Chapter 1 - YOU’RE FINALLY GOING TO DIE
“You’re finally going to die, Jonathan. I’m so sick of pretending to love you.”
I opened my eyes just enough to see Victoria leaning over my hospital bed, her perfume drifting through the sterile chill of St. Jude Medical Center. Rain battered the windows behind her. The heart monitor at my bedside clicked out a weak, irregular rhythm that suddenly sounded louder than the storm.
Earlier that morning, my cardiologist had whispered to a nurse outside my door, thinking I was asleep.
“Five days, maybe less. The damage is too extensive.”
I had built an empire out of plywood, broken machinery, and stubbornness. I owned a furniture manufacturing company in Milwaukee, a large estate in Naperville, two downtown condos, and more money than I had ever expected to see in one lifetime. None of it frightened me. What frightened me was the expression on my wife’s face.
Victoria was sixteen years younger than I was, polished to perfection, with honey-blonde hair and the soft, careful voice that made people trust her immediately. She had spent four years calling me sweetheart, bringing me vitamins, adjusting my tie, kissing my forehead before board meetings, and reminding me not to work too hard.
Now she smiled like a woman who had already buried me.
“Your factory, your homes, your accounts…” she whispered. “All of it will belong to me. Raymond and I already picked out a house in Malibu. You worked your whole life like a machine, Jonathan. The sad part is, you never noticed you were building it for us.”
My throat tightened. I tried to speak, but only a rough breath escaped.
She leaned closer.
“The digoxin did exactly what it was supposed to do. In the right dose, it helps the heart. In the wrong dose, it destroys it slowly. Do you remember those supplements I brought every night? You never questioned me once.”
She placed one manicured hand on my chest, as if soothing me.
“Don’t die before I finish, okay? That would be rude.”
Then she told me the funeral would be small because “it would be absurd to waste good money on a dead man” when she planned to buy a Porsche.
When she finally walked out, I stared at the ceiling and let the truth settle.
My wife had been poisoning me.
Not in rage. Not in some moment of passion.
Patiently. Carefully. With a smile.
Ten minutes later, Lucas Bennett came into my room to straighten my blanket and refill my water. He was one of the younger orderlies—twenty-five, always tired, always polite, always moving like he was already late for his next shift. I knew bits and pieces of his life from overheard conversations. He worked two jobs. His fourteen-year-old sister, Chloe, needed a specialized heart surgery their family could never afford.
He glanced at me and frowned.
“Mr. Mercer? You okay?”
“Lucas,” I rasped. “Come closer.”
He did.
“I need you to call my attorney. Daniel Brooks. He’s in my contacts.”
Lucas hesitated. “If this is something private, I can get a nurse—”
“No nurse. No administrator. No one connected to my wife.”
His expression changed.
Not fear.
Recognition.
He knew this was serious.
“Tell Brooks,” I said, fighting for each word, “that I want him here before my wife returns. And tell him one more thing.”
May you like
Lucas bent lower.
“I am changing everything.”
