Home / After I Faked My Death, He Suffered Agony / Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

All Chapters of After I Faked My Death, He Suffered Agony: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

36 Chapters

Chapter 1

At the top of an encrypted bounty board was a contract worth enough to buy a small island.**Target: Valentina Cole Moretti.****Objective: Subject must survive one hundred near-fatal incidents before final termination.****Progress: 79/100.**I read it three times before I understood that the target was me.The last ninety days rearranged themselves in my mind. The avalanche in the Alps. The gas that seeped into our opera box. The swimming pool that turned deadly the moment I stepped into it.And Damian, always there afterward.My husband had carried me out of the opera with blood on his sleeve. He had hauled me from the pool and pressed his forehead to mine while I struggled to breathe. When members of his family suggested I might have had something to do with Claudia’s plane crash, he had thrown them out of the house.I had taken all of it for proof that he still loved me.I clicked on the employer’s authentication record. Damian Moretti’s private encryption key appeared on the scre

Chapter 2

Damian found me in the study the next morning.“What are you hiding?” he asked, slipping his arms around my waist.He spoke against my ear, warm and familiar. I closed the safe with my heel before turning to face him.“Your anniversary present.”His eyes brightened. “Then I’ll have to wait.”He kissed my forehead and took my hand. “Come on. I have a present for you first.”He led me to the riding grounds behind the estate.Inside the stable stood a white Arabian horse. Claudia had loved white Arabians. Damian knew I remembered that; he watched my face as the animal was brought out.The cleaner had sent me an update an hour earlier. He had found an abandoned maintenance route beneath the private airfield. I had not yet replied. For the next few minutes, all I could think about was keeping my phone hidden and my expression calm.“Take her around the field,” Damian said, placing a crop in my hand. “She’s gentle.”“I’ve been dizzy lately. Another day?”His smile faded.“I went to a great d

Chapter 3

I was seven when my parents died protecting Damian’s father.Antonio Moretti and his wife brought me into their home. Damian was ten then: quiet with visitors, impatient with his tutors, but endlessly willing to sit beside me when I missed my parents.For years, he was the safest person I knew.At nineteen, another family’s son asked me to dance at my birthday ball. Damian shot him through the hand. Afterward, he touched my cheek and told me no one else would ever have me.I had mistaken that threat for a promise.When we married, I put the Cole family intelligence network behind him. It gave Damian information he needed to secure his hold on Chicago. We worked late together, passing reports across his desk, arguing over names and routes until morning. I believed we were partners.Then Claudia arrived.Three years ago, while I was pregnant with our first child, she claimed I had thrown one of her earrings into the snow. I denied it. Damian ordered me outside to find it anyway.The bliz

Chapter 4

Damian vanished for two days after the riding grounds.He returned four days before our anniversary, in time for the family gala. I was fastening my earrings when he came up behind me.“An arms deal needed my attention that day,” he said. “You weren’t hurt, were you?”I met his eyes in the mirror. He looked different. The hatred I had seen when he aimed at the horse was gone. He examined me instead with the confidence of a man who believed he had everything under control.“I’m fine.”He summoned the butler. A velvet box and a new violin were carried into the room.“You’ll play the opening piece,” Damian said. “Wear this.”The box held a black leather collar set with rubies. Claudia had worn it at a private party the previous year.My mother’s century-old violin was missing from its stand. I found it in the storeroom, its strings cut and its body broken.“Your old one didn’t sound very good,” Damian said when I came back.I held one splintered piece of the violin. My mother’s initials w

Chapter 5

The dog bite brought on a fever that night.Damian sat beside my bed while I shivered. He took my hand and injected something into my IV line.“This will help with the pain,” he said.Within minutes, the ache in my leg became almost unbearable. I reached for him, but he had already left.I pulled myself out of bed and searched the medical waste bin. The empty ampoule bore the name of a drug used to heighten pain during interrogations.On the dark-web account I was monitoring, a new instruction had appeared:**Execution order amended. Additional punishment: administer nerve-sensitizing agent.**Why had Damian amended the order instead of carrying it out?I went to Marcus’s private clinic before dawn. He treated the wound and cleared the remaining drug from my system. When I was steady enough to sit, he asked whether Damian knew about the baby.“No.”“Tell him,” Marcus said. “Claudia’s back. You need something on your side.”I stared at him.“Claudia is alive?”“She arrived from Zurich o

