And all I can do is let it.
I know I’m going to die the moment Mark’s hands close around my throat.
There’s no fight left in me. Even if I could claw him off—if I had some impossible reserve of strength left—my body has limits. Adrenaline can only carry me so far, and I spent every last drop of it on Duvall before Mark made his move.
So... this is it. The end of my story.
This is who I ended up being—a woman unloved, disrespected, and discarded. Dying on the cold, hard floor of my kitchen.
A strange calm takes over as my body starts to fail. It feels distant, like I’m watching my own death from outside myself. Mark's grip tightens. My vision tunnels. Darkness eats at the edges. My limbs jerk weakly, fingers scraping against his wrist, but there's no real strength behind it. No resistance.
I’m dying. We both know it.
I see it in his eyes that he's just as aware.
And the thing that hurts me the most?
There’s no hesitation in his eyes. No fear. No rage. Just certainty. Like this was always how it was meant to end. Likesomewhere along the way, Mark Dilano stopped seeing me as his wife and started seeing me as a burden. And now, he’s getting rid of it.
It sparks the last bits of anger in me.
Not because he’s killing me. Not because my body is failing. But because he looks at me like I was never meant to be anything but his to erase.
No.
I am not his.
Even if I die here, even if everything I am burns out like a cheap candle in a hurricane, I will not let my last moment be him looking at me like I was nothing. Because I am something. I always was. Sure, maybe I never figured out what. Maybe I ran out of time. Maybe I spent too long trying to be soft when I should have been sharp.
But I am not nothing.
So I hate him. I hate him so much, it’s all I feel. I hate him with the intensity of a thousand collapsing stars. When the last scrap of air abandons my lungs, I still hate him. Even as my body goes cold, even as my heartbeat sputters out like a broken record—I hate him so much I’m taking that hate with me into the dark.
And I hope my death stains his hands. I hope he hears my voice in every goddamn silence. I hope it haunts him in his sleep, creeping into his dreams like a whisper in the dark, like something rotting beneath the floorboards. I don't know if it will, but I really, really hope it does.
That’s all I’ve got left.
His lips part slightly. Maybe he’s saying something. Maybe he’s gloating. Maybe he’s delivering some final, pretentious monologue. But I don’t hear it. Because in the next second—
I’m gone.
Death has come.
And the first thing I notice about it? It’s quiet. No wailing. No trumpets. No celestial fanfare. No screaming souls or ominous laughter. Just… silence.
I am floating. Or maybe I’m not. Maybe I’m just here—or nowhere. I feel the absence of my body, like I never had it in the first place.
No weight. No pain. No breath. No heartbeat. No cold. No warmth. Just… nothing. Even my hate is fading.
And yet—it's the only thing still remaining.
I drift, but there is no sense of motion. No time. It might have been a few seconds that passed. It might have been months. But eventually, something stirs.
A pale light flickers at the edges of my awareness, soft and inviting. It whispers relief, promises warmth. I don’t know where it leads, but I’ve got nothing else to lose.
So I follow it.
That's when my memories crash over me in waves, bleeding through the void I'm leaving behind.
