Chapter 1
After the crash, my husband, Darius, lost his ability to speak. The trauma to his cervical spine left him unable to even lift a finger.
The doctors said his only remaining way to communicate was to nod, or to shake his head.
Sitting by his hospital bed, I finally asked the question that had been eating away at me for three months.
"When the crash happened... were you on your way to see your mistress?"
Darius stared dead at me. Then, slowly, he nodded.
A twisted thrill washed over me the second he made the motion.
For three months, I’d been digging through his pockets like a lunatic, scouring his call logs, yet finding absolutely zero hard evidence. And now, a single car crash had turned this lying bastard into a machine capable of producing only the truth.
“That woman… it was Isolde, wasn't it?”
I leaned over, bracing my hands on the edge of the mattress, and locked my gaze onto his.
Darius's pupils contracted violently. His breathing hitched, accelerating, as a bizarre, wet gurgling sound scraped from his throat.
But he couldn't fight his own broken body. Ultimately, in total humiliation, he nodded again.
A cold laugh escaped my lips.
Isolde. My best friend.
What a sick, agonizingly cliché soap opera.
“You slept with her?”
A nod.
“In our bed?”
A shake of the head.
“At her apartment?”
A nod.
God, the feeling of absolute control was intoxicating.
Darius used to be such a smooth talker. All those flawless excuses, those deeply affectionate vows—all of it shattered now by a few involuntary reflexes.
I straightened up, smoothing out the hem of my shirt.
His eyes brimmed with desperate pleading, but inside, I felt nothing but ice.
“One last question,” I murmured, leaning close to his ear. “That crash was horrific… Isolde was in the passenger seat. Did she die?”
I took a step back, waiting for his response.
A nod, or a shake.
Life, or death.
But a second later, the sneer froze on my face.
Darius looked at me, his neck dipping down with a stiff, jerky motion—he nodded.
Just as I was about to exhale, his neck suddenly jerked sideways, completely out of control—he shook his head.
A nod, And a shake? Yes, and no?
What kind of answer was that?!
The doctor had made it perfectly clear: his neurological reflexes were purely one-way now. It was physically impossible for him to make such contradictory movements!
Unless… unless even Darius didn’t know if Isolde was dead or alive?
Or worse… was Isolde in some bizarre state suspended between life and death?
A sudden chill spiked down my spine. My nails dug fiercely into my palms.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean? Is she dead or alive?!”
Completely losing it, I grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. Darius's eyes went wide with terror, and his body convulsed violently under my grip.
Bang!
The hospital room door was shoved open with brutal force.
I flinched, whipping my head around.
A tall, grim-faced man filled the doorway. He wore a rumpled gray trench coat and dangled a transparent evidence bag from his fingers.
“Ms. Sierra?”
“I’m Detective Bram.”
I let go of Darius, forcing a façade of calm. “Detective, can I help you? My husband needs his rest.”
Bram ignored my attempt to dismiss him. He strode into the room, his sharp gaze sweeping over the paralyzed man in the bed before locking dead onto me.
“Rest? I’m afraid neither of you has time for that right now.” Bram held up the plastic bag. Inside lay a severed length of black rubber tubing.
“We found this on your husband’s car. The brake line. Intentionally cut.”
“What? Cut?”
“Exactly. This wasn't an accident. It was premeditated murder.”
Bram pulled a photograph from his coat pocket and slapped it face-up on the bedside cabinet.
“What’s more, half an hour ago, we pulled a body out of an abandoned canal on the outskirts of town.”
My eyes were helplessly drawn to the photo.
It showed a waterlogged, bloated corpse, the skin soaked to a sickly pale. Though the face was battered beyond recognition, that signature red dress… It was Isolde.
She was dead.
I snapped my head back to look at Darius on the bed.
If Isolde was already dead, then what the hell did his “nod and shake” actually mean?!
