All Chapters of KILLED BY MY HUSBAND, RETURNED AS HIS NEMESIS : Chapter 1 - Chapter 5

## **AMARA** The house was quiet, except for the low, jagged sound of my mother. It was a keening so raw it seemed to vibrate through the very floorboards of the sitting room. I stood frozen in the center of the rug, my arms hanging uselessly at my sides, watching her. She was collapsed, her body folded in a way that looked physically painful, right beside a shape I couldn’t quite make out. *Mum is crying?* I thought. The observation felt dull and flat, like a radio frequency that hadn't quite tuned in. *Why is she crying like that?* I wondered. The front door stood wide open, letting in the heavy, humid evening air. A bag of groceries sat abandoned on the entryway table; a carton of eggs tilted precariously on the edge. They must have just walked in. They must have just seen... whatever was on the floor. My father, Chris, stood a few feet away. He hadn't even taken off his coat. He was perfectly still—a gray monument of a man, his hands curled into white-knuckled fists. He looke

AMARAI was dead.And apparently, my sister was a terrible actress.Sasha stood in the middle of the room crying her eyes out, and all I wanted to do was grab her by the shoulders and shake her. You suck at this. She knew it. I knew it. The only people who didn’t know it were the ones busy being actually devastated—my mother, folded into herself like something broken, and my father, his hand pressed flat against his chest as if he could hold his own heart in place.I watched them and felt something I didn’t have a name for. Not quite grief. Not quite rage. Something in between, something with teeth.Then there was Antonio.Antonio, who killed me. Antonio, letting people wrap their arms around him. Antonio, accepting condolences with the practiced ease of a man who had rehearsed this moment and found it suited him.You are a damn liar, I thought, standing close enough that I could have reached out and touched his face. And I will ruin your life.I didn’t know if the dead could make pr

## AMARA The food was good. That was the part that made it worse, somehow—sitting across from Antonio’s empty chair, eating the breakfast he had made with his own hands. I forced myself to chew, tasting the butter and the salt, but all I could think about was the ordinary domesticity of a man who didn't know I had felt his hands on my back, heard the air whistle past my ears as I fell. I finished every bite. I had to. I needed the strength for the war ahead. Antonio came out of the shower with a towel slung low around his waist. He was moving at that particular, frantic pace he always had when his mind was already three steps ahead of his body—half in the room, half already at his meeting. He looked so clean. So innocent. It made my blood turn to ice. "You liked it," he said. It wasn’t a question; he was used to being the provider of my joy. "Thank you," I said, stretching my lips into a smile that felt like it might crack my face. He took the dishes without being asked, his