CHAPTER 2 â THE PERFECT MURDER COLLAPSES
Mark rushed to the bedroom window.
Police cars flashed somewhere beyond the trees surrounding our estate.
"They're passing by," he muttered.
"They're not stopping."
His breathing steadied.
He turned back toward me.
"You almost scared me."
I smiled again.
This time...
He noticed my bedside coffee mug.
Empty.
His own mug sat on the dresser.
Also empty.
He frowned.
"What did you do today?"
I answered with a whisper.
"I switched them."
Silence.
His face slowly drained of color.
"No..."
"You've always been obsessed with routines."
"Same breakfast."
"Same coffee."
"Same blue mug."
"Every single morning."
His heartbeat seemed loud enough to fill the room.
"You couldn't move."
"I didn't."
"My nurse did."
Mark laughed nervously.
"You think anyone believes that?"
"My nurse stopped believing you six weeks ago."
The smile vanished completely.
Six weeks earlier, my new home-health nurse had noticed unusual bruises hidden beneath my sleeves.
She quietly began documenting everything.
Together, we built a case.
The hidden camera.
Medical samples.
Financial records.
Bank transfers.
Every insurance document.
Every purchase.
Every threatening text.
Every late-night visit from the woman Mark planned to marry after my funeral.
He never realized she had been wearing a wire.
Mark staggered backward.
"You..."
"You planned this?"
"No."
"You planned it."
"I simply finished it."
He suddenly grabbed the phone.
No signal.
The internet disconnected.
The smart locks clicked.
Every exit sealed.
Not because I trapped him.
Because federal investigators already had.
The front door exploded inward.
"State Bureau! Don't move!"
Armed investigators flooded the house.
Mark bolted toward the kitchen.
Halfway there...
He collapsed.
His hand trembled violently.
The coffee cup shattered across the hardwood floor.
"No..."
His speech slurred.
"What..."
I watched calmly.
"I never poisoned your coffee."
His terrified eyes met mine.
"You poisoned it yourself."
Months earlier he had contaminated the sugar container he secretly used while preparing both our meals.
He believed only I consumed enough to suffer.
But greed made him careless.
He had slowly been dosing himself too.
The symptoms he blamed on stress...
The headaches.
The trembling.
The blurred vision.
They had never been stress.
They had been his own poison.
As officers placed him in handcuffs, he looked at me with complete disbelief.
"You knew..."
"I knew the day you first called me your investment instead of your wife."
The lead detective opened the antique music box.
May you like
Inside...
The tiny camera's red recording light still blinked.
