The Twisted Life Of Beckham Mall

My husband took me to a secluded villa for the weekend to honor the fifth anniversary of his sister’s death.

But I found her alive, laughing on the patio with him and my parents. They were bouncing a little boy on their laps—a boy with my husband’s hair and his "dead" sister's eyes.

I heard Mark call me his "dutiful, grieving wife," laughing about how easy I was to fool. My own mother looked at Annelise with a love she had never once shown me. My entire five-year marriage was a performance designed to keep me occupied while they lived their real lives in secret.

He didn't just confess; he told me I was nothing but a "convenient solution." Then he revealed their final plan: they had already arranged to have me involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital, using my fabricated "grief" as the reason.

I ran. After setting a fire as a diversion, I hid in a ditch by the main road, my life in ashes. With nowhere else to turn, I made a desperate call to the one person I knew my husband feared: his biggest rival.

Chapter 1

The lie was five years old, and it had a name. Annelise.

I stood shivering in the manicured gardens of the secluded villa, hidden behind a thick, fragrant curtain of overgrown jasmine. The scent, usually a comfort, was cloying tonight, thick with the smell of rain and deceit. A fine mist clung to my skin, seeping into the thin fabric of my dress, a dress Mark had picked out for this "restful weekend away." A weekend to help me cope with the anniversary of his sister's tragic death.

Except Annelise wasn't dead. She was standing on the flagstone patio not twenty feet away, bathed in the warm, golden light spilling from the French doors. She was laughing, a sound I hadn't heard in half a decade, her head thrown back as she looked up at my husband. My Mark. He was smiling down at her, a gentle, loving expression I hadn't seen on his face in years, and bounced a small child on his hip. A little boy with Mark's dark hair and Annelise's bright eyes.

My own parents were there, too. My mother, her hand resting on Annelise's arm, her face alight with a joy I had never been able to inspire. My father stood beside Mark, clapping him on the shoulder, a proud patriarch presiding over his true family.

"He looks more like you every day," my mother said, her voice carrying clearly in the damp night air.

"He has your stubborn chin, though," Annelise replied, her voice a ghostly echo from a life I thought was buried. She reached out and tweaked the boy's nose.

My mind refused to process it. It was a dream. A nightmare. Annelise had died in a car crash. We'd held a funeral. I had spent months comforting a shattered Mark, holding my own grieving parents together. I had built my life around the empty space she'd left behind.

"Are you sure Clara suspects nothing?" my father's voice was a low rumble, laced with a familiar, dismissive impatience.

Mark scoffed, the sound sharp and ugly. "Clara suspects what I tell her to suspect. She's so wrapped up in playing the dutiful, grieving wife she wouldn't notice the truth if it bit her. She still thinks this weekend is about honoring Annelise's memory."

A wave of nausea washed over me, so violent I had to press a hand to my mouth. The world tilted, the jasmine vines seeming to twist and writhe around me. *Dutiful. Grieving. Wife.* The words were acid.

Then I saw it. Hanging around Annelise's neck, catching the light, was a unique, antique silver locket. It was shaped like a songbird, intricately carved, with two tiny sapphire eyes. My grandmother's locket. My mother had told me, with tears in her eyes, that it had been lost in a robbery years before I was even married. A priceless family heirloom, gone forever. Yet there it was, resting against the skin of the woman who was supposed to be a ghost.

The pieces of the puzzle clicked into place with sickening speed. The sham marriage. The lies. My entire life, a carefully constructed stage play designed to keep me occupied, to control my inheritance, while they kept their perfect, precious Annelise safe and hidden away.

I wasn't a wife or a daughter. I was a placeholder. A tool.

Rage, cold and pure, burned through the shock. I had to get out. Now.

I backed away slowly, my movements clumsy, my feet sinking into the soft, damp earth. A twig snapped under my heel. The sound was like a gunshot in the quiet night.