Chapter 6

Three mornings before our anniversary, I carried two cans of gasoline into the glass conservatory Damian had built for me.A thousand white roses grew there. We had planted the first ones together when we were young, and for years I had cared for them even after I stopped believing our marriage could be repaired.I poured the gasoline and struck a match.The flames ran through the beds. By the time Damian arrived, heat had cracked the glass above us.He stared at the burning roses, then took my soot-blackened hand.“Let them burn,” he said. “There’s an auction tomorrow. I’ll buy you something better.”I let him lead me away.That afternoon, Ruth sent her first findings. Claudia’s aircraft had carried a woman using a false identity. A member of the ground crew had been paid to alter the boarding record.It did not yet prove Claudia had arranged the crash, but Ruth had found a payment connected to an account Claudia controlled.I asked her to keep digging.The cleaner sent an update too.

Chapter 7

“You should have seen her face,” Claudia said into her phone. “She still thinks I nearly died.”I stopped beside the VIP lounge and started recording.Claudia spoke freely. She had arranged for another woman to take her place on the aircraft. She had planted a false transfer record in my room. Damian had found it and decided I was responsible.“Now that I’m back,” she said, “he won’t kill Valentina. But tomorrow he’ll still lock her on that jet and fill it with smoke. He’ll do anything if I tell him I’m frightened.”I held the phone steady until she ended the call.Ruth had been looking for evidence; Claudia had just provided her own account. I sent the recording to the secure archive.When I stepped into the corridor, Claudia saw me. She broke a wineglass against a table, grabbed my hand, and drove a shard into her own palm.Her scream brought Damian running.“She cut me!” Claudia cried.Damian pulled her close. “Valentina. Kneel and apologize.”“I didn’t touch her.”He did not ask wh

Chapter 8

Damian brought me breakfast on our anniversary morning.“Six years,” he said, setting down the tray. “I have a surprise for you.”I changed into a plain white dress and followed him to the car. The cleaner’s people were already at the airfield. Ruth had agreed to watch for any change in the crew schedule.As we drove, Damian noticed my silence.“Still angry about yesterday?”“I know where we’re going,” I said.He glanced over.“When I was nineteen, you promised that on our sixth anniversary you’d take me to the church on the Sicilian coast. You said we would renew our vows there.”His hands tightened on the steering wheel. He had forgotten.“Is that where the jet is taking us?” I asked.For a moment he did not answer. Then he said, “We’ll talk when we arrive.”I knew what that meant. Today he would frighten me; another day, perhaps, he would offer Sicily as compensation.I told him about the gift in my study safe. He said he remembered it.At the airfield, the Gulfstream stood where th

Chapter 9

Damian watched the aircraft from the VIP room at the top of the tower.Leo told him the smoke device had started. Fire trucks waited nearby. Once I called, they would open the door.Claudia had come to watch too. She stood near the window with a glass of champagne.“Is she frightened yet?” she asked.Damian did not answer. In the car I had reminded him of his promise about Sicily. He could still picture the way I had looked at him while waiting for his answer.One minute passed. Then two.His phone remained dark.“Why hasn’t she called?” Leo asked.Damian stood. “Open the door. Now.”Leo reached for his radio.The explosion struck before he could speak. The tower windows shuddered, and a column of fire rose from the Gulfstream.The supervisor called. “Boss, the cabin is locked from inside. The main fuel tank exploded. The jet’s gone.”Damian dropped the radio and ran.Claudia caught his sleeve. “Let your men deal with it.”“I didn’t want her dead.” He shook her off. “Valen’s on that pl

Chapter 10

By morning, Damian was back at the estate.Maria met him at the front steps. “Where’s Mrs. Moretti?”He collapsed before he could answer.When he woke in my bedroom, he found our wedding photograph beside the bed. I was smiling in it, holding white roses. He could not remember when I had last looked at him that way.Then he remembered the gift I had locked in the study safe.He ran there barefoot. The code was our wedding date. Inside lay the ultrasound image, baby shoes, and my note.Marcus called while Damian was unfolding the paper.“Valentina was five months pregnant,” the doctor told him.Damian stared at the small shape in the image. He thought of the horse, my injured leg, and the drug he had injected into my IV. He had not known about the baby, but he had known he was hurting me.He called his assistant and ordered every record of my last seven days recovered.In the wine cellar, he found a bottle we had once marked **Open when the baby is born**. He was still holding it when C

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