For Our Wedding Anniversary, I Gifted Him My DeathChapter 1
“Father, I’m ready now. Please arrange my marriage. I’m going to divorce my husband Xander.”
My voice cracked, but I kept my tone steady as I gripped the phone like it was the only thing tethering me to what little was left of me.
“What do you mean?” he asked, his tone sharp, biting like ice through the line. “You’re agreeing now to the marriage you rejected so stubbornly before? And divorcing Xander?”
I shut my eyes, pushing down the burn in my throat. “I changed my mind. I’m going to leave him. If you still want me as your daughter, if you still want me as your family, then pick me up. Erase my identity. Help me disappear. So I can be free.”
I hung up before I could hear the disappointment slide into his voice.
My hands trembled so badly I nearly dropped the phone. The hospital room was too bright, too white, the scent of antiseptic too clean to match the rot in my chest. I stared at the IV line snaking into my arm and felt the memory rise up like bile.
Three days ago, I was standing on a yacht off the coast of San Amaro. It was my husband Xander’s birthday party.
Nadia was also there. My half-sister. My husband’s mistress.
She sidled up next to me near the railing, “Why are you even here, Lauren?” she’d asked, twirling her glass lazily. “You’re always so out of place. You should’ve just stayed at home.”
I ignored her, but the words dug under my skin like glass splinters.
The yacht rocked gently beneath us. The party roared behind us — laughter, music, clinking glasses. Nadia leaned closer, her eyes glittering with something too dark to name. “Do us all a favor, sister. Leave. He doesn’t need you.”
I turned to shove past her and felt her hand on my arm. A single, deliberate push. My scream vanished under the splash as I hit the freezing black water.
“Oh no!” I heard her giggle. “She fell!”
I came up gasping, salt burning my eyes. I flailed in the darkness, each stroke more desperate than the last. I could see them above me — Nadia, giggling behind her hand, and Xander, my husband, glass in hand, head thrown back in laughter.
They didn’t move. They didn’t help. They watched me struggle as if I was an inconvenience, a stain on their perfect evening.
If it weren’t for the old fisherman who found me clinging to driftwood, I’d be at the bottom of that sea. But maybe that would’ve been kinder.