Prologue
Present day…
“Hi, this is Raya Taylor. Ace’s wife.”
The soft lilt of her voice pulls me out of the depths of my sleep, lulling me to consciousness with a smile on my face. I swear, waking up to her never gets old. Hearing her call herself mywifenever gets old.
“Yes, he won’t be coming in today. He’s not feeling well.”
Wait a minute.
Something’s wrong.
My eyelids feel like they’ve been glued shut. I struggle to get them open, commanding them to lift, but the signal isn’t reaching its destination.
But that’s not the only problem here.
“Probably tomorrow…it’ll depend on how he feels.”
My limbs are heavy, too. It’s like I’m swimming through syrup. My arms won’t lift. My legs won’t move.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
“I’ll let him know. Thanks so much.”
There! A sliver of light breaks through the tight crease of my left eye and makes its way to my cornea. I’m alive, at least.
I fight again, straining, trying with all my might until my right eye eases open. The world is a blur of shapes and colors bleeding together into images I don’t understand.
“Wake up, sleepyhead.”
I’m trying.
Did I say that out loud? I wanted to, but I don’t think my mouth and my brain are communicating yet. The words scraped against the back of my throat and died there, lost forever.
I’m going insane.
The fog clears a little, and I’m able to make out the shape of my wife sitting next to me. But where is her face? I need to see her pretty face.
Slowly, my eyes focus, revealing little pieces of her at a time. Her neck. Her ears. Her mouth. Her eyebrows. Ah, there she is, smiling down at me.
But there’s something weird about her face. I squint at her, lifting my head, which feels like I’m lifting a bowling ball with my neck. I need to get closer to figure out what I’m seeing. It looks like a white stripe across her face. That doesn’t make sense, though. She doesn’t wear her makeup like that.
My dry, itchy eyes drop a few inches, and that’s when I see it.
That white stripe across my wife’s face is light that’s reflecting off the sharp, steel edge of the butcher knife she’s holding.
“Good morning, my love,” she says softly. “We need to talk.”
I swallow hard, my throat thick and coated. My sight has returned completely, and now I see why I couldn’t move my limbs. Raya has me tied to the bedposts.
Fuck.
The day finally came.
She knows.
PART ONE
