It was the eighth year of Kevin Henson's affair with his "gal pal," Cassandra Delgado.

I died on her husband's knife.

He stabbed me eighteen times.

The baby in my womb, five months along, didn't survive.

When it was done, he lifted my lifeless hand and pressed my finger to the phone's lock screen. Then he typed a message to Kevin, in my voice.

"Hey babe, whenever you and Cassie finish up today, come home early."

"I've got a big surprise for you two!"

——

Kevin Henson received the text at the worst possible moment.

Cassandra Delgado had him pinned beneath her, clinging to him like she'd never let go.

My soul hovered above his body. I watched, helpless, as he smacked Cassandra on the curve of her hip. She yelped, and only then did she reluctantly give him a moment to breathe.

He glanced at my message and broke into a warm, sweet smile. He held down the voice button and replied.

"Okay, sweetheart."

"Your hubby can't wait to see this surprise."

Cassandra leaned back against the hotel pillows, gave him a playful kick, and laughed.

"You two have been married for years. Is all that really necessary?"

"Just wait till we're done and text her back then. What's the worst that could happen?"

Kevin shot her a look and lit a cigarette with practiced ease.

"You wouldn't understand."

"Miriam is the mother of my daughter. She's carrying my son."

"If I can't even manage this much basic decency, what kind of husband am I?"

Cassandra plucked a cigarette of her own and leaned in, pressing the tip to the ember of his. She took a long drag and exhaled, her laughter bright and careless through the haze of smoke.

"Well, well. Who would've guessed? After all these years, the great Kevin Henson is still so devoted to his wife?"

"But if you love Miriam Swanson so much, why are you in bed with me?"

Kevin gripped her chin, his voice low and teasing. "You and I are friends with benefits. Always have been. We both get what we need."

"I like the way you move. You like the way I handle you. It's physical, nothing more."

"Don't you dare compare yourself to my wife. She's the only woman who's ever mattered to me."

"The only reason I come to you is because I can't bring myself to be that rough with her. So don't go catching feelings."

Kevin's love for me.

Even Cassandra's husband, Marlin James, believed it without question.

Forty minutes earlier, Marlin had burst through my front door.

The first stab went straight into the gentle swell of my pregnant belly.

And as he kept plunging the blade in, he spoke.

"You're the woman Kevin Henson loves most. Your husband seduced my wife."

"Killing you is the only way to give him the deepest, cruelest punishment he deserves."

Back at the hotel.

Kevin and Cassandra had moved to the shower. Through the steam, they'd already started another round, tangled together under the hot water.

Shortly after sending the text, Marlin James took his position by the entryway of my home, the knife clenched tight in his fist.

Like a mantis lying in wait.

Kevin and Cassandra checked out of the hotel. In the car on the way home, they kissed like they couldn't stand to be apart.

Minutes crawled by. Finally, the smart lock on the front door beeped to life.

Three short tones. The door swung open.

Marlin raised the knife high.

But the person who walked in wasn't Kevin or Cassandra.

It was my five-year-old daughter, Lily Abbott, home from kindergarten.

The instant she stepped through that door, my soul convulsed.

Only then, too late, did my sluggish mind remember. Before I died, I'd been gathering my things to leave the house.

I'd been on my way to pick her up from school.

I threw my translucent body in front of her.

"Lily, run! Don't look inside! RUN!"

But my daughter couldn't see me. Couldn't hear me.

All she could see was my mutilated body on the floor.

And Marlin's twisted, monstrous face, a knife still clutched in his hand.

She screamed. The family portrait she'd painted at kindergarten slipped from her fingers, hitting the ground alongside her little bunny sippy cup.

She spun around to run, but Marlin snatched her up by the arm.

She wailed, terrified, and he backhanded her across the face.

"Shut up, you little brat!"

"You and your mother are both useless trash. If either of you had been worth a damn, your daddy wouldn't have gone after my wife!"

He hit her so hard that several of her baby teeth, already loose, flew from her mouth.

My soul screamed. I clawed at him, kicked at him, hysterical, throwing everything I had against his body.

He'd killed me so fast. So fast that only now was the reality catching up to me.

"Let go! Let go of my daughter!"

"Kevin and Cassandra are the ones who wronged you! Why are you taking it out on me and my little girl?"

"Go kill them! Kill THEM!"

My fury must have bled through somehow, because a faint, cold draft stirred through the room.

Marlin set the child down. She'd already wet herself from fear. He looked in my direction and smiled.

"Miriam, I just thought of a much more interesting game."

Then he grabbed my daughter and lashed her to a dining chair with rope. He stuffed layers of socks from the balcony into her mouth until her small face turned scarlet and she couldn't make a sound.

After that, he opened the refrigerator and emptied it completely. Every last scrap of food. Not a crumb of hope left behind.

When he was finished, he picked up my phone again and typed out a text to Kevin.

"Honey, something came up! Lily and I are visiting family. We won't be back for a week!"

