Chapter 4

On the fifteenth day, there was still no news of me.

Ethan Shaw was finally starting to panic.

In the past, no matter how upset I was, it never lasted more than three days. I loved him, after all—he was everything to me. But this time was different. I wasn’t answering his calls, ignoring his messages on WhatsApp, and hadn’t updated my favorite Instagram account. It was as if I had vanished into thin air.

The most troubling part for him, though, was that my due date was fast approaching. A child’s birth required the father’s signature, and even if I were angry, I would never use our baby to make a point.

The call my best friend made to him that day, combined with the image of me being abandoned on the roadside in my weakened state, must have planted a terrible premonition in his mind. Yet, he refused to admit it. He stubbornly convinced himself that I was just throwing a tantrum.

My friend, furious beyond reason, took it a step further. She sent him the details of a cemetery, along with a biting message:

*“Pick one. It’s the last thing you can do for her.”*

Ethan, enraged, dismissed it as provocation. Without hesitation, he chose a cemetery and sent it back to her.

“Fine. This one. Let me know when the burial is. I want to see how far she’ll go to play dead,” he sneered.

But even after that, I didn’t appear.

You see, Ethan’s mind worked differently from a normal person’s. He still couldn’t accept that he might have done something wrong. In fact, he believed I was behaving this way because his punishment hadn’t been severe enough. That’s when he came up with what he thought was a brilliant idea.

After our wedding, my parents had moved into the house he’d bought for us. So, on a bitterly cold winter day, with snow falling steadily outside, Ethan drove to that house.

Inside, my parents were in shambles. They hadn’t slept for days since hearing the news of my death. Their eyes were swollen and red from crying, their hair seemingly turned white overnight. When Ethan barged through the door, they were clutching my photograph, sobbing uncontrollably.

“Where is Clara?!” he bellowed. “She’s got some nerve! I spend my money supporting your whole family, and she dares to pull a stunt like this?!”

My parents, elderly and frail, were no match for his outburst. Seeing him only brought back the fresh pain of my tragic end. My mother’s voice cracked as she screamed through her tears, “How dare you come here?! If it weren’t for you, our Clara wouldn’t be dead!”

He ignored her completely. “So you’re playing along with her, huh? Fine. Then I’ll find her myself!”

Without waiting for a response, he stormed through the house, kicking open doors one by one. But the rooms were empty. There was no sign of me.

For Ethan, this was the moment his mounting fear could no longer be suppressed. Driven by desperation, he devised a cruel and inhumane plan.

He forced my parents out of the house into the freezing cold. He couldn’t believe that I, who had always been so devoted to them, would ever abandon them. He was sure I would come back for their sake.

My mother, frail and grief-stricken, stumbled as he shoved her. She fell hard to the ground, her knees scraping against the icy pavement until blood seeped through her clothes.

“Stop it!” I screamed in rage, but, of course, he couldn’t hear me. All he cared about was venting his frustration.

That was the moment my father finally snapped. He stormed back into the house, grabbed the death certificate, and thrust it into Ethan’s face.

“Open your damned eyes and look!” my father roared. “Clara is gone! She’s dead! You even chose the cemetery yourself—have you forgotten?!”