chapter 18
My mouth had gone dry.
“In the other life,” I said carefully, “did you love him?”
She looked at me with exhausted honesty. “I loved being wanted until I realized I was being kept.”
That single sentence reassembled half my memories.
Not a saint.
Not a temptress.
A girl who had mistaken obsession for devotion until it closed around her throat.
She swallowed. “I booked that second flight because I was running. I found out he’d bought an insurance policy in my name without telling me. I was terrified. I thought if I disappeared, he’d calm down eventually. Find someone else to destroy.”
“Instead you died.”
Her fingers froze on the torn napkin.
“No,” she whispered. “I didn’t.”
The world narrowed.
I stared at her.
“The crash happened,” she said. “But I wasn’t on that plane. I paid someone to use my documents on the official route while I took the second booking. It was desperate. Stupid. I thought if everyone believed I was dead, I’d finally be free.”
I could barely hear the rain anymore.
“You let an innocent woman die wearing your name.”
Her face crumpled. “I didn’t know she would board. I swear to God, I didn’t know. The broker said the documents would disappear into the system, that it was just enough to create a false trail. I didn’t know.”