“I’ll give her a mild sedative tomorrow. She’ll be half asleep before we even get to the mountain road. That way, if anything happens, it’ll look even more like an accident. Just make sure there’s nothing on your phone. Understand? Stay quiet, and I’ll bring you the papers to sign once it’s done.”
I couldn’t bear another second. My knees gave out, and I sank to the hallway floor. The carpet felt soft, but beneath me it may as well have been blades.
My mind flooded with memories: our wedding at a luxury hotel, Javier taking my hand and saying, “I’ll never abandon you.” The nights I came home aching from fertility treatments and he handed me warm water, saying, “Just one more try, my love. Soon we’ll have our child.” The late nights I waited for him and he hugged me, apologizing for another “business dinner.”
Had any of that been real?
In that house, I had always believed my greatest enemy was my mother-in-law. Her taunts, her comments, the way she stared at my stomach. I had secretly thought, “If I ever leave this house, it will be because of her.”
But the person truly planning to erase me was the man lying beside me every night.
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