Wed or Dead

"Lucifer, I'm begging you. Can I go back and take a look first? Just a quick peek."

I stood on the cold stone floor, staring intently at the misty shadow seated behind the desk.

Lucifer side-eyed me.

"The rules are clear: you can't go back and change the past!

"However, I can give you one flashback opportunity for each marriage. You can only watch, not touch. Once you've seen everything, you make your decision. But there's a catch."

"What catch?" I asked eagerly.

"If you choose a wife this way and still end up dying a miserable death after the marriage, your soul will be completely obliterated, erased from existence forever. But if you pick right now without looking, even if you die horribly again, you'll just have to wait in line here for another hundred years before you can reincarnate. Think carefully."

My fingers dug hard into the icy stone.

Obliterated from existence? Or suffer another hundred years here?

Spending a century in this dreary Hell until my soul went completely numb sounded like torture. I'd rather take a gamble on the flashback—my only real shot at survival.

I raised my head and choked out, "I choose the flashback."

Lucifer's hand froze mid-air. He looked me up and down, his lips curving into a smirk that I couldn't tell was mocking or approving of me.

"You've got some guts."

Before the words even faded, he waved his massive hand, and everything went black.

When I opened my eyes again, I was standing right beside Rosie Price's genuine leather couch.

This was my first marriage. Rosie was a powerful, self-made leather factory owner pulling in millions a year. How in the world did things get to the point where she used her own husband's fingers to pay off gambling debts?

…

Week 1 of our marriage.

Rosie's life was far more glamorous than I remembered.

Her factory was running at full capacity, with orders booked out through the next quarter. Every day, she left the house with a smile and came back with gifts of the latest high-end watches and sneakers for me.

"Babe, did you go out today? Buy whatever you like. Just swipe my card."

She tossed her car keys onto the entryway table, her eyes crinkling with genuine warmth as she kicked off her heels.

When I was actually living through this past life, my heart had been filled with the joy of feeling cherished. But watching it now as a spectator, I saw the hidden cracks.

Even during that first week, Rosie would sit at her computer, her brow furrowed in frustration over the books. Whenever her phone rang, she would turn her back to me and drop her voice to a whisper.

"Why did the raw material price jump another three percent? The margins are way too thin!"

Whatever the person on the line said only made her run her fingers through her hair in agitation.

…

Day 15 of our marriage.

This was when things began to shift.

The factory's biggest client suddenly breached their contract, leaving an unpaid balance of four hundred thousand dollars hanging in the air.

Rosie didn't utter a word about it to me.

That night, she suffered from insomnia until three in the morning, pacing the balcony and smoking through half a pack of cigarettes. Yet the next morning, she still smiled warmly at me over breakfast.

"What do you feel like eating tonight? I'll pick it up on my way home from work."

…

Day 20 of our marriage.

Rosie went to a private poker game hosted by a friend.

"Just playing small to unwind. You've been way too stressed lately, Rosie," her friend had coaxed.

Rosie walked away winning six thousand dollars. When she came back home, her eyes were shining.

It wasn't the greedy spark of a gambler. It was the frantic desperation of a drowning person who had suddenly grabbed hold of a lifeline.

Observing from the outside, I finally understood where it all started.

That high from winning six thousand dollars wasn't driven by greed. It was the only tangible thing Rosie could grasp ‌amidst her suffocating anxiety. Because early the next morning, she used that exact six thousand dollars to buy me a designer tie.

"I walked past the display window and thought it would look so handsome on you," she said softly as she tied it around my neck herself, her gaze dripping with tenderness.

Watching that moment made my heart ache sharply.

…

Day 25 of our marriage.

The client's breach of contract blew wide open.

The bank was pressing for repayment on the previous batch of material loans, and she faced a funding shortfall of two hundred thousand dollars.

So Rosie started frequenting the poker tables. She went from five-thousand-dollar buy-ins to ten thousand, and eventually to fifty-thousand-dollar hands.

She had winning streaks. Once, she brought home eighty thousand dollars in a single night.

That night, she swept me into her arms and spun me around the living room. "Babe, we're going to the Maldives right now! I already looked up the flight tickets!"

In my past life, I was so thrilled, asking if she had just closed a massive business deal.

She said yes. And I blindly believed her.

…

Days 30 to 60 of our marriage.

I watched Rosie's gradual descent.

At first, whenever she won, the first thing she did was transfer money to me or plan trips. She was actively trying to patch up the financial hole.

However, starting around Day 45, winning money no longer meant fixing the problem. It meant planning the next poker game.

The hole was already mostly patched, but she couldn't stop.

The stakes on the table shifted from "our trip to the Maldives" to "I can win even more". She went from playing with local small business owners to facing seasoned high-stakes players in underground VIP lounges.

The scale of her wins and losses ballooned from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

…

Day 80 of our marriage.

Rosie suffered her first massive loss, with three hundred thousand dollars gone in one night.

She didn't come home, opting to hole up in a hotel room for two days instead. When she finally returned, I asked her what was wrong.

"I was on a business trip negotiating a big contract. I'm just exhausted," she muttered, avoiding my eyes as she walked straight into the bathroom.

I stood by helplessly, watching a woman who had originally just wanted to build a good life for us get her sanity stripped away by the thrill of winning.

By the end, the look in Rosie's eyes at the table was completely different from where she started.

The first time, her eyes held anxiety and desperate hope. By the last time, her eyes held nothing but pure, bloodthirsty madness.

She had long forgotten why she sat down at that table in the first place.

…

Day 96 of our marriage.

The debt collectors came knocking at the door.

Rosie wasn't home, leaving me alone to face three strange men covered in full-back tattoos.

"Rosie owes us two million dollars. She said she's out of cash, so we're taking her husband's fingers to settle this month's interest—a hundred and seventy thousand dollars," the leader sneered.

In my past life, I had broken down crying, begging for mercy.

What followed next was a nightmare I had already lived through once.

The flashback abruptly cut off right as my first finger was severed. The blinding pain didn't reach me this time, only a dizzying rush of vertigo accompanied by the debt collector's cruel laugh into his phone.

"It's done, Mr. Con. You can count on me..."