Soren’s gaze was black ice.
He drew his gun, pressing the muzzle against her temple.
“Do you remember Ellie Duvall? The girl you bullied—the one who killed herself? She was my sister.”
His voice was low, steady, lethal. “I never loved you. From the beginning, I was here for revenge.”
His finger tightened on the trigger—then stilled.
Death, he said, would be too merciful. He wanted her alive. Alive to suffer, to endure the same hell he had for eight years.
Until death, there would be no peace.
In public, he played the doting husband, admired by society. In private, he forced her to kneel before his sister’s memorial tablet day and night, stripping her of all dignity.
“Unless you die,” he told her, “this never ends.”
But Linnea truly was dying.
---
“Miss Carrington, advanced leukemia is agony,” the doctor had said. “If you refuse treatment…”
She’d vomited blood into the sink that morning, staring at the pale, hollow-eyed stranger in the mirror—a far cry from the Red Rose Linnea who had once ruled Kingsport’s social scene.
Five years of marriage to Soren had drained the color from her life, her body, her soul.