I left the bedroom door ajar on purpose, so my husband could hear me making out with my lover all night. The next morning, his eyes were full of anger as he pinned me against the bed, demanding answers. “Did he even satisfy you? How many times did he really touch your body? Why not me?” But I just tightened my silk robe, covering the marks on my skin, and threw his own question back at him. “Aren’t we just playing the same game? Has your little nurse, Tiffany, stopped satisfying you?” Julian Grant’s eyes burned red, but he had nothing to say. Our marriage died the day he caused our daughter’s death. The wind bit through me as I drove alone to the suburban cemetery to visit our daughter. Passing the lot where my father’s clinic once stood, tears blurred my vision. I had been the youngest, most promising doctor at the Academy. I gave up a place at a top-tier institution for Julian. The year the malpractice lawsuit hit, an angry mob of patients’ relatives nearly beat him to death. My father sold the clinic he’d built over thirty years and emptied his savings to bury the legal case. To secure Julian’s position at City General, he handed over a lifetime of surgical notes, contacts, and professional reputation. He even joined a drug trial Julian was running, just to support his research. It cost him his liver. He didn’t survive. That was how Julian became the youngest Chief of Surgery in the city. I was naive enough to believe t to believe a debt like that would be honored for life. But after he brought the nurse, Tiffany, into our home, everything changed. The man who once worried if I so much as frowned was now tearing my heart apart with his own hands. I’ll never forget it. My mother was dying of lung cancer, desperate for an imported drug. But Julian, to cheer up Tiffany, gave the only available dose to her ragdoll cat for a skin rash. And I’ll never forget the day our daughter stopped breathing. Julian was in Tiffany’s hospital room, tangled up with her. I finally found my daughter’s niche in the cheapest public cemetery. A tiny, desolate space-not even a photo to mark her. When darkness fell, I sat on the cold tile floor. Just as I used to when lulling her to sleep, I hummed Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star through the night. I woke up the next morning to a chorus of shouting. Blinking my eyes open, I found a crowd of neighbors circled around me, phones raised and recording. “That’s her! Dr. Grant’s mad wife!” “Nurse Tiffany said she went berserk last night-destroyed the whole community garden!” “Those flowers were just planted by the management. They cost a fortune!” “What a vicious woman. No wonder Dr. Grant keeps her locked away!” Julian stepped forward through the crowd. His face was a mask of pained regret. “Neighbors, I apologize. It’s my failure. My wife has been unwell. Emotionally unstable. Misunderstandings led to this. I will cover every loss. Please, don’t hold it against her.” With those words, he sealed my fate as the “madwoman.” I stared at the man I had loved with my entire life, trembling with a rage so deep it felt cold. “Julian, you’re lying. I never left the cemetery last night!” “Still making excuses!” A security guard held up his phone. “The security footage shows a woman from behind. She’s wearing exactly what you have on now!” “That madwoman is a curse. Even her daughter’s grave is tainted!” “Get that urn out of here! Don’t pollute our cemetery!” I lunged to stop them, but several men forced me down, pinning me to the ground. My face pressed against the cold tile, tears cutting through the grime on my cheeks. All that escaped my throat were choked, guttural cries. They pried open the small niche and pulled out the black urn. I fought wildly. The box fell and struck the floor. The lid flew off. Pale gray ashes spilled out. A sudden gust swept through, lifting the dust into a swirling cloud. I could only watch, helpless, as the last trace of my daughter in this world simply…drifted away. The crowd muttered and dispersed. Julian slowly walked over. He looked at me with complex eyes. “Audrey, you’ve always been the strongest… it’s just a place for ashes. I’ll buy a better burial plot later…” “You know how delicate Tiffany is, how sheltered she’s been. What you did yesterday-sprinkling that powdered medicine into her soup-went too far.” I gritted my teeth, every word tasting of blood. “My daughter’s last remains in this world…were those ashes..” “I understand.” He sighed. “But if I don’t reassure Tiffany this way, what if her depression returns? What if it harms the baby she’s carrying? Audrey, you should understand my position.” He paused, his voice softening slightly. “Audrey, you need to be strong.”
