Her Choice, My Freedom

Her Choice, My Freedom

Gavin

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The last thing I remembered from that life was the metallic taste of blood. Mark' s fists felt like concrete blocks, crushing my ribs with every blow. Through the haze of pain, I saw Sarah by the warehouse door, holding her son. She watched me die, her beautiful face blank, her eyes cold and empty. She had chosen him, the gangster, the man now beating me to death, over me. After twenty years of trying to save her, sacrificing everything, her betrayal was the final, most painful blow. Then, nothing, until a phone started ringing. I snapped awake in my childhood bedroom not aching, not broken. My old flip phone flashed a familiar name: Sarah' s Mom. I knew this call. This was the night Sarah got into trouble with Mark. The night her parents begged me to use my college savings to bail her out. Last time, I' d said yes, draining my account and giving up my dream school. This time, I took a steadying breath. "No." The line went silent. "What? Alex, what do you mean, no? This is Sarah we' re talking about." "She made her choices. She needs to face the consequences. I' m not getting involved." A weight I didn' t know I was carrying for two decades lifted. "I have my own life to think about. I' m sorry." I hung up, staring at my unbroken hands, the hands of an eighteen-year-old with a future I was taking back.

Introduction

The last thing I remembered from that life was the metallic taste of blood.

Mark' s fists felt like concrete blocks, crushing my ribs with every blow.

Through the haze of pain, I saw Sarah by the warehouse door, holding her son.

She watched me die, her beautiful face blank, her eyes cold and empty.

She had chosen him, the gangster, the man now beating me to death, over me.

After twenty years of trying to save her, sacrificing everything, her betrayal was the final, most painful blow.

Then, nothing, until a phone started ringing.

I snapped awake in my childhood bedroom not aching, not broken.

My old flip phone flashed a familiar name: Sarah' s Mom.

I knew this call. This was the night Sarah got into trouble with Mark.

The night her parents begged me to use my college savings to bail her out.

Last time, I' d said yes, draining my account and giving up my dream school.

This time, I took a steadying breath.

"No."

The line went silent.

"What? Alex, what do you mean, no? This is Sarah we' re talking about."

"She made her choices. She needs to face the consequences. I' m not getting involved."

A weight I didn' t know I was carrying for two decades lifted.

"I have my own life to think about. I' m sorry."

I hung up, staring at my unbroken hands, the hands of an eighteen-year-old with a future I was taking back.

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I watched my husband sign the papers that would end our marriage while he was busy texting the woman he actually loved. He didn't even glance at the header. He just scribbled the sharp, jagged signature that had signed death warrants for half of New York, tossed the file onto the passenger seat, and tapped his screen again. "Done," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. That was Dante Moretti. The Underboss. A man who could smell a lie from a mile away but couldn't see that his wife had just handed him an annulment decree disguised beneath a stack of mundane logistics reports. For three years, I scrubbed his blood out of his shirts. I saved his family's alliance when his ex, Sofia, ran off with a civilian. In return, he treated me like furniture. He left me in the rain to save Sofia from a broken nail. He left me alone on my birthday to drink champagne on a yacht with her. He even handed me a glass of whiskey—her favorite drink—forgetting that I despised the taste. I was merely a placeholder. A ghost in my own home. So, I stopped waiting. I burned our wedding portrait in the fireplace, left my platinum ring in the ashes, and boarded a one-way flight to San Francisco. I thought I was finally free. I thought I had escaped the cage. But I underestimated Dante. When he finally opened that file weeks later and realized he had signed away his wife without looking, the Reaper didn't accept defeat. He burned down the world to find me, obsessed with reclaiming the woman he had already thrown away.

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