Chapter 2

I had a faint, pale scar on my ankle—a mark left from when Jake accidentally scratched me while we were fighting over a toy as kids.

The corpse's ankle was smeared with mud. He gave it a quick swipe but didn't really clean it off.

If he'd just wiped a little more, he would've spotted the slightly raised scar hidden under all that grime and knew right away it was me.

"Is something wrong?" his assistant asked curiously.

Jake blinked, coming back to himself. He set my ankle down. "It's nothing. Just taking a look."

He missed it—just like all those other times before.

The police captain, Adam Moore's voice drifted over from a distance, sounding a little pissed. "Where the hell did Chloe run off to? She took a vacation and won't even return messages?"

As Adam spoke, everyone cast a sidelong glance at Jake. But Jake just kept his head down, focused on his work.

It was as if my name belonged to a stranger, someone who had nothing to do with him.

Jake reported on the body in a calm, professional tone, "Victim suffered violent trauma pre-death. Multiple fractures. Stab wounds in the abdomen. Skull's missing.

"Fingerprints were burned off postmortem. This isn't the primary crime scene. We'll need to run a full autopsy back at the lab."

Everyone exchanged looks and wisely kept quiet.

They zipped my corpse up in a body bag and soon laid me on the autopsy table.

Jake, always the consummate professional, felt his hand start to tremble again around the scalpel.

He had to clamp down on his own wrist, taking several deep breaths to steady his nerves.

I stared at him in a daze.

The last time I saw him like this was when he had to cut open his own mother on the autopsy table.

*****

A week before the wedding, I suddenly started feeling nauseous, my stomach aching dully.

I called Jake, and after a few seconds of silence, he said he was tied up and couldn't leave.

I figured I'd tough it out, maybe take some painkillers.

Jake's mother, Violet, gently rested her cheek against mine to check my temperature. Her voice was soft and motherly as she murmured, "Sweetie, you've got a slight fever. I'll go with you to the hospital."

When those men in black swung their baseball bats at me in the hospital's underground parking garage, it never even occurred to me that their real target was Violet.

Hopelessly outnumbered, I fought to keep Violet behind me, but in the end, a brutal blow to the back of my head sent me crashing to the ground, unconscious.

When I came to, everything around me was blinding white and deathly silent.

Violet was nowhere to be found. When the police finally located her, all her organs had been removed—she'd been gutted, left like a ragdoll emptied of all its stuffing.

Jake stood by my hospital bed, shoving a photo of Violet's body right in front of my face, his eyes bloodshot.

"Why did you have to drag Mom around with you? Aren't you always the tough one who can handle anything? Why did you make a fuss this time?" he shouted.

He added, "You just had to show off, make enemies—and now my mom's dead. You pissed off those bastards and got my mom killed! Do you really think you're a good cop? You're nothing but a goddamn disaster."

Half-collapsed on the hospital bed, I let my tears fall onto the snow-white sheets.

I didn't have the strength to argue, nor did I even care to wonder why, when I was lying there on the stretcher that day, drenched in blood, Jake had come rushing in with Iris.

It wasn't until later that I found out Iris had just come back to the country on that very day, and Jake was at the airport picking her up.

After that, Jake never once came to see me in the hospital. So of course he had no idea I was pregnant.

But Violet's death was a cold, hard fact. Even if I'd tried to tell Jake about my pregnancy, he would've just accused me of milking it for sympathy.

That was just the way he'd always seen me.

I endured the torment of morning sickness, but all I could think about was what happened to Violet.

Even in my nightmares, Violet—with her eye sockets hollowed out—would grab my hand and cry to me about how much pain she was in.

I was diagnosed with PTSD, along with severe depression and manic episodes, so I ended up taking an extended leave from work.

Our wedding turned into Violet's funeral.

I showed up right after being discharged, head still bandaged. I sobbed at the entrance, begging him to let me see Violet one last time.

But Jake just coldly told me to get lost.

I swore I'd catch whoever murdered Violet. Maybe that'd give me peace.

I knew I probably wouldn't make it out alive. Thus, before I left, I asked Jake something that probably sounded like a desperate fantasy. "Jake, is there any way we can go back to how we were?"

Jake's voice was calm, like he was just commenting on the weather. "Even if you die, I'll never forgive you."

Then the door slammed shut. He didn't even look back.