Killed by My Wife, Reborn as Her Nightmare

HIS DEATH

CHAPTER 5:

Consciousness was a dark, bruised thing. Adrian came to with the scratch of rough fabric against his face, the smell of dust and oil clogging his nose.

His lungs burned, screaming for the oxygen even if the oxygen tank was still connected to his nose.

He tried to move, but his wrists were locked tight to the arms of a cold metal chair, his ankles bound to its legs. Panic surged, raw, animal, and utterly useless.

Click.

A door opened. Footsteps echoed on concrete, unhurried, approaching. They stopped in front of him. Hands seized the fabric sack and tore it away.

Adrian blinked in the sudden, sickly glow of a single fluorescent light dangling from a high warehouse ceiling.

The room was a cavern of shadows and forgotten machinery. Standing before him, backlit and blurry, was a man.

“Who are you?” Adrian’s voice was a dry crackle. He pulled at the restraints. “If you want money, I have none.”

“I already know that.” The voice was calm, polished, and horribly familiar. It was the voice from Elena’s office, from her laughter in the dark. “And I don’t want your money.”

Adrian’s blood went cold. “Diego.”

The man stepped into the weak light. Diego Navarro, dressed in a suit that probably cost more than Adrian’s last year of medical bills, his expression one of mild, amused contempt.

“You always were a little slow,” Diego said. He pulled a folded document from his inside pocket. “I’m here to make you an offer.”

“I don’t want anything from you.”

“You’ll want this.” Diego unfolded the paper. The bold letters at the top were clear even from a distance: PETICIÓN DE DIVORCIO, meaning divorce agreement. “Freedom, Adrian. A clean break. You sign this, and the pain ends. The humiliation ends. You can disappear.”

Adrian stared at the paper. It wasn’t just a document; it was an eraser. It would wipe out the last five years, the sham marriage that had begun with a lie.

He remembered the flashing cameras at the Gran Hotel Majestic, Elena’s desperate grip on his arm. “Just stand here. Look like you’re with me.” He’d been a prop in her damage control, a blurry-faced delivery boy promoted to “secret sweetheart” to bury a scandal. He’d loved her for it.

He’d loved the performance. And the moment the headlines died, the performance ended, and the real Elena emerged, cold, contemptuous, and utterly repulsed by the sick man she’d trapped herself with.

“Go to hell,” Adrian whispered.

Diego’s pleasant facade dissolved. In one swift motion, he grabbed a vodka bottle from a crate and smashed it against the floor. The explosion of glass was shockingly loud.

“You don’t seem to understand your situation!” Diego snarled, his voice echoing. “I am not asking. This is the only courtesy you will get from me. The only one.”

Before Adrian could answer, a knock sounded at the metal door. It opened.

Elena walked in.

She was dressed for a night out, her smile radiant and effortless. She went straight to Diego, kissing him with a deep, possessive hunger.

When she finally pulled away and glanced at Adrian, her expression didn’t change. It was the same look she gave a piece of furniture that needed dusting.

“So you’re in on this,” Adrian said, the words tasting like ash.

“Everyone is, Adrian.” Her voice was light, almost sing-song. “Just sign the paper. We’ll make sure you’re… comfortable. For what little time you have left.”

Diego placed the divorce decree on a small table he dragged over. He produced a pen. “Sign it.”

“No.”

Diego’s eyes darkened. He leaned close, his voice dropping to a terrifying, intimate whisper. “You know, I’ve made this offer before. To men who owed me. To men who were in my way. They always sign. Or they always die.” He straightened up, a cruel smile returning. “Today, you get to do both.”

He reached out. His fingers, cold and steady, found the plastic tubes of the oxygen cannula nestled in Adrian’s nostrils. With a gentle, almost clinical tug, he pulled them free.

The world stopped.

Adrian’s lungs, orphaned from their mechanical lifeline, seized in instant, blind panic. A ragged, soundless gasp ripped through him. He strained against the cuffs, his chest heaving, but the air was thin, useless.

Elena lit a cigarette. She handed it to Diego.

Diego took a long, savoring drag. Then he leaned in, exhaling a thick, toxic cloud directly into Adrian’s open, gasping mouth.

The smoke was fire. Adrian’s body revolted with a violence that shook the chair. A coughing fit tore through him, deep, wet, and uncontrollable.

Each cough was a detonation in his chest. He choked, tears streaming, his vision blurring. He tried to beg, but only wet, gurgling sounds emerged.

They watched. Diego with detached interest. Elena with a faint, satisfied curve to her lips, as if watching a tedious play reach its inevitable finale.

The coughing grew weaker, shallower. A hot, coppery taste flooded Adrian’s mouth. Blood dripped from his lips onto his shirt, onto the floor.

The edges of his vision darkened into a tunnel. The last thing he saw was their faces, merged in a haze of triumph, leaning together as the world went silent and still.

He awoke to the smell of car exhaust and the rumble of an engine. He was in a dark, confined space, a trunk.

He was too weak to move, too broken to care. The car stopped. The trunk opened. Cold night air washed over him.

Hands hauled him out. He was on a bridge, the city lights a distant, uncaring glitter far below. Diego and Elena stood nearby, wrapped in each other’s arms, watching.

“Now,” Diego said softly, “we can really begin.”

They lifted him. For a moment, he dangled over the railing, suspended between the world that hated him and the void below. Then they let go.

The fall was silent. The impact with the black, icy water was a final, brutal embrace. The current took him, pulling him down into the cold and the dark.

The last bubbles of his life slipped from his lips and spiraled upward, tiny silver lies rising to a surface he would never see again.

He sank.

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Five minutes later, tires screeched on the bridge above. Doors flew open.

Rafael Valerio, his eyes already burning with a preternatural fury, strode to the railing and stared into the rushing water.

“Find him,” he commanded, his voice not loud, but carrying the weight of a coming storm. “He is not lost. He is returning.”