Chapter 1

I feel the cold first.

It' s a deep, penetrating chill that has nothing to do with temperature. It's the cold of the stainless-steel table beneath me. My soul, or whatever this is, hovers just above, watching.

The man in the blue scrubs is my husband, Dr. Ethan Cole.

He' s a surgeon, brilliant they say, but today he' s playing the part of a forensic pathologist. His face is a mask of professional indifference. He picks up a scalpel, the light glinting off the blade. I see his knuckles are white as he grips the handle.

Is he nervous? Or just tired?

He probably had a late night with her. Olivia.

I try to feel anger, a spark of jealousy, but there' s nothing. Just a hollow emptiness, a vast, quiet space where my heart used to be.

My body is in pieces.

A leg here, an arm there. He and his assistant are trying to lay them out, to make sense of the butchery.

Ethan lets out a short, frustrated sigh.

"This is a mess. The killer was thorough. Almost… personal."

His voice is exactly as I remember it. Deep, steady, but with an edge of impatience. It' s the same voice he used when I' d ask him where he' d been, the same tone he' d use when I' d say I missed him.

His assistant, a young man I don' t recognize, looks pale.

"Sir, the preliminary report said she was held captive for three days."

Ethan doesn' t look up from his work. He' s examining my hand, or what' s left of it. He traces a line along my finger where my wedding ring used to be. The skin is raw and torn.

"They starved her," Ethan says, his voice flat. "Dehydration, malnutrition. The dismemberment was post-mortem. A final act of cruelty."

He sounds like he' s reading from a textbook. There' s no emotion, no hint that he recognizes the body parts of the woman he married. But how could he? I was just a troublesome wife he couldn' t wait to get rid of.

I remember those three days in the dark.

The suffocating blackness of the bag over my head. The raw burn of ropes on my wrists. I didn' t cry. I didn' t scream. I just waited. I waited for Ethan to come for me. I believed he would. Even after everything, I believed.

On the third day, the kidnappers made the call. I heard it through the thin wall.

Ethan' s voice, clear and cold.

"A ransom? For her?"

A pause. Then a short, cruel laugh that shattered the last of my hope.

"She' s not worth my money. Thank you for getting rid of that troublesome woman for me."

The line went dead. The silence in the room was heavier than the darkness.

Then, the pain started.

Back in the morgue, Ethan finds something. He leans in closer to my torso. He uses his forceps to pick at something near my ribs. A small, dark splinter of wood.

"What is it, Dr. Cole?" the assistant asks.

"A splinter. From an old, untreated wood. Maybe from the place she was held."

He places it carefully into a small plastic bag. His expression changes for a fraction of a second. A flicker of something. Not recognition. Not sadness. Something else. Concentration. The look he gets when a puzzle intrigues him.

I was always a puzzle he couldn' t be bothered to solve.

The assistant speaks again, his voice trembling slightly.

"The level of violence… it' s personal. The killer must have hated her."

Ethan straightens up, his face once again a blank slate.

"Hate is a strong motivator."

His phone rings, a sharp, jarring sound in the sterile silence. He strips off one of his bloody gloves with a snap and answers it.

"Olivia," he says. And his voice softens. The ice melts away, replaced by a warmth I haven' t heard in years.

"I' m at work. Yes, it' s a bad one… No, I' ll be there. I wouldn' t miss your birthday for anything."

He hangs up. He looks back down at the fragmented body on his table. At me. A look of pure disgust crosses his face. As if my brutalized remains are a personal inconvenience, an obstacle to his evening plans.

"Let' s get this over with," he mutters.

He turns his attention to my womb. It was my last secret, my final, desperate hope to fix what was broken between us. To build the family I thought we both wanted.

Ethan makes an incision. He' s all business again, a machine of precision. He pauses. His hand freezes.

The assistant leans forward. "Doctor?"

Ethan doesn' t answer. He reaches in slowly, carefully, and lifts out a tiny, nascent form. A fetus. Barely formed, but unmistakably a new life. Our new life.

He stares at it in his gloved hand. The world seems to stop. The hum of the ventilation, the clatter of instruments, it all fades away.

For the first time since this began, Ethan' s mask cracks completely. His jaw tightens, his eyes widen, and a sound escapes his throat-a choked, guttural noise that is part shock, part horror, part something I can' t name.

I float in the silence, watching the husband who despised me discover the child he never knew he had.

A child he had just declared not worth his money.

I remember lying on the floor of that dark room, my hand on my stomach, whispering to our baby.

"Don' t worry. Daddy will save us. He loves us."

What a fool I was.

What a blind, hopeful fool.