Strong? What a joke! My dad died of liver failure after participating in a clinical trial to help Julian develop a new drug. To keep him from feeling guilty, I forced myself to handle my father’s funeral arrangements alone, without shedding a single tear. When my mom was in the final stages of lung cancer, he gave the only life-saving imported drug to Tiffany’s cat. Before she passed, my mother gripped my hand and whispered, “Julian…might have his own burdens. Don’t resent him…” My throat closed. My eyes burned. I swallowed every tear. But all that pain I carried, all the humiliation I endured, all the tears I never cried… In his eyes, they were just reasons for me to be “strong”? I laughed, my whole body trembling. “Julian, is Tiffany’s mood more important than my daughter’s ashes?” “Can’t you stop making such a big deal out of it? She didn’t mean it.” It was always the same. I was always the one at fault. It was just like before: I simply pointed out that she was giving a patient the wrong medication. Furious at my defiance, Julian locked me in the basement for a year. “Audrey, it’s been a year. Have you learned your lesson?” When Julian opened the basement door again, the outside light cut into my eyes. Tiffany, visibly pregnant, walked over, pretending to help me. “Be careful, Audrey. The basement’s damp, don’t fall.” Fall? I almost laughed. The day he locked me in, a year ago, our daughter had just died. I had knelt then, clutching Julian’s pant leg, my forehead bleeding from begging against the floor. “Please, save Lily! I swear I’ll never oppose Tiffany again!” He looked down at me, his eyes cold as a scalpel. “Audrey, you’re ill. How could Tiffany harm our child? You’re the one who’s lost your mind.” He held the trembling, sobbing Tiffany, his voice sickeningly gentle. “Don’t be afraid, I’ll lock her up. No one will hurt you again.” I saw a tenderness in his eyes I’d never witnessed before, and my blood ran cold. “Julian! My daughter is dead!!” My response was the thud of a lock clicking shut. To get out sooner and bury my daughter, I didn’t cry or make a fuss. But as my daughter’s body began to decompose in the hospital morgue, Tiffany, while I was asleep, had someone send the body directly to the crematorium. I hammered on the door like a madwoman, my throat hoarse from screaming. “Julian! That’s your daughter! How could you let her be cremated without even a proper goodbye!!” My palms bled from pounding, and what I got in return were rats, infected and scurrying, thrown in through the vent in the middle of the night. They bit my feet, tore at my fingers. I huddled in the corner, wounds infected and inflamed, feverishly ill. “Is Audrey doing okay?” Tiffany’s voice pulled me back to reality. I wiped the cold sweat from my forehead, looked up at Julian, my voice hoarse. “Where are Lily’s ashes?” No one answered. My heart sank. I stumbled toward the nursery on the second floor, The room I had decorated myself when I was pregnant. The closer I got, the more my heart ached. But the moment I pushed open the door, I froze. The room was filled with lingerie, whips, and handcuffs. The walls were covered with nude oil paintings of Tiffany. My fingers dug into the door frame, knuckles white. Julian’s footsteps sounded behind me, his tone impatient. “I didn’t let you out to cause trouble.” “The dead cannot return; can’t you just move on?” “No!” I spun around and slapped him across the face. “Is this filthy place how you explain yourself to our daughter?! Julian, do you deserve to be a father?!” “I just want to know, where are her ashes?” When I mentioned our daughter, his eyes darted away. “Tiffany’s pregnant and emotionally unstable, so I painted some pictures to cheer her up…” “She has prenatal depression, I couldn’t help it.” “Couldn’t help it?” When Tiffany moved into my house, neighbors whispered and pointed, but he pretended not to see, saying he couldn’t help it. Tiffany put peanut powder, which I am severely allergic to, in my soup; I went into shock and was rushed to the ER, but he turned a blind eye, saying he couldn’t help it. Tiffany caused our daughter’s death, and he protected her, saying he couldn’t help it. I laughed, tears streaming down my face. “All these ‘couldn’t help it’s almost killed me.” I stormed into the room, grabbed a bucket of paint, and hurled it at the paintings. “Audrey, are you insane?! What has Tiffany ever done to you?!” Julian grabbed my wrist, but suddenly froze. Beneath my sleeve, my arms were covered in festering wounds. “What… how did you get these? I explicitly ordered them to bring you food every day, to take good care of you…” “I’m perfectly fine.” “You can just kneel here until you’ve truly reflected. Then you can come back.” Julian’s cold voice snapped me back, and I pressed my lips together, unable to say a word.
