Chapter 1 - The Man Who Tried to Kill Me
The first thing I remember is suffocating.
Not pain.
Not the crying baby.
Not the hospital machines.
Suffocating.
Something heavy pressed over my face, sealing my mouth and nose. I tried to inhale, but there was nothing to breathe. My chest convulsed. My body jerked violently beneath the hospital sheets.
Then pain exploded across my abdomen.
My C-section stitches felt as if someone had ripped them open with a knife.
I tried to scream.
Nothing came out.
My arms moved weakly against the mattress. My fingers clawed at the pillow, but my body was still too weak to obey me. Every movement sent a brutal wave of pain through my stomach.
Somewhere nearby, my newborn son began crying.
The sound reached me through the darkness.
My baby.
My son was crying.
And my husband was trying to kill me.
I knew it was Daniel before I could see him.
I knew him by the smell of his cologne.
By the rough skin of his hands.
By the wedding ring pressing against my cheek as he held the pillow down.
For six years, those hands had held mine.
They had touched my face.
They had carried me across our first apartment when I was sick.
Now they were trying to suffocate me.
My vision began to fade.
Then the hospital door exploded open.
“GET AWAY FROM HER!”
The pressure vanished.
I dragged in a desperate breath and immediately began coughing. My entire body shook. A nurse screamed. Someone shouted for security.
And then I heard my father.
My father never raised his voice.
Not when my mother left us.
Not when our family business nearly collapsed.
Not even when Daniel had once insulted him during our wedding rehearsal dinner.
But now, his voice sounded like thunder.
I opened my eyes.
My father had Daniel by the collar.
Daniel’s back was pressed against the wall.
My father’s face was terrifyingly calm.
“What,” he said quietly, “were you doing?”
Daniel’s face had turned white.
“I wasn’t—”
“You were holding a pillow over my daughter’s face.”
“It was an accident.”
My father looked at the pillow on the floor.
Then he looked at me.
Then at my newborn son.
“No,” he said. “It wasn’t.”
Security rushed into the room.
Daniel immediately began crying.
Actually crying.
“I love her,” he insisted. “She misunderstood. I was trying to help her breathe.”
I stared at him.
I had almost died.
And he was already lying.
My father turned toward me.
“Emma,” he said gently, “look at me.”
I did.
His expression changed.
The fury disappeared.
What remained was fear.
Real fear.
“Did he hurt you?”
I tried to speak.
My throat burned.
“Why?”
Daniel froze.
My father looked at him.
I forced the words out.
“Why did you try to kill me?”
Daniel’s mouth opened.
But before he could answer, the heart monitor beside my bed began screaming.
My blood pressure dropped.
Nurses rushed toward me.
The room blurred.
The last thing I saw before darkness took me again was my father standing between me and my husband.
And the last thing I heard was Daniel whispering:
“She was never supposed to wake up.”
My father heard him.
So did the nurse.
And from that moment on, everything changed.
May you like
Because my husband had just confessed to a murder attempt.
And none of us yet knew that I had not been his only target.
