My husband thought he had finished what he started on the staircase when he locked my ICU door and pressed a pillow over my face. Adrian had already left me shattered inside a near-full-body cast after I confronted him about my life insurance, but what he didn't know was that people were listening, and they were about to hear him confess.

The plastic smell of the ICU was supposed to mean safety, but all I could smell was the faint scent of Adrian’s sandalwood cologne.

I couldn't scream. My body was an iron prison of plaster and broken bones, shattered after twenty-four concrete steps took everything from me. Adrian stood over my bed, looking down at me with eyes that no longer bothered to pretend he loved me.

The grieving husband mask was gone. In its place was a cold, calculating predator.

"You really should have died when you fell down those stairs, Hannah," Adrian whispered, his voice dangerously soft in the dimly lit room.

He slowly lifted the heavy foam pillow from behind my head. My heart hammered against my cracked ribs like a trapped bird.

"I can't let you wake up and tell the police about the insurance policy," he continued, hovering the pillow over my face. "I can't let you ruin everything I built."

"Please..." I tried to utter the word, but my broken jaw yielded nothing more than a dry, pathetic rasp.

He pressed the pillow down.

Darkness slammed into my lungs. The weight of his arms pressed into my skull, cutting off my oxygen, my future, my life. I couldn't fight him physically. My arms were pinned in a heavy torso cast, my leg bound in traction. I was helpless—a sitting duck waiting to be erased by the man I had swore to love until death did us part.

Instead of fighting his strength, I focused on the tiny piece of plastic tucked beneath my right thumb.

I counted the agonizing seconds in my head, feeling my consciousness begin to fray at the edges.

Seven.

Eight.

Nine.