Deadly Vows

A crisp white envelope, starkly blank save for my name, Ashley Carter, typed neatly, lay on my kitchen counter.

Inside, a single sheet: a confidential lab report. Tiffany Bellweather. HIV Positive.

My heart hammered with a sickening dread as I drove to the new house, the future home Mark and I had planned to fill with our life.

I bypassed the door, stepping in to find him, my fiancé Mark, and his high school flame, Tiff, brazenly entangled on the floor of what was supposed to be our master bedroom.

The air left my lungs, a horrifyingly familiar scene echoing from a nightmare I had already lived through.

Last time, I' d stumbled upon Tiff' s secrets, tried desperately to warn Mark, only for Tiff to "accidentally" fall, and him to blame me.

The true horror followed: standing at Tiff' s grave, Mark, a mask of cold fury, watching as his hired thugs tortured, violated, and ultimately ended me, all live-streamed to the world.

My mother, heartbroken, suffered a fatal stroke, and my strong father, David, was financially ruined and then silenced forever by those same brutes.