The Wife He Buried Alive

The acrid smell of disinfectant saturated the air.

Donna opened her eyes. Her entire back burned as if seared by a hot iron; each breath tugged at the raw wounds.

Then, voices from outside the door delivered another blow to her groggy consciousness.

"How could you lock Donna in there? You’re her husband. How could you tell *me* to leave first… I never should have gone to that place with you…"

Nancy’s voice was a soft, weeping murmur, answered by Roger’s—saturated with tenderness.

"Don’t blame yourself. I was too frantic. I knocked over the memorial lamp by accident. Blame me, alright? But even if I had a thousand—ten thousand—chances to do it over, I’d still save you first."

Their intimate murmuring threatened to split her eardrums.

Gritting her teeth, she fumbled for the bag she always kept close. Inside lay the tiny clothes she had sewn herself, stitch by painstaking stitch. Silent tears carved wet paths down her cheeks.

Her Terry… had never once worn the clothes she made for him.

Just… gone.

And the test report that had just arrived on her phone shattered five years of love into meaningless dust.

Her body was perfectly healthy. Yet the report Roger had personally handed her—every line, every word—had condemned her as sickly and weak.

In a sudden frenzy, Donna found that report and ripped it to shreds.

It had never crossed her mind that the reports were fake. She had never dreamed her ‘frail’ constitution was Roger’s own handiwork!

She watched the flight confirmation on her screen, tears soaking into the pillow.

No need for a thousand or ten thousand second chances.

*Roger, this time, I'm the one walking away.*

*I'm giving you back to Nancy.*

She had barely set her phone down when the door burst open. Roger hurried in, haggard and dusted with soot as though he’d come straight from the fire.

Seeing Donna lying safely in the hospital bed, his strength seemed to desert him. He slumped to his knees beside her.

"Donna… thank God. Thank God you’re all right. If anything had happened to you, I wouldn’t want to go on living…"

Donna looked at the dark shadows beneath Roger’s eyes and found she couldn’t utter a word.

On any ordinary day, she would have clung to him and wept.

But the burns on her back. Her own dead child.

They screamed a blood-soaked truth: the family she had cherished for five years was a fabrication!

The man she had loved with her life hated her most of all.

"Roger," Donna’s voice was thick, each word trembling, "why did the fire have to be in Terry’s room? I was so close… I almost had him in my arms."

Roger tilted his head up and gently kissed the tears from her cheek.

"My fault. All my fault. I didn’t negotiate clearly with the kidnappers back then. I was the one who insisted on keeping that lamp burning for him… I made it so even in death, Terry found no peace."

Every syllable was a dodge, an evasion.

A sudden, deep exhaustion washed over Donna.

She had already decided to leave him. So why did her heart ache like this?

Her hand flew to her chest of its own volition, pounding against it as if she could tear the wretched thing out and be rid of it.

But Roger misunderstood. Thinking it was self-recrimination, he caught her fist in his hand, his own voice pained. "Don’t hit yourself. Hit me. It kills me to see you hurt. Terry… he’s gone. Let’s just have another, okay?"

As he spoke, his fingers went to the collar of her hospital gown, his lips grazing the shell of her ear.

"No. I won’t have a child with you."

*I won’t let you kill another of my children…*

Her gaze fell to the sprawling, vivid marks on Roger’s neck, just below the blood-red prayer bead at his throat. The hickies were a deeper, more lurid red than the drop of her own blood she had once sealed inside it.

Nausea roiled in her stomach. Pushing against his chest, weariness etched itself into her eyes and brow.

Roger nodded, his gaze lingering, tender. "Alright. Then I’ll stay right here with you. Call if you need water."

Under the weight of his heated stare, Donna could only close her eyes.

She dreamed of last night again. Of the fire, consuming everything she had.

"Roger!"

She woke with a gasp, jolting upright. The room was utterly dark. The man who had promised to stay was nowhere to be seen.

Outside the door, nurses chattered.

"That girl upstairs is so lucky! Just a twisted ankle and her boyfriend’s beside himself…"

"Honestly! He booked the whole VIP floor *and* hasn’t left her side. Dotes on her more than that ‘wife-worshipping’ CEO, Roger!"

A traitorous tear escaped. Donna scrubbed it away viciously.

*Don’t you dare cry, Donna!*

After Dad died, no one was ever going to love you again!

Her phone chimed.

A message from Nancy.

A photo. In it, Roger—the man whose hands signed billion-dollar contracts—was down on one knee, tenderly rubbing Nancy’s ankle, his eyes filled with rapt devotion.

**「I’m taking your man AND your child!」**

**「The one in your belly will end up just like the first!」**