Chapter 7
I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. But I didn’t fight either. I walked to the center of that salted floor in silence… and knelt.
The pain was instant. Sharp. Burning. Every grain like a blade pressed into my skin. But I didn’t flinch. Not once. I kept my eyes low. My back straight. My mouth shut.
Time crawled. Every second dragged across my spine like a knife. I started bleeding by the end of the first hour. By the second, my vision blurred. By the third, I was no longer human–I was just a shell they were trying to break open and rearrange. And still, I said nothing.
Then she stirred. Like she timed it perfectly. Elodie fluttered her lashes, sighed weakly, and turned her head like she was waking from a month–long coma.
“Jeremiah…?” Her voice was breathy. Fragile. A porcelain lie.
He rushed to her side, brushing her hair back like she wasn’t the one who’d destroyed me. She looked around, and then like some holy martyr her eyes landed on me.
Me, on my knees. Bleeding. Silent. Refusing to fall.
“Jeremiah,” she whispered, “why is she like that?”
“She needed to reflect,” he muttered. “You could’ve died.”
She blinked slowly. Then the tears started to flow. Fake. Timed. Manipulative. “Please… don’t make her kneel for me. She’s grieving too. She lost her fiancé on their wedding day. I know she hates me… but I always cared for her.” Her fingers reached for his wrist with trembling elegance. “Please, babe. Don’t torture her. When I die… I want the two of you to be happy together. Don’t let my pain turn you into something dark.” She sobbed harder. Like this was her Oscar speech. “Promise me, okay? Promise me you’ll forgive her.”
I looked up slowly. Blood had soaked through the silk of my gown. My knees were raw. My mouth was dry. And yet all I could do… was laugh. Low. Bitter. Broken.
‘You’re not dying,” I whispered. “You’re acting.”
Harvick glared at me. “Danica, enough—”
‘No,” I snapped. “You want me to break? Then you better hit harder than this. Because all your salt and silence and staged tragedies won’t change the truth. You left me. Lied to me. Buried me n grief while you played house with a woman who wore my perfume and smiled at my funeral.” Harvick’s jaw tightened.
Elodie whimpered. “Why are you saying these things…?”
‘Because it’s true,” I said. “And deep down, you both know it.”
I stood up, every inch of my body screaming in pain. Blood dripped down my legs, and salt clung
to my skin like a curse. But I still stood. And I looked Harvick dead in the eyes.
‘You’re not punishing me,” I whispered. “You’re punishing yourself. Because you see me still standing–and you hate that.”
He didn’t speak. He just stared. Like the lie was starting to burn.
By the time I got home from the hospital, my knees were still bleeding through the gauze, and the salt had already crusted into my wounds like it wanted to stay.
Harvick acted like nothing happened. He followed me inside, slow and soft, like we were still playing pretend. He brought me a cup of tea with his usual mask on–careful, warm, gentle. “You should drink something,” he said. “It’s got ginger. For your stomach. You used to love it
when…”
I looked at him. Blank. Hollow. Like a porcelain doll that had finally cracked.
“I need air.” That’s all I said.
He reached for me like he wanted to stop me. Like he still thought he had some kind of right over my breath. But then Elodie’s voice screamed from the upstairs intercom.
“Jeremiah-!” she wailed. “I–I can’t breathe–please! My chest! Something’s wrong!”
Harvick turned fast, panic etched in his face like a whip, and I didn’t miss how quick he forgot about me again.
“Stay inside,” he barked over his shoulder as he ran up. “Don’t go anywhere.”
But I was already walking out the door.
The taxi was waiting at the curb. Not a flashy car. Not suspicious. Just a clean black sedan with a driver in sunglasses and a silent nod.
I slid into the backseat like I wasn’t bleeding under my dress. Like I hadn’t just knelt for three hours on jagged salt while the man I once loved let another woman sob lies beside him.
“Ms. Monroe?” the driver asked calmly.
I nodded.
“Good,” he said. “We’ve been ready. Peter’s cleared the road. I’m taking the long route. When we hit Marker 17… it begins.”
I didn’t speak. I just sat there with my eyes on the mountain road ahead.
We were halfway up the mountain when the driver spoke again.
“We’ll swap cars once the news breaks. Your double’s already in place. We used a corpse Peter kept tagged for two weeks–female, similar height. The explosion will destroy the rest. But your clothes, DNA, your watch, your ID… they’ll all survive just enough.”
I nodded once, slow.
“Thank you.”
He glanced at me through the rearview.
“Peter said you’d probably thank me like that. Quiet. Calm. Like someone who already died long ago.”
He wasn’t wrong. Because I did die. On my wedding day. When the helicopter never landed. When I clutched my stomach and sobbed over a man who buried me in silence while holding
4:35 pm
DD
another woman’s hand.
I turned to the window and whispered, mostly to myself,
“Make sure they see it. Make sure they believe it.”
The driver didn’t respond. But he pressed harder on the gas.
Three minutes later, the crash echoed through the trees. A blast of fire lit the side of the mountain like lightning from hell.
The car rolled twice, then exploded again–fuel tank ruptured, heat spilling into the sky.
2
People saw it. People screamed. A shepherd down the hill called it in.
They found a body inside–burned beyond recognition.
A twisted, melted watch lay next to it, engraved with initials: Danica. And a charred ID half-melted to the leather wallet still read:
DANICA MONROE
HARVICK’S POV
My phone rang just as I was pouring Elodie her tea.
I didn’t even look at the name, I just answered, annoyed.
“Boss! Boss, it’s Danica. Ms. Danica… she…she died, sir. Car crash just ten minutes ago!”
