Chapter 3Consumed by the Sea of Fire

He put the call on speaker, making sure I could hear every word.

“Alex, where are you right now? Your wife’s been in an accident. She’s going into surgery. Get your ass back here, now!”

I expected Alex to at least hesitate, hearing his boss’s command.

I was wrong. His voice was cold and firm.

“Dr. Evans? Did Clara run crying to you? Don’t believe a word she says. She’s completely unhinged. All she does is pick fights with me at home. I’m a doctor, I can’t just refuse to treat someone because my wife gets jealous!”

“If I’d been a minute later today, my patient would be dead! She’s still not stable!”

“Just get Clara admitted for observation. And maybe you can talk some sense into her for me. If she won’t listen, fine. Let her believe what she wants!”

Dr. Evans was so stunned by Alex’s attitude that he could barely speak. He gritted his teeth, a vein throbbing on his forehead. But before he could unleash his fury, a soft, fragile voice drifted through the phone.

Eliza’s voice.

“Is that Clara? Are… are you leaving? Then I’ll be all alone again, won’t I? I guess it makes sense… with your baby coming so soon. It’s my fault for not being able to let you go…”

As if terrified she might say more, Alex abruptly ended the call.

Another brutal contraction hit me, and the world went black.

As Dr. Evans rushed me into the operating room, my mind drifted back, back to my first life.

The last time, I had called Alex the second the crash happened. He had been on his way to Eliza’s. Hearing my panicked voice, he’d turned around instantly. He’d pulled me from the driver's seat with his bare hands and carried my bloody body into the ER himself. He didn’t rest until he knew I was out of danger. But the trauma had been too much, and the baby didn’t come that day.

By the time he got me home and raced to Eliza’s apartment, all he found was a cold corpse in the bathtub. The gash on her wrist was deep enough to see bone.

He said nothing. He handled her funeral arrangements alone.

When he finally reappeared two days later, he was calm, as if nothing had happened. He told me Eliza was gone. He saw the guilt on my face and just shook his head, his expression blank.

He told me he didn’t blame me. He said the incident made him realize how fragile life was. He couldn't wait any longer; he wanted to give me a real wedding.

I looked into his eyes, the same eyes I had loved for years, and I chose to believe him.

That was my mistake. The night before our wedding, he knocked me out and dragged me to her home.

He tied my hands and feet, curling my body into the same tub where she had died. The love I thought I saw in his eyes was gone, replaced by a chilling, blood-red hatred. He was a madman who had lost his one true love.

The scalpel in his hand gleamed under the dim bathroom light.

As my world crumbled, he spoke, his voice a low whisper. “It was just a car crash. You wouldn’t have died. But Eliza… without me, she really died…”

“Do you know how deep her wound was? Do you know how much blood she lost that day?”

“She was lying right where you are, in this exact position. The blood pooled around her ankles. All my years of medical training… I never knew a human body could hold so much blood. It was all I could see…”

“But don’t worry,” he hissed, a monstrous smile twisting his lips. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

He placed a framed photo of Eliza on the edge of the tub, so she could watch him avenge her.

The first cut sent a bolt of agony through me so intense I nearly passed out. But my screams and pleas meant nothing to him. He was deaf to them.

He worked with a chilling precision.

Our baby, who was so close to being born, took its first and last breath in that cold, sterile air.

I thought that was the end of his revenge.

It was only the beginning.

He raised the scalpel again and again, raining down blows on me and our child. He chanted like a man possessed, a specter in his own private hell.

“This deep… right here… this much blood… Eliza must have been in so much pain. She must have needed me so much…”

In the last second before I died, I counted. A thousand cuts. He had carved a thousand cuts into my body and the body of our baby.

Afterward, he left our corpses in the tub.

He held a wedding ceremony with Eliza’s urn.

My soul lingered, watching him, seeing the insane obsession in his eyes. Only then did I finally understand my own foolishness.

But it was too late.

I should have known seven years ago, the day she returned from overseas on our wedding day. The day he got that call and left me standing alone at the altar. It didn’t matter that she was the one who had abandoned him, that he was the one who had come to me for comfort.

Next to Eliza, I never stood a chance.

A wedding without a groom, a marriage without love. I held it all together by myself for seven years.

And now, it had finally ended in a bloodbath.