I knelt on the ground, my forehead resting against my daughter’s tiny headstone, crying my heart out. “You look so pathetic.” Tiffany’s voice drifted from behind me. “She’s already like this, why can’t she just get the hint, divorce him, and get lost?” She stood before me, visibly pregnant, wearing a victor’s smirk. “But you reaching this point? It was all my design, step by step.” She crouched down, leaning close to my ear, her voice laced with a smile. “I personally dragged your daughter out of the morgue and threw her into that stray dog den on the west side of the city.” “I watched those dogs… tear her apart piece by piece. It was so satisfying.” She paused, her tone laced with a sickening pride. “Do you know what Dr. Grant did that night, when I came home, covered in blood and the stench of death?” “He held me… and ravished me all night.” “You bastard! You witch!” I shrieked, scrambling to my feet, my hands clamping tightly around her throat. I would kill her! Avenge my daughter! Tiffany’s face flushed dark, but her smile never wavered. “Serves you right.” Her hand closed around the handle of a shovel leaning nearby. She swung it hard into my back. A white-hot pain exploded through me, and my vision went black. A year in the basement had already broken my body.. I collapsed to the ground like a ragdoll, unable to move. I don’t know how long it was before she crouched beside me again, dangling something in her hand. A soft, chilling chime. My pupils shrank- Three years ago, before Julian’s heart surgery. I flew to the Philippines, nearly died diving the depths, all to gather those golden pearls. I polished each one myself. Tiffany’s smile was cruel. “Remember these? I should thank you, really.” “Dr. Grant loved using them during our nights…slipping them, one by one, over my skin…” “He said it let him feel your devotion.” That raw, life-risking devotion I had once offered now felt like poison-tipped boomerangs, each one flying back to pierce my heart. A sharp, sickening pain twisted through me. “Get out! Tiffany, get out of my sight!” Her eyes were cold, her words venomous and ruthless. “Audrey, you deserve to die!” My vision went black, and I collapsed.
When I woke again, I was bound in an abandoned warehouse. The rough nylon ropes chafed my wrists, burning with pain. My heart tightened, and I tried to struggle free. A man with a scar across his face walked over and kicked the metal shelf beside me. “Don’t bother. If Julian is smart, he’ll send over the original copy of that medical notebook your dad left behind, and we’ll let you go.” That notebook was Julian’s lifeblood-it contained all my father’s lifelong work. He always kept it locked in a bank safe; no one was allowed to touch it. My heart ached, but I felt no expectation that Julian would come. Too many expectations had been shattered; I no longer dared to hope. After an unknown period, the screech of tires echoed from outside. Scarface grinned. “Dr. Grant is quite fast. Where’s the stuff?” Julian stepped out of the car, his brows furrowed. He was about to signal his assistant to hand over the file, Suddenly, his phone rang, a sharp, insistent sound. He impatiently reached to hang up, but then his gaze softened as he saw the caller ID, and he answered. The nurse’s excited voice came through the phone. “Dr. Grant! Miss Tiffany’s water broke prematurely, she’s hemorrhaging badly, and she keeps calling your name!” Julian froze. He turned to look at me, his lips moving. “Audrey…” A bodyguard rushed forward to intervene. “Mr. Grant! Mrs. Grant’s life is genuinely in danger here! Miss Tiffany has doctors at the hospital…” “Shut up!” Julian’s face was grim. “I’m leaving this to you. Make sure you protect my wife.” He looked at me, his eyes complex. “Audrey, you’ve always been able to get through things… you know, Tiffany can’t do without me now…” “But Mr. Grant…” Before the bodyguard could finish, Julian had already turned and climbed back into the car. The car sped away. My heart was completely numb. Was my life truly that worthless to him? One bodyguard. One bound woman. What chance did we have against desperate men like these? Scarface eagerly tore open the envelope. After flipping through a few pages, his face darkened. “Damn it! You dare try to fool me with forgeries?!” He snatched up a steel pipe from beside him, his glare burning into me. “Your man played dirty. Don’t blame me for what comes next!” I thought perhaps, after a year so close to death, that when the end truly came, I’d feel nothing but calm. When your heart dies completely, even fear disappears. The pipe cut through the air with a whine. I closed my eyes. Bang. The warehouse door burst open. Blinding headlights cut through the dark, a dozen black SUVs sealing every exit. A voice I knew too well cut through the silence. “Let’s see who dares lay a hand on her today.”
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