ManyWriters

In our six years of marriage, Dante Moretti, betrayed me three times.
The first time, at an underground casino, he slept with a girl and swore he had to be responsible for her.
The second time, to make that girl happy, he locked me in a warehouse for three days while I was seven months pregnant. Then, our baby’s heartbeat stopped.
The third time, that girl fell ill and needed a kidney transplant from me. He strapped my mother, who was on a ventilator, into his sports car and sped wildly along a cliffside highway.
I knelt, begging, "I'll donate it. Just let my mom go. I'll do anything you ask..."
Dante smiled, his hand tightening on the remote control.
The next second, the car smashed through the guardrail, and I could only watch, as my mother plunged toward the lake.
"Remember this. This is the consequence of making Isabella suffer for even one more day."
"From now on, as long as you learn to be obedient, everything can go back to the way it was."
But I knew that was impossible.
Dante, there could never be a future for us.

Love Drowns In the Lake

What it contained was no longer our sweet past, but a horrifying collection of all the ways he had hurt me.


There was the time he locked me in an abandoned warehouse when I was seven months pregnant, the time he tied my mother to a sports car and sent it hurtling toward the lake, and even the brutal incineration of her body...


Dante's mind went completely blank. An infinite terror seized him, and he clutched at his chest.


In that moment, he wished desperately for someone to tell him that none of it was true.


The images scrolling endlessly on the screen forced him to accept the truth.


Just then, his assistant shattered the silence, holding the results of the investigation.


Dante snatched the phone and scrolled through it as fast as he could, until he saw it: fifteen minutes before he had arrived, Isabella had swapped the mannequin on the lakeside road with my frail mother.


His nails dug deep into his palms, his eyes turning scarlet.


Chapter 9