The shovel hit my coffin. Once. Twice. Then dirt. I screamed until my throat tore, but the man I married stood above my grave—and smiled. "Rest well, darling," Adrian said softly. "The insurance pays out Friday." I clawed at the silk lining as the first wave of soil thudded down. My wedding ring glinted in the dying light. The ring he'd slid onto my finger eight months ago, whispering forever. Forever, it turned out, was a lie with an expiration date. I'm Vivienne Cross. Twenty-six years old. And I was being buried alive by the husband I'd given everything to—my trust, my name, my entire inheritance, which he'd drained into accounts under her name. Camille. My best friend. The woman standing beside him now in my black dress, dabbing fake tears. "Are you sure she's dead?" Camille's voice drifted down, muffled by three feet of earth. "She moved. I swear she moved." "Sedatives wear off in an hour," Adrian said. "By then she'll have no air left." An hour. I had one hour. My fingers found it—the emergency kit I'd sewn into my dress lining myself, paranoid after months of catching Adrian whispering on midnight calls. A folding knife. A penlight. And the burner phone I'd kept hidden from him for exactly this kind of nightmare. One bar of signal. My hands shook so hard I dropped the phone twice in the dark. Then I dialed the only number I had left—the private line of a man I'd met once, three weeks ago, at a charity gala. A man who'd looked at me like he saw the bruise I'd hidden under makeup, and slid me his card with four words. If you ever need out. The line clicked. "Cross Industries. Speak." That voice. Low. Cold. Lethal. "It's Vivienne," I rasped, dirt filling my mouth. "I'm in a coffin. Greenwood Cemetery. Section C. He buried me alive—Adrian buried me—please—" A pause. One single, terrible second. Then: "Don't move. Don't waste air. I'm already in the car." The line went dead. And forty feet above me, I heard my husband laugh as he walked away—not knowing that the woman he'd just murdered had a knife, a phone, and one name burned into her heart like a brand. The name of the man who was coming to dig me out. The name of the man who would help me bury them. I pressed my palm flat against the coffin lid, against the suffocating weight of everything they'd stolen, and I made myself a promise in the dark. You wanted me dead, Adrian? Fine. Vivienne Cross is dead. But whatever crawls out of this grave— you should pray it never finds you. The air was already getting thin.
