The Unforgivable Absence

The last thing I remembered from my first life was the burn of rope against my skin and the chilling indifference in my husband’s eyes.

He was killing me. Julian Thorne, the man I had loved with every fiber of my being, was ending my life with his bare hands.

As the darkness closed in, my mind flashed back to the moment it all truly ended. The phone call.

I had been trembling, my hands shaking so violently I could barely hold the phone. "Julian," I’d cried, my voice a ragged mess. "They have them. Your parents. They sent a photo. They’re going to kill them if we don't pay."

But the man on the other end of the line was not my husband. He was a monster wearing his skin. I could hear the frantic, soft gasps of his mistress, Seraphina Miller, in the background.

"My parents have bodyguards!" he’d snarled, his voice thick with annoyance, not concern. "But Sera is having a life-threatening asthma attack right now! She can barely breathe! Is this another one of your pathetic games to get my attention, Elara?"

"Julian, please—"

"If anything happens to her because you wasted my time, I swear to God, Elara, I will kill you."

He hung up.

In that life, Seraphina "died" from her faked attack gone wrong—a detail I only learned later. Julian, mad with a grief he believed I was responsible for, made good on his promise. He blamed me. He called me a vicious, heartless woman.

And then he killed me.

***