Chapter 1 - The Blood on the Persian Rug
“If you ever touch Selina again, I swear to God I will kill you.”
Those were the last words my husband said before he drove a fruit knife into my abdomen.
I had been standing in our own living room in silk pajamas, trying to explain that I had not touched his first love, had not threatened her, and had not even left the house that day. Julian Vance looked at me as if three years of marriage meant less than the tiny scratch Selina Cole had brought to our door.
The first stab shocked me so completely that I barely understood what had happened. Then Julian pulled the knife out and stabbed me again, and I fell onto the cream Persian rug we had chosen together, pressing both hands against blood that was spreading too fast.
I waited for my husband to panic, drop the knife, call an ambulance, or even look horrified by what he had done. Instead, he stepped over me and went straight to Selina.
That was the part I would remember more clearly than the pain. Selina was trembling behind him, and Julian took off his expensive jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders while I lay bleeding only a few feet away. He whispered, “It’s okay now,” with the same tenderness he used to give me when I was frightened or sick. Then Selina looked over his shoulder at me and smiled.
The cruelest part was that Julian had not always been this man. I remembered him driving across the city during a thunderstorm because I had once admitted I hated sleeping alone in bad weather, and I remembered him burning pancakes barefoot in my tiny kitchen before we were rich enough to have staff. He had proposed with shaking hands and told me I was the only person who ever made him feel as if he had somewhere to come home to. Three years later, that same home had become the place where he chose another woman’s lie over my life.
Eight months earlier, Selina had returned to the city as Julian’s “old friend.” Soon she became a client, then a consultant, then the woman calling him after midnight while he turned his phone facedown whenever I entered the room. Every time I questioned it, Julian told me I was insecure, jealous, or imagining things, then ended the argument with the same sentence: “I married you, Nora.” I kept trying to believe that a wedding ring meant I still mattered more than the woman he could not seem to let go.
That morning, I had discovered something that made my hope almost unbearable. At 8:17 a.m., I took a pregnancy test, then another three minutes later, and both were positive. I sat on the bathroom floor with my hand over my mouth, thinking about how badly Julian had once wanted children and wondering whether this could become the moment that forced us to tell each other the truth. I ordered dinner from the little Italian restaurant where we had gone on our second date and even considered placing the tests inside a gift box.
I never got to tell him. At 3:42 p.m., Selina used the access code Julian had never changed and walked straight into our home crying, holding out a small scratch on her forearm. She claimed I had cornered her downtown, grabbed her, and threatened her if she did not stay away from Julian. I stared at her in disbelief because I was still wearing the same pajamas I had worn all day.
I told Julian to check the cameras, the garage records, my phone location, the doorman—anything that could prove I had never left. Selina immediately claimed I must have changed clothes, then told Julian she did not want us “fighting over her.” For one second, her tears stopped, and I saw satisfaction at the corner of her mouth. Julian saw none of it because he had already decided which woman he wanted to believe.
He picked up the fruit knife from the marble coffee table beside the half-sliced apple. I told him to put it down, but he kept asking whether I had hurt Selina, as if repeating the accusation could turn it into truth. I should have run, yet some part of me could not accept that the man who had slept beside me the night before could actually become dangerous. Then he threatened to kill me and proved he meant it.
As my vision narrowed on the rug, something inside me changed. I stopped thinking like a wife who wanted to save her marriage and started thinking like a woman who might have only seconds left to save the truth. My smartwatch was trapped beneath my body, pressing against my wrist, and Julian and Selina believed I was fading. I let my body go limp, moved my fingers under me, found Voice Memos, and pressed Record.
May you like
For a few seconds, no one spoke. Then Julian whispered, “She’s gone,” followed by, “I…I did it, Selina. Just like you said. We’re free.” Selina told him to calm down, and when he mentioned the scratch, she said something that made my blood run colder than the knife ever had: “You weren’t supposed to ask questions after.” I stayed perfectly still while their voices continued above me.
Then my watch lit up. It had detected the fall and triggered Emergency SOS, and suddenly Julian noticed the glow beneath my wrist. Selina hissed at him to turn it off, Julian swore that he could not, and I felt his hand grab for my arm as sirens began screaming somewhere beyond the windows. The last thing I remember before everything went black was one terrifying question: had the watch recorded enough to prove what really happened?
