He reached out and took the platinum pen. He looked over his shoulder, making quick, deliberate eye contact with Serena in the front pew. For a microscopic fraction of a second, the mask slipped. He flashed her a terrifying, arrogant, victorious smirk.

“They both froze to death on that ledge,” Victor whispered, his voice low but perfectly caught by the small microphone on the podium. “It’s an unimaginable tragedy.”

He turned back to the document. With a sharp, aggressive, arrogant flourish, Victor signed his name on the dotted line.

He set the pen down. He believed he had just successfully executed the perfect crime. He believed he was now a multi-millionaire, free to live his life with his mistress, entirely unbothered by the blood on his hands.

The executive slid a massive, certified check for fifty million dollars across the podium.

But as Victor’s hand reached out to grasp the paper, a sound shattered the quiet, mournful atmosphere of the cathedral.

It wasn’t a cough, or a crying guest.

It was the explosive, deafening, violent crash of the massive, solid oak double doors at the back of the cathedral being battered inward with tremendous force.

Chapter 4: The Corpse Returns

The heavy oak doors slammed against the stone walls of the cathedral vestibule with a sound like a bomb detonating.

The organ music ground to a sudden, screeching, discordant halt.

Three hundred heads turned in absolute, terrified unison, staring toward the back of the massive room. The bright, blinding afternoon sunlight poured through the open doorway, casting long, dramatic shadows down the center aisle.

I stepped into the cathedral.

I was not wearing a white burial shroud. I was not a broken, freezing, terrified victim.

I was wearing a sharp, impeccably tailored, jet-black designer suit. My posture was rigid, my spine perfectly straight. I didn’t try to hide my face. The jagged, ugly, red scar tracking across my cheek was fully visible—a terrifying, undeniable badge of my survival and a brutal testament to his crime.

I didn’t walk in alone.

I walked arm-in-arm with Adrian Cross.

The billionaire CEO of Cross Atlantic Insurance moved with the predatory, unstoppable gravity of a man who owned the world and was actively seeking a target to destroy. His presence instantly caused a ripple of shocked recognition to spread through the pews. Senators and CEOs gasped, realizing that the most powerful man in the city had just crashed a funeral.

The silence in the cathedral was absolute, suffocating, and heavy with impending doom.

We walked slowly, deliberately, down the long center aisle. Our footsteps echoed off the stone floors, a steady, rhythmic drumbeat marking the final seconds of Victor’s freedom.

Up on the altar, Victor stood frozen.

The arrogant, victorious smirk had completely, violently melted off his face. The blood drained from his skin so rapidly he looked like the very corpse he was attempting to bury. His mouth hung open in a silent, horrified scream. He stared at me as if a demon had just clawed its way out of hell to drag him back down.

“Elena?” Victor shrieked. His voice cracked, rising an octave into a pathetic, high-pitched, hysterical squeal that shattered his dignified facade entirely. “You’re… you’re dead! I saw you fall! You’re dead!”

I stopped exactly ten feet away from him, standing at the base of the altar stairs. I looked at the terrified man I had once thought I loved.

“I’m sorry to ruin your payday, Victor,” I stated. My voice was no longer the trembling, subservient whisper of a terrified wife. It echoed through the silent cathedral, cold, booming, and absolutely lethal. “But as the CEO of the company you just defrauded can attest, you are terrible at closing deals.”

Victor staggered backward, his legs hitting the wooden podium, nearly knocking the $50 million check onto the floor.

Serena, sitting in the front pew, let out a feral, guttural scream of pure, unadulterated panic. The realization that they hadn’t committed the perfect crime, that the woman they left to freeze had survived, completely broke her brain. She hiked up her designer black dress and bolted toward the side exit door, desperately trying to flee the cathedral.

She didn’t make it five steps.

“FEDERAL AGENTS! NOBODY MOVE!”

A dozen men and women who had been sitting quietly in the back pews, posing as mourners in dark suits, suddenly stood up. They ripped open their jackets, revealing FBI badges and tactical gear.

They swarmed the aisles with terrifying, synchronized speed.

Two massive agents intercepted Serena, violently grabbing her arms and tackling her to the stone floor of the side aisle. She shrieked hysterically as cold steel handcuffs were snapped around her wrists.