Cold Vengeance

"Mark, we're over." The words, simple and clean, were the hardest I' d ever spoken, yet they carried the sweet taste of freedom. After a lifetime of his smooth, confident voice, it was over. My hands trembled as I hung up, staring at my reflection in the cheap motel window-pale and thin, but with a light in my eyes I hadn' t seen in a decade.

Because this wasn' t the first time I' d lived this nightmare. In another life, just days after my brother David' s tragic death, Mark had delivered the second crushing blow: my university admission, my future, was gone. He' d proposed amidst my grief, a manipulative anchor to a broken woman. For ten years, he' d used children and false promises to keep me trapped, extinguishing my spirit until I withered and died at 32, a ghost haunting my own life.