Chapter 4

I sat there in Hell in a heavy, prolonged silence.

For once, Lucifer didn't try to rush me. He simply kept turning the pages of someone else's Book of Life.

Inside my head, all three flashbacks were playing on an endless loop.

Rosie had started out gambling out of love, only to end up gambling purely for the sake of the addiction.

Mandy had been executing deep-seated control programming hard-wired into her bones from day one.

And Olivia was broken inside. She could cry all she wanted, but she could never quite manage to grow a spine.

There were three choices on the table.

Rosie had her addiction. Once a gambling habit takes root, it clings to you like a venomous snake biting its own tail. Even if the initial motive was pure, it still leads to the same abyss.

Mandy had her mental illness. Her obsessive need for control was a core personality defect that was not correctable. And the worst part was that she genuinely didn't believe anything was wrong with her.

Olivia had her broken spirit. A psychological paralysis forged from decades of conditioning that had left her permanently fractured, something I could never hope to heal.

So the conclusion was crystal clear. None of them were viable.

"Is there any way I can choose none of them?" I asked, biting down hard on my lower lip.

Lucifer finally lifted his head to look at me.

"The rules state your destined match is locked within these three. If you refuse to choose, you spend a century doing hard labor right here in Hell."

"And what if I pick one, but still end up dying anyway?"

Lucifer closed the registry with a solid thud, his tone flat. "Did you completely tune out when I said, 'It's up to you?' You've died three miserable deaths already. Are you seriously just going to blame it all on bad luck?"

I froze.

What on earth did Lucifer mean by that?

However, I didn't press him for answers, knowing full well he wouldn't spare another single word.

Silence stretched on. The wind in Hell blew with a biting chill, feeling like a dull razor slowly scraping across bare skin.

"You've only got three days left on the clock. If you miss the deadline, I'll just assign you one at random," Lucifer snorted coldly. "And if it comes down to a random assignment—"

He tapped his fingers together, putting on a cheap, dramatic act of calculation.

"Odds are it'll be Mandy. Her line has the shortest waiting list."

A violent shiver ran straight down my spine.

I forced my mind to rewind the three flashbacks frame by frame, completely dropping my focus on what my wives had done wrong. Instead, I started searching for something else entirely.

What was my role in each of these marriages?

Take Rosie's timeline. What did I actually do?

I just kicked back, enjoyed the high life, spent her cash, and waited around for our next vacation. Not once did I ever stop to ask, "Are you exhausted? Are you running into trouble at the factory?"

For Mandy's timeline, I didn't say a word when my phone was first snooped through. When she first started tracking my movements at the mall, I convinced myself it was romantic. When she first struck me, I excused it as her caring too much, before wiping my tears and taking her five thousand dollars to buy a jacket.

Not once during that very first invasion of my privacy did I stand up and say, "This crosses the line. I'm walking away."

In Olivia's timeline, my liver condition flared up into a high fever, and my mind started slipping. What did I do? I just waited around for her to save me.

My phone was right there on the nightstand. Why didn't I call 911 myself?

It wasn't because the fever had completely scrambled my brains. I remembered clearly that I had still been conscious enough to make the call.

The reason I didn't make the call was because I was waiting for Olivia to rescue me. I had outsourced the entire responsibility of staying alive straight to my wife.

Across all three marriages, my role never changed: I waited to be pampered, waited for an apology after being beaten, and waited to be rescued.

I had never once made a single decision for myself.

Yet did this sudden epiphany actually change anything? Even if I finally recognized that I was always just waiting around, what good would it do?

An addiction remained just that. So did a sickness, and a broken spirit. Would refusing to wait for my wife suddenly cure Rosie of her gambling problem? Would it stop Mandy from throwing punches? Would it magically give Olivia a backbone?

The deeper I spiraled, the more hopeless it felt.

With only one hour left of my final three days, I stood before Lucifer. My eyes were red-rimmed, but my mind was made up.

"I've made my choice."

Lucifer picked up his pen and sat up straight.

I took a deep breath and spoke the name.

Lucifer's pen stopped dead in its tracks.