CHAPTER 1 – Betrayal & Death

I knew something was wrong the moment I unlocked the door.

The apartment was too quiet.

Not the peaceful kind of quiet. The thick, muffled kind, like sound had been turned down, and the air was holding its breath.

“Ethan?” I called, nudging the door shut with my hip. My arms ached from the weight of two grocery bags and a cheap bottle of red wine digging into my ribs. “I brought food. And that Pinot you like.”

No answer.

The hallway smelled like dust and old takeout. The overhead light flickered, then steadied. I dropped my keys into the chipped bowl and kicked off my shoes.

My feet throbbed. My back hurt. My brain buzzed with the remains of a twelve-hour shift and a half-finished horror outline waiting on my laptop.

Still, stupid, hopeful warmth flickered in my chest.

Maybe tonight we could actually talk. Maybe if I cooked, if I didn’t bring up his snide comment from last week—that my writing was “cute” but not a real job—maybe he’d actually look at me the way he used to.

Like I was wanted.

I clung to that thought like a talisman as I shuffled down the narrow hall toward the tiny kitchen.

Then I heard it.

A low, breathy sound. A moan.

I froze.

It came again, clearer this time. A man’s groan, painfully familiar, wrapped around a woman’s breathy laugh.

My name floated down the hallway. Not the way you’d say it if you were worried about me. The way you’d say it if—

No.

The grocery bag handles cut into my fingers. The bottle of wine was slick with the sweat of my palm.

I told myself it was the TV. Ethan had fallen asleep with late-night cable on before. Maybe it was one of those trashy reality shows he pretended not to like.

Then I heard my sister’s voice.

Higher, breathier. “Ethan—oh my God—”

The world tightened into a pinpoint.

I walked down the hallway like I was underwater, every step heavy and slow. My heart pounded so hard my chest hurt. I stopped outside the bedroom door—the door to *my* room, the bed I’d picked out on clearance, and hauled up three flights of stairs while Ethan complained about his back.

The door was half open.

Through the crack, I saw a glimpse of skin and a tangle of limbs, the flash of my own blue bedsheet.

My throat clicked when I swallowed.

“Ethan?” I said, and my voice sounded wrong—too small, too polite.

The movement on the bed stilled.

For one absurd second, I hoped I was wrong. Maybe they were wrestling, or she had nowhere else to sleep, or—

He looked over his shoulder.

My boyfriend. Five years. Brown hair sticking to his forehead, skin flushed. My sister sprawled beneath him, naked in the dim light, her lipstick smeared across his mouth and my pillow.

I dropped the grocery bags.

The wine bottle hit the floor, rolled, and clinked against the wall. An onion bounced away, a ridiculous, bouncing planet in the middle of a collapsing universe.

No one moved.

My sister was the first to recover. She didn’t scramble to cover herself. She didn’t look ashamed. She just flicked her hair back, slow and deliberate, like this was an inconvenience.

“Oh my God, Willa,” she said, voice dripping annoyance. “Do you ever knock?”

Something inside my chest twisted.

“Get out,” I heard myself say, but it came out thin. A draft of a sentence, not the final line.

Ethan pushed himself up and off her, grabbing at the sheet with clumsy hands. He looked stunned for half a heartbeat, then something shuttered over his expression—annoyance, not guilt.

“Willa, wait,” he said. “This isn’t—”

“Isn’t what?” I stared at them, at my sister’s bare shoulder brushing my nightstand, at my own bra hanging from the bedpost like a joke. “You’re in my bed.”

“It just happened,” he snapped like that absolved him. “You’re always working, Willa. You’re never here. What did you expect?”

“I expected you not to screw my sister,” I said. My voice cracked on the last word.

He rolled his eyes. “Don’t be dramatic.”

My sister laughed—actually laughed—and dragged the sheet up more to her own chest than out of modesty. “You’re being creepy,” she said. “Standing there and watching. No wonder he strayed. You’re so… pathetic.”

The word hit me like a slap.

Who’d want you, Willa? You’re pathetic.

She’d said it before, in other ways. So had he. You’re lucky I put up with this writing phase. You’re too intense. You’re too sensitive.

Maybe if you tried harder—

My mind flooded with all the things I’d given up: weekends, sleep, savings, and pieces of myself. I’d stayed late at work, taken extra shifts, so we could afford this place. I’d shelved my horror drafts when he told me they freaked him out.

I’d twisted myself into knots, trying to be easy, uncomplicated, and grateful.

My chest hurt. My eyes burned. The room blurred.

“Get out,” I said again, stronger this time.

Ethan swung his legs off the bed, like I was inconveniencing him. “Can we not do this right now?” he said. “You’re tired. You’re emotional. It’s not just me, okay? You’re not exactly—happy to be around lately.”

He gestured vaguely at me. At my messy bun, my cheap T-shirt with a fading horror movie logo, my worn jeans. At the dark circles under my eyes from staying up too late revising.

“You’re saying this is my fault?” My voice came out thin and high. This couldn’t be real. I felt like I’d stepped into one of my own drafts, the bad kind I never finished.

He sighed. “I’m saying things haven’t been good for a while, and you know it. It just… happened.”

My sister smiled a little, smug and satisfied. “Face it, Willa. You’re not exactly… appealing.”

“Stop.” The word tasted like blood.

No one stopped.

Something inside me gave way.

I stepped back. My heel crunched down on broken glass from the wine bottle. Pain shot up my foot, but it felt distant. Far away, like my body belonged to someone else, and I was watching from the ceiling.

“I’m done,” I whispered, to myself more than to them.

They were still talking when I left. Maybe they called my name. Maybe they didn’t. The rush of blood in my ears drowned everything out.

I stumbled down the hallway and grabbed my keys with shaking fingers. I didn’t take my shoes. Didn’t take my bag, my laptop, my drafts. I just opened the door and ran.

The night air slapped me in the face, cold and wet. I tasted rain and exhaust. My bare feet slapped concrete and then asphalt. Headlights streaked by horn blasts and the distant wail of sirens blending into a single, rising scream.

I didn’t care if I lived through the next second.

I didn’t look. I didn’t check the light.

I stepped off the curb.

For a split second, a car exploded into existence in front of me. White hood, blinding headlights, a driver’s face twisted in horror. The horn blared, too late.

Impact.

The world snapped sideways. Something crunched in my chest. Pain flared, then vanished altogether. Sound cut out.

I hit the ground and couldn’t feel it.

Cold seeped in from all directions. My vision tunneled, narrowing to a strip of wet pavement and scattered groceries. A red bottle lying on its side, bleeding wine like blood.

“Ethan,” I rasped. Not a plea.

A curse.

Darkness swallowed the street, the car, the betrayal, the pain.

Swallowed me.

And somewhere, far away, something was already waiting.

---