I Faked My Death to Take His Empire

I didn't storm in to catch them in the act and make a scene.

I just did something close to self-torture instead. I booked the room next to theirs.

The walls didn't muffle much.

Or maybe they simply never bothered to hold anything back.

The sounds coming through the wall were violent. I had never once seen him like that.

With me, he was always gentle, always restrained.

Seraphina's voice broke into a sob.

"Val, three years ago, you were so angry I left you out there in the water—"

"Today, let me give myself to you to make up for it. Please?"

The moment the words faded, the noise on the other side of the wall grew even more savage.

I bit down on my lower lip until I tasted blood.

I forced down the urge to break, took out my voice recorder, and saved the evidence.

A wave of nausea kept rising up my throat.

I tucked the recorder away and stumbled out.

I walked the streets alone, cold wind driving fine rain into my face.

My phone lit up. A message from Val.

"Penny, this case is dragging. I'll be home late. Go to sleep early, don't stay up."

I tipped my head back.

I tried to push the tears back down, but my eyes blurred over anyway.

I'd believed I was the happiest woman in the world.

The evidence in front of me had just slapped me across the face for it.

I don't know how I got home.

I picked up the woodcarving by the entryway and carried it to the display stand in the living room.

The stand was crowded with small carvings of a woman.

For three years, I had taken them as proof that he loved me.

I used to be obsessed with woodcarving.

So Val canceled every dinner and engagement and came along to learn it with me.

He'd circle me in his arms, his hands over mine, working the knife stroke by stroke.

He said he wanted to keep every version of me, carved and held forever.

I walked to the half-length carving in the center, the one I loved most.

The suspicion kept rising in me, and almost without thinking, I lifted the carving aside.

There was a hidden compartment underneath.

I opened it, and I couldn't stop shaking.

Inside lay a single old photograph, yellowed with age.

The girl in it smiled wide and bold, with a particular melancholy resting in her eyes.

It was Seraphina, before the surgery.

I held the photo up against the carving in front of me.

The brow, the eyes, the expression. None of it was me at all.

I was only a reference, something to trace Seraphina's old face onto.

Just then the front door chimed with the fingerprint lock.

Val was home.

"Still awake? Were you scared, here on your own without me?"

He came over and reached out to ruffle my hair, the way he always did.

I couldn't hold it back any longer.

I dodged his hand and flung the photo into his face.

"So these three years of being good to me. All of it was fake?"

"You were only ever looking at her through me?"

Val glanced down, and a flicker of displeasure crossed his eyes.

He bent and picked the photo up, brushing the dust off it gently.

Not a trace of a man caught cheating.

"Penny, the title of Mrs. James will always be yours."

"Seraphina is just an obsession from when I was young. I need a little time to put it to rest."

I let out a cold laugh. "Put it to rest? In bed?"

Val looked up, eyes narrowing at me. "You followed me?"

He crossed one leg over the other.

"She has severe depression now. I can't just stand by and watch a living person die, can I?"

"I trust you can understand me. You're so tender-hearted with stray cats and dogs. This is a human life."

Just then his phone, lying on the table, lit up.

A voice message from Seraphina.

Val didn't bother hiding it. He just tapped it onto speaker.