He didn't even question the strangeness of those two messages I'd sent all day.
He just texted back something sweet: "Miss you already, babe."
Then he yanked the steering wheel hard and drove right back toward the hotel.
Kevin and I had been married for eight years.
As a husband, he was attentive in every way imaginable.
He kept track of my cycle, knew when to offer emotional support.
Every holiday, every anniversary, there were generous transfers, designer jewelry, never a single occasion missed.
The day I gave birth to our daughter, I nearly died from an amniotic fluid embolism. He knelt outside the delivery room, begging the doctors on his hands and knees.
He pleaded with them to save my life no matter what, swore that even if I ended up in a vegetative state, he would never leave my side.
Everyone said he loved me more than he loved himself.
But he could never cut ties with Cassandra.
Even though they were constantly seen together in public, their names linked across every tabloid and gossip site.
Even though I'd caught them in bed together more than once.
Kevin could still look me dead in the eye and explain, with a perfectly straight face, that he and Cassandra were both married people. They were just close friends. Gender had nothing to do with it.
The sex? That was just practice. Sharpening his technique so he could come home and be a better lover for his spouse.
I asked Kevin for a divorce countless times. Every single time, he swore up and down he would change.
But every single time, all he actually changed was where he and Cassandra met up, hiding it somewhere more discreet.
So when I discovered yet another secret rendezvous between them three months later, I didn't cry. I didn't confront him. I didn't so much as furrow my brow.
Instead, I quietly contacted a trust company overseas.
I set up a trust fund in my daughter's name, registered in a foreign jurisdiction.
Then, like an ant carrying crumbs one grain at a time, I began moving everything Kevin had given me over the years. The jewelry. The savings. Piece by piece, all of it transferred out.
My plan was simple: wait until the baby in my belly was born.
Then find the right moment, take both children, and vanish from Kevin Henson's world for good.
What I never could have imagined was that when I was just one step away from freedom, I would die under the blade of Cassandra's husband.
It happened so fast I didn't even have the chance to scream, let alone beg for my life.
Marlin had chased after Cassandra for eight years, been married to her for five, and hollowed himself out giving her everything he had.
Yet Cassandra had the nerve to openly flirt with Kevin at his own mother's funeral.
Even back then, I had a creeping feeling that Marlin would snap someday.
I just never expected that when he finally lost his mind, the first person he'd want to kill would be me.
Darkness fell, then light returned, then darkness again.
Forty-eight hours slipped by in a blink.
My daughter, still bound to the chair, finally worked her small hands free from the ropes.
For two days and two nights, she'd cycled through the same loop: crying for a while, sleeping for a while, struggling for a while.
Sometime past midnight on the second night, she thrashed so violently that the chair toppled over, and her head cracked hard against the floor.
She blacked out briefly. But the impact knocked the sock loose from her mouth.
She gulped air in ragged, desperate breaths, whimpering and sobbing for her mommy and daddy.
At that very same moment, her father, Kevin Henson, was having the time of his life with his "buddy."
Cassandra had screamed herself nearly hoarse.
Two days later, my daughter finally freed herself from that chair.
But the shock and hunger had taken their toll. She couldn't stand.
All she could do was crawl, inch by inch, following the trail of dried blood on the floor toward my phone lying nearby.
After two days and two nights, the battery was down to five percent.
Using the speed-dial shortcut I'd once taught her, she called Kevin.
