Chapter 1 - The Frozen Threshold
The shadows in the room seemed to stretch,
creeping across the floor like dark,
liquid fingers,
as Garrett stood by the dresser.
He didn't just move the water;
he staged it,
placing the crystal glass exactly six inches from the edge,
far beyond the reach of my trembling hands.
I watched his reflection in the mirror,
a man I had loved for seven years,
looking at me with the detachment of a landlord,
inspecting a property he intended to demolish.
"You're being dramatic,
Elara,"
he said,
his voice as smooth as the silk tie around his neck.
Behind him,
the door to our suite stood wide open,
and I could hear his mother,
Brenda,
laughing in the foyer.
She was a woman who wore cruelty like a designer scarf,
effortless and expensive.
"The doctor says you need rest,"
she called out,
her voice echoing through the marble hallway,
"and we are giving you plenty of it."
The cruelty of her words hung in the air,
thick and suffocating,
like the smell of the eucalyptus ointment.
I tried to push myself up,
but my joints felt as though they were filled with crushed glass.
The autoimmune flare had stolen the strength from my bones,
leaving me a prisoner in my own skin.
"Garrett,"
I gasped,
the word catching in my throat,
"the safe."
"What about it?"
he asked,
straightening his cuffs.
"My medication is in there,"
I whispered,
"the hydrocortisone,
the emergency vials,
everything."
He turned to face me,
his expression one of calculated concern.
"It's for your own safety,"
he replied,
though his eyes remained dead.
"You've been overmedicating,
I think."
"I need it to live,"
I cried out,
but the sound was barely a whimper.
He didn't flinch.
He didn't even blink.
He simply reached into his pocket,
fingered the heavy key to the safe,
and tucked it into his traveling bag.
"We’ll be back in seventy-four days,"
he said,
checking his watch with clinical precision.
"Try to be a bit more mobile by then."
Tiffany,
his sister,
appeared in the doorway,
holding a glass of champagne.
"The car is downstairs,
Garrett,"
she chirped,
not even glancing toward the bed where I lay dying.
"The flight to Paris won't wait for us."
She looked at her brother,
a conspiratorial smirk playing on her lips.
"Is she still complaining?"
she asked,
gesturing vaguely toward me.
"She'll be fine,"
Garrett replied,
picking up his cashmere coat.
"She’s tougher than she looks."
He walked to the door,
but paused for one final,
horrifying moment.
He reached for the light switch.
"Sleep well,
Elara."
The room plunged into darkness.
The heavy sound of the penthouse door clicking shut,
and the turning of the deadbolt,
was the loudest sound I had ever heard.
The silence that followed was heavy,
cold,
and absolute.
I was alone in a tomb of glass and steel,
twenty-nine floors above the world,
with no way out.
My phone was gone,
my medicine was locked away,
May you like
and my husband was flying across the Atlantic,
waiting for my heart to stop.
