Chapter 0002

CHAPTER TWO

SOPHIE

There was blood everywhere, on my hands, my face, and even on my clothes. I touched my arms, and my stomach but there was no pain, no wound on my body. Then whose blood is this?

It was warm and sticky, and it sent shivers down my spine. My throat felt tight and breathing became difficult as I looked down at Ethan, and realized that the knife was buried deep in his chest. His white shirt was turning red, and the blood was quickly spreading out.

I blinked rapidly. No. No, no, no. This isn’t happening.

Ethan coughed, and he managed to smirk despite the pain. My heart pounded in my chest. I wanted to help him, and press my hands over the wound to stop the bleeding, but my body wouldn’t move. I was in so much shock.

Then suddenly, a loud scream filled the air.

“Help!” Stella screamed and her voice was filled with fear and terror. “Someone help! Mr. Ethan’s wife is trying to murder him!”

I quickly turned toward her and saw that she was at the office door, banging her fists on it, and her face displayed horror. Her words made my stomach churn badly.

“What? No!” I stumbled back from Ethan, and I could feel my entire body shaking. “That’s not true! Stella, you saw what happened!” I tried to reason with her, but she wasn’t listening. She wasn’t even trying to hear me out.

She turned toward me, and for a little moment, the fear in her eyes disappeared, and it was replaced by cold look.

She wanted this. This was their plan all along.

Before I could control myself, I began sobbing hard and desperately. “Please… you know I didn’t do this,” I pleaded in a shaky voice.

She smirked at me and then, she let out another loud cry. “Help! Somebody call the police! She’s trying to kill him!”

Panic filled my heart and everything screamed at me to run, to fight, or do something, but my body refused to move.

Ethan chuckled weakly and though his voice was hoarse, I could hear the hatred and disgust in it.

“Now you’ll never be able to expose me,” he rasped. His eyes shine with victory despite the pain he was going through. “If you ever think of ruining me, Sophie, I will come for you, and you will regret it. No one will ever believe you, I made sure of that.”

My hands trembled seriously. I looked down at the blood om my skin, and my eyes went blurry and I felt dizzy.

The office door was pushed open, and everything happened in a few seconds.

Security guards and police officers rushed in. Someone yelled and another man roughy grabbed me and put handcuffs on my wrists.

“I- I didn’t do it!” I screamed, and struggled with the officers holding me. “I didn’t do it! Please, you have to believe me!”

But they didn’t listen, they didn’t even try to hear me out.

Everything that happened after felt like a nightmare that I couldn’t wake up from. The police taking me away, the scary interrogation room, and the empty feeling in my chest as Stella and Ethan stood before the judge, and effortlessly told lies without batting an eye.

They said I was a jealous, mentally unstable wife who went crazy when she found out about the affair. Ethan even had the audacity to sit in the courtroom, and claimed he was heartbroken.

“She always had a hot temper,” he told the judge. “But I never thought she’d go this far…”

Stella cried dramatically beside him. “She wanted to kill him!” she sobbed. “I was so scared. She just… she just lost control.”

The lies went on and on, but I had no one. There was one to defend me. No family, and no lawyer agreed to stand by me. It was like he paid them off.

In the end, the judge ended the case, and gave me eight years in prison, and that was how my world collapsed.

“Cheer up! You can’t spend all your life thinking about him.” An inmate nudged me on my shoulders, and I forced myself to smile. I looked around the cold, gray walls of my cell that added to my depression each day.

The other inmates were chatting about something but I wasn’t interested. I never joined them, not because I felt like I was above them, but because my life was slowly slipping away.

I learnt to stop counting the days and stop feeling anything at all.

Then, suddenly the cell door was pushed open and it brought me out from my straying thoughts.

“Hey!” a guard barked in a rough voice. “You have someone waiting to see you.”

I slowly lifted my head slowly, and blinked rapidly as I tried to process what I had just heard.

Someone wanted to see me? Who’s that?

I had no one left. No one had ever come to see me since I got in. So why now?

My heart pounded in fear as I stood up and followed the guard to see whoever was waiting for me.