Chapter 2

Elia Carpenter POV:

There was no pain.

One moment, I was a girl strapped to a bomb in a concrete room. The next, I was… nothing. A wisp of consciousness floating in the quiet, dusty aftermath.

Below me, where my body had been, was a scene of utter devastation. A crater in the floor, blackened walls, and scattered, unrecognizable fragments of what used to be me.

I should have been horrified. I should have been screaming. Instead, a profound sense of peace washed over me. The constant, aching weight of trying to be enough for Arthur, of feeling invisible, was gone. I was free. Death was not an end; it was a release.

I drifted aimlessly through the ruined building, a silent observer in a world I no longer belonged to. Time seemed to have no meaning. Hours, or maybe days, passed in a gray, formless haze.

Then, I felt a pull. A tether. It was faint at first, then stronger, drawing me back to the epicenter of the explosion as the wail of sirens grew louder.

Arthur Thompson arrived with the first wave of forensic investigators.

He stepped out of his car, dressed in a crisp, dark suit, his face a mask of professional detachment. He was here as an architect, a consultant for the city on structural integrity after explosions. The irony was a bitter pill I no longer had to swallow.

"What have we got?" he asked the lead detective, his voice all business.

"Jane Doe. Looks like she was the target. Bomb was strapped right to her. Messy," the detective grunted, pointing toward the crater.

Arthur nodded, his gaze sweeping over the scene. He walked closer, his expensive shoes crunching on the debris. He looked down at the scorched floor, at the few pathetic remnants the blast had left behind.

I floated beside him, a strange, desperate hope flickering within me. A stupid, human hope that refused to die even after I had.

He' ll know. Even like this, he' ll know it' s me. He' ll see something, a piece of my favorite blue blouse, the locket he gave me… and he' ll know.

And when he knows, he will crumble. The perfect, composed facade will shatter, and he will finally, finally feel the weight of what he has lost. What he threw away.

He crouched down, his expression clinical. "The device was high-grade C4. Professional job. The blast was directed inwards, minimizing structural damage to the load-bearing walls. Smart. They wanted to contain it."

He pointed at a small, melted piece of metal. "See that? The casing is military-spec. This wasn' t some amateur."

He stood up, brushing dust from his trousers. He didn' t look at what was left of me again. He saw a crime scene, a puzzle to be solved. Not the woman who had shared his bed for three years.

He didn't recognize me. He didn' t even consider it could be me.

The last, foolish ember of hope inside me turned to ash. Of course he didn' t know. To him, I was just a nuisance who had been pulling a "dramatic stunt" a few days ago. I was an inconvenience he had already decided to cut from his life. Why would he even think to look for me here?

The medical examiner' s team arrived and began the grim task of collecting what was left of me. They placed the fragments into a body bag. As they zipped it shut, I felt that strange tether pull taut.

I was being drawn along with the bag, a spectral passenger on my own final journey. I was bound to him. To Arthur.

In the car on the way back to the precinct, his best friend and colleague, Kadin Cooper, sat in the passenger seat.

"Any word from Elia?" Kadin asked, his voice gentle.

Arthur stared out the window, his jaw tight. "I haven' t checked. Probably a hundred missed calls and a novel' s worth of angry texts. I swear, Kadin, I' m at my limit with her."

Every word was a nail in my coffin, sealing me in this cold, dark reality. I was a ghost, and I was still suffocating.

"Arthur, maybe you should just call her," Kadin urged. "She sounded genuinely scared when her father called me. He said she' s been missing for two days."

"She' s not missing," Arthur scoffed, pulling out his phone. "She' s punishing me because I had to work. It' s what she does."

He opened his messages, and I saw my last texts to him appear on the screen.

I know you don' t care. But I was pregnant. You were going to be a father.

I hope we never meet again. In this life or the next.

I watched his face, my non-existent heart pounding. This is it. This is the moment.

His expression didn' t soften with grief or shock. It hardened with fury.

"Unbelievable," he muttered, his thumb hovering over my name.

"What is it?" Kadin asked.

"She' s claiming she was pregnant," Arthur said, his voice dripping with disgust. "Sinking to new depths to manipulate me. What a sick thing to lie about."

He tried to call me. The call, of course, didn' t go through.

"See? Straight to voicemail. She' s turned her phone off to complete the drama," he seethed. "Well, I' m done. I' m done playing these childish games."

He cursed under his breath, a stream of vicious words aimed at a woman who no longer existed.

Then, with a final, decisive tap, he blocked my number. He deleted my contact. He erased me from his life as easily as wiping a smudge from a screen.

The pain I' d felt in my final moments was a roaring fire. This was a cold, creeping void. The last vestiges of the girl who loved Arthur Thompson died in that car. What was left was something else. Something empty and watchful.

I had given up the ghost of a hope that he would ever love me. Now, I gave up the ghost of a hope that he would even mourn me.

I followed my own remains into the morgue. I was forced to watch as the medical examiner laid out the fragments on a steel table.

And then Arthur walked in, a clipboard in his hand, ready to assist with the official report.

I was tethered to him, a cruel twist of fate. I was forced to watch the man I had loved, the man whose indifference had signed my death warrant, perform an autopsy on my unrecognizable body.

A silent, invisible scream built inside me, but no sound came out. I was trapped. Trapped with him. Forever.