His Mistress Filmed While My Fiancé Killed Me

He didn't let go of my arm. Not when we reached the railing. Not when I tried to twist away, my feet slipping on the wet deck. Not when I sobbed his name one last time.

He just shoved.

The world inverted. Sky became water became sky. I saw the yacht's white hull tilt sideways, saw faces lean over the railing in a slow-motion blur, and then the Atlantic hit me like a fist.

Cold. God, the cold. It punched every thought out of my head and replaced it with animal panic. My mouth opened to scream and salt water poured in, choking, burning. My dress tangled around my legs. The diamond necklace was a weight dragging me down.

I clawed at the surface. My arms thrashed. My lungs were on fire.

I wasn't in the Hamptons anymore. I was eight years old on a muddy riverbank, watching the East River swallow my father whole. I was pressing his whistle into my palm so hard it left marks. I was waiting for him to come back. Waiting. Waiting.

He never came back.

The water closed over my head and I went under. Darkness. Pressure. The muffled thud of my own heartbeat in my ears. I kicked and broke the surface again, gasping, choking, screaming words that came out as nothing but salt and terror.

"Jett!" I tried to yell. "Jett, please—"

Above me, the yacht's lights blurred into smears of gold. Faces lined the railing. I couldn't tell if they were watching or looking away. I couldn't tell if anyone was moving. The music still played. I could hear it, faint and distorted, bleeding through the water like a dream I couldn't wake up from.

Then I heard the splash.

Relief flooded through me, hot and desperate. He came. He came for me. He was going to pull me out. He was going to say he was sorry. He was going to hold me and tell me it was over and I would forgive him because I always forgave him, because that's what love was, wasn't it? Enduring. Forgiving. Waiting.

I saw his head break the surface ten feet away. Water streamed off his hair. His eyes locked onto mine.

They weren't soft.

They weren't scared.

They were furious.

He swam toward me with hard, efficient strokes, and I reached for him, my hand outstretched, fingers grasping at nothing. "Jett, I can't—I can't swim, please, I—"

He reached me.

His hand closed around the back of my head.

And he shoved me under.

The world exploded into black. Water filled my nose, my mouth, my throat. I tried to scream and choked on salt. My hands flew up and found his wrist, his forearm, clawing, pulling, trying to break free. He didn't let go. His grip was iron. His fingers tangled in my hair and held me down like I was something that needed to be drowned, something that needed to be silenced.

I thrashed. My nails dug into his skin. My legs kicked at nothing. The pressure in my chest built and built until I thought my ribs would crack.

This wasn't an accident.

This wasn't a rescue.

This was punishment.

My vision started to gray at the edges. My lungs screamed. My body begged me to open my mouth, to breathe, to take in anything even if it killed me. My hands were still on his wrist but they were weakening, the strength draining out of me like water through a sieve.

And then my fingers found the chain at my throat.

The diamond necklace. The one Jett had given me. The one I wore over the whistle because he told me to, because he said the whistle was garbage, because he said if I wanted to be a Patterson I needed to stop clinging to trash.

But the whistle was still there. Hidden. Always hidden.

My hand closed around it.

The metal was cold and small and battered, and I held it the way I'd held it fifteen years ago on a riverbank with mud sucking at my shoes and my father's voice in my ears—*hold onto this for me, sweetheart*—and I gripped it so hard the edges cut into my palm.

I held it.

I held it.

I held it.

The gray at the edges of my vision turned black. The pressure in my chest stopped hurting. My body stopped fighting. My hands went slack around the whistle but my fingers stayed closed, locked, like rigor mortis setting in early.

Somewhere far above me, Jett let go.

I felt his hand release my hair. Felt the water shift as he kicked away. Felt myself sinking, slow and heavy, the yacht's lights fading into pinpricks and then nothing.

I sank.

And the last thing I held onto in this world was my father's whistle, the one he pressed into my hand before the water took him.

The same water that was taking me now.

Daddy's coming right back, he'd said.

I waited.

I waited.

And then I stopped waiting.

I let go.