Rose's POV
I was too numb to notice the tears rolling down my cheeks until they landed with soft taps on my computer.
Playing on the screen was CCTV footage showing the parking lot of my sister's apartment building the day she went missing.
When I received the envelope containing the flash drive from the private investigator, I had thought it was more good news, fresh out of a doctor's visit confirming my pregnancy.
That is until I read the autopsy report that confirmed all my worst fears over the last eight months.
Bella was dead.
The short video stopped and replayed for the third time, forcing me to rewatch her struggle as she was forced into a van by the same man whose child I was carrying in my belly.
My husband, Nathan.
I refused to believe it, even as it replayed a fourth time.
Nathan had been my rock those first few months of Bella's disappearance—making sure her case was a priority to the police, weeding through the dark underbelly of his world to check if she had been taken by one of his enemies, only to come up with nothing.
The case had been closed in just four weeks after the police had met nothing but dead ends. Meanwhile, Nathan had sworn he would never stop searching for her.
All of it had been a performance, and it made me wonder why.
What reason did he have to kill Bella?
I wiped my tears away and opened the autopsy report, knowing the pain of reading it was the only way to get answers.
The report stated that she was not harmed in any way, save for a few bruises from the struggle and one missing organ—her heart.
Confused, I searched through the other files on the flash drive until I found my sister's medical report and an organ donor form with her signature on it.
Alongside it was the medical report of the recipient, and my blood froze in my veins when I read the woman's name.
Katherine Salford, Nathan's ex-girlfriend.
Katherine had come back into his life a year ago to spend what she had thought were her last days with him.
By some miracle, a donor match had been found, and I remember the joy I had felt when we visited her post-surgery.
I had placed my head on her chest, listening to her brand-new heartbeat, not knowing it belonged to the woman I had been desperately searching for.
My heart shattered into a thousand pieces, and I broke down in sobs.
Nathan calling out for me snapped me out of my grief. I hurriedly pulled out the flash drive and hid it under the pillow.
He walked in before I could wipe my tears, and his expression grew worried.
"Are you alright, darling?" he asked, wrapping his arms around me and pressing a kiss to my head.
Nathan had committed crimes that would horrify a hardened soldier but I had never been frightened of him.
Being held with the same hands that had taken my sister's life, I felt fear for the first time.
"I was thinking about Bella and got carried away," I managed to respond.
His expression did not change, not even a hint of remorse. "We'll find her someday."
"Are you up for golf with me and Katherine?"
My blood boiled in my veins, hearing how easily he dismissed talk of the woman he murdered for the woman who had broken his heart to pieces before I came along and fixed it.
"No, but don't let me stop you." I gave him the option because I wanted to know who he would choose.
"Alright." He kissed me on the lips. "I'll call you if I can make it back for dinner."
With that he left, taking with him whatever love and loyalty had made me doubt the evidence staring me in the face.
Nathan had a clean persona for the public to hide his criminal organization, and Katherine was a model married to a man in Nathan's line of work.
They both had something to lose if something like that got out.
A shiver went down my spine as I wondered what would happen if he ever discovered I knew their secret.
My hand cradled the small bump underneath my shirt, the only innocent in the whole mess.
I couldn't sleep beside him, eat at the same table and call him my husband knowing what he did.
I would slip up one day and put not just myself but my child in danger of his father.
I had to leave.
But there was no such thing as divorce for the women in his world, and even if I got out, I needed to give him a reason not to come after me and my child.
I fished out the flash drive and studied it.
It was a good start, but if I wanted to convince him to let me live and agree to a divorce, I would need more.
