does."

He opened his messages, and I saw my last texts to him appear on the screen.

I know you don' t care. But I was pregnant. You were going to be a father.

I hope we never meet again. In this life or the next.

I watched his face, my non-existent heart pounding. This is it. This is the moment.

His expression didn' t soften with grief or shock. It hardened with fury.

"Unbelievable," he muttered, his thumb hovering over my name.

"What is it?" Kadin asked.

"She' s claiming she was pregnant," Arthur said, his voice dripping with disgust. "Sinking to new depths to manipulate me. What a sick thing to lie about."

He tried to call me. The call, of course, didn' t go through.

"See? Straight to voicemail. She' s turned her phone off to complete the drama," he seethed. "Well, I' m done. I' m done playing these childish games."

He cursed under his breath, a stream of vicious words aimed at a woman who no longer existed.

Then, with a final, decisive tap, he blocked my number. He deleted my contact. He erased me from his life as easily as wiping a smudge from a screen.

The pain I' d felt in my final moments was a roaring fire. This was a cold, creeping void. The last vestiges of the girl who loved Arthur Thompson died in that car. What was left was something else. Something empty and watchful.

I had given up the ghost of a hope that he would ever love me. Now, I gave up the ghost of a hope that he would even mourn me.

I followed my own remains into the morgue. I was forced to watch as the medical examiner laid out the fragments on a steel table.

And then Arthur walked in, a clipboard in his hand, ready to assist with the official report.

I was tethered to him, a cruel twist of fate. I was forced to watch the man I had loved, the man whose indifference had signed my death warrant, perform an autopsy on my unrecognizable body.

A silent, invisible scream built inside me, but no sound came out. I was trapped. Trapped with him. Forever.

Elia Carpenter POV:

The final autopsy report was read aloud in the sterile, white-tiled room.

"Jane Doe, female, estimated age twenty-five to thirty. Cause of death, massive trauma from explosive device. The detonation was instantaneous."

The medical examiner paused, clearing his throat before continuing. "Evidence of pre-mortem contusions on the wrists and ankles, consistent with being bound. Ligature marks on the neck suggest a period of strangulation prior to death, though not the fatal injury."

Every clinical word painted a picture of my final, terrified hours.

"Furthermore," the examiner said, his voice softening slightly, "the victim was approximately eight weeks pregnant at the time of death."

A heavy silence descended upon the room. The detectives, the lab technicians, even Arthur-they all stood frozen, the weight of the words settling over them.

My own spectral form shuddered. Eight weeks. I hadn' t known. A tiny, secret life had been growing inside me, a life I never got the chance to cherish or protect. A life Arthur would never have known he' d created, or lost.

A tear, cold and insubstantial, slid down my ghostly cheek. It wasn't for me. It was for the baby. My baby. We had died together, nameless and unloved by the one person who should have moved heaven and earth for us.

Arthur broke the silence. He shook his head, a flicker of something that looked like pity in his eyes. "God, that' s brutal. To a pregnant woman. What kind of monster does this?"

He ran a hand through his perfectly styled hair. "We need to find this son of a bitch. I want to be on the team that brings him in. Personally."

I wanted to laugh. A hollow, broken sound. Of course. The great Arthur Thompson, champion of the nameless, pregnant victim. He would hunt down my killer with a righteous fury he could never spare for me in life.

Would he be so righteous, I wondered, when he finally discovered the Jane Doe he was championing was the woman he' d so coldly dismissed? Would he feel guilt? Or just annoyance that my death had become an inconvenient stain on his otherwise perfect life?

Later, Arthur and Kadin stood outside in the crisp night air, the smoke from their cigarettes curling into the darkness.

"You need to go home, Arthur," Kadin said, his voice laced with concern. "And you need to call Elia. This whole case... it should be a wake-up call. Life is short."

Arthur took a long drag from his cigarette, the embers glowing in the dark. "Elia isn' t going anywhere. She' ll be sitting at home, waiting for me to apologize for whatever crime she' s invented this week. I sent her a text telling her we' re done. She knows."

I' m not at home, Arthur, I thought, the words a silent scream in the void. I' m here. What' s left of me is on a steel table a hundred feet away from you.

I no longer cared if he felt remorse. The hope for that had turned to dust. All I wanted now was to be free of him. To drift away into whatever came next and leave the memory of Arthur Thompson behind forever.

Just then, his phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen, and the hard lines of his face instantly softened. It was a video call.

Genesis Bentley' s perfect face filled the screen.

"Arthur, darling," she pouted. "You missed our dinner reservation. I' ve been waiting."

He managed a tired smile, the one reserved only for her. "I' m sorry, Gen. Something came up at work. A bad one."

"Worse than my foundation crisis?" she asked, a playful glint in her eye.

"Much worse," he said, his voice gentle. He was shielding her from the ugly details, protecting her innocence in a way he had never bothered to protect my feelings. "Don' t worry about it. I' ll make it up to you tomorrow. I promise."

The hypocrisy was suffocating. He could move mountains for her, but for me, he couldn' t even move past his own arrogance.

The investigation into Jane Doe' s murder stalled. Without an identity, there were no leads. Days turned into a week. Frustrated, Arthur was the one who suggested they release a description of the victim to the media.

"Twenty-five to thirty years old, five-foot-six, brown hair, brown eyes," the news anchor reported over a generic silhouette. "The victim was wearing the remnants of a blue silk blouse and silver hoop earrings."

My earrings. My blouse.

The phone on Arthur' s desk rang just as the broadcast ended. He picked it up, his attention still on the paperwork in front of him.

"Thompson."

I heard the voice on the other end, thin and reedy with panic, and my non-existent heart seized.

"Mr. Thompson... Arthur... it' s Richard Carpenter. Elia' s father."

I gasped, a soundless, desperate cry. Dad.

"I' m sorry to bother you at work," my father stammered, his voice cracking. "But we can' t reach Elia. Her phone goes straight to voicemail. We haven' t heard from her in over a week. She... she matches the description on the news. Please, Arthur. Tell me it' s not her."