"Don't bother coming home either! Go take care of whatever you need to. Come back next Monday and I'll have a surprise waiting for you!"

Marlin finished typing and waved the screen in front of my corpse's face.

"Let's make a bet, Miriam."

"I'm betting that your husband reads this message and either figures out something's wrong and rushes back to save your daughter..."

"...or spends another week tangled up with my wife, and comes home just in time to collect two bodies."

When he sent that text, a small measure of relief settled over me.

Because he'd made a fatal mistake.

I had no family to visit.

Kevin and I had both grown up in an orphanage until we were twelve. Then the Henson family found him and brought him back, and overnight he became the young heir to a fortune.

On our wedding day, he'd wanted to make sure I wouldn't feel that absence. He'd hired an entire AI team to reconstruct the faces of parents I'd never met, modeled from my own features. He'd used holographic projections to let them walk me down the aisle.

My soul drifted toward the window and looked down.

Kevin's car was already at the front gate of our complex.

The moment he saw the words "visiting family," he would know something was wrong. He had to. At the very least, he'd come upstairs to check. Even if it meant a confrontation with Marlin, my daughter would have a chance. She wouldn't be left to starve to death, bound to a chair in this apartment.

But the second Kevin read the message, he tapped the screen dark.

"Miriam says she's taking the kid to visit family for a week." He hooked a finger under Cassandra's chin and pulled her into a long, deep kiss, his eyes still burning with unspent desire. "You insatiable little thing. Looks like I'm all yours this week."

He didn't even stop to wonder where "family" was.

He didn't even question the strangeness of those two messages I'd sent all day.

He just texted back something sweet: "Miss you already, babe."

Then he yanked the steering wheel hard and drove right back toward the hotel.

Kevin and I had been married for eight years.

As a husband, he was attentive in every way imaginable.

He kept track of my cycle, knew when to offer emotional support.

Every holiday, every anniversary, there were generous transfers, designer jewelry, never a single occasion missed.

The day I gave birth to our daughter, I nearly died from an amniotic fluid embolism. He knelt outside the delivery room, begging the doctors on his hands and knees.

He pleaded with them to save my life no matter what, swore that even if I ended up in a vegetative state, he would never leave my side.

Everyone said he loved me more than he loved himself.

But he could never cut ties with Cassandra.

Even though they were constantly seen together in public, their names linked across every tabloid and gossip site.

Even though I'd caught them in bed together more than once.

Kevin could still look me dead in the eye and explain, with a perfectly straight face, that he and Cassandra were both married people. They were just close friends. Gender had nothing to do with it.

The sex? That was just practice. Sharpening his technique so he could come home and be a better lover for his spouse.

I asked Kevin for a divorce countless times. Every single time, he swore up and down he would change.

But every single time, all he actually changed was where he and Cassandra met up, hiding it somewhere more discreet.

So when I discovered yet another secret rendezvous between them three months later, I didn't cry. I didn't confront him. I didn't so much as furrow my brow.

Instead, I quietly contacted a trust company overseas.

I set up a trust fund in my daughter's name, registered in a foreign jurisdiction.

Then, like an ant carrying crumbs one grain at a time, I began moving everything Kevin had given me over the years. The jewelry. The savings. Piece by piece, all of it transferred out.

My plan was simple: wait until the baby in my belly was born.

Then find the right moment, take both children, and vanish from Kevin Henson's world for good.

What I never could have imagined was that when I was just one step away from freedom, I would die under the blade of Cassandra's husband.

It happened so fast I didn't even have the chance to scream, let alone beg for my life.

Marlin had chased after Cassandra for eight years, been married to her for five, and hollowed himself out giving her everything he had.

Yet Cassandra had the nerve to openly flirt with Kevin at his own mother's funeral.

Even back then, I had a creeping feeling that Marlin would snap someday.

I just never expected that when he finally lost his mind, the first person he'd want to kill would be me.

Darkness fell, then light returned, then darkness again.

Forty-eight hours slipped by in a blink.

My daughter, still bound to the chair, finally worked her small hands free from the ropes.

For two days and two nights, she'd cycled through the same loop: crying for a while, sleeping for a while, struggling for a while.

Sometime past midnight on the second night, she thrashed so violently that the chair toppled over, and her head cracked hard against the floor.

She blacked out briefly. But the impact knocked the sock loose from her mouth.

She gulped air in ragged, desperate breaths, whimpering and sobbing for her mommy and daddy.

At that very same moment, her father, Kevin Henson, was having the time of his life with his "buddy."

Cassandra had screamed herself nearly hoarse.

Two days later, my daughter finally freed herself from that chair.

But the shock and hunger had taken their toll. She couldn't stand.

All she could do was crawl, inch by inch, following the trail of dried blood on the floor toward my phone lying nearby.

After two days and two nights, the battery was down to five percent.

Using the speed-dial shortcut I'd once taught her, she called Kevin.