He Held My Funeral,While I Was Still AliveChapter 1
My husband was kidnapped. The abductors didn't want ransom. They wanted me to hold my own funeral.
To save him, I did exactly as they asked.
The day the funeral ended, my husband came home.
And my nightmare began.
He came at me like a man possessed, fists and fury, not caring that I was pregnant.
I screamed. I begged. I asked him why.
He said nothing. Just kicked me in the stomach, again and again, until I started bleeding.
I watched, helpless, as my fully formed baby slipped out of me and onto the floor.
In that moment, the pain in my body and the devastation in my mind pulled me under, and everything went black.
When I woke up, I was lying beside the incinerator.
My husband's face hovered inches from mine, twisted into something inhuman.
"The day of your funeral, you were already a dead woman."
The second I realized he meant to push me in, I thrashed and clawed and begged him to stop.
His face only grew more monstrous.
"You don't deserve to carry my child. Only Geraldine is worthy of being the mother of my children."
"A worthless tramp like you belongs in hell."
Then he shoved me in.
Fire swallowed me whole. Nothing but agony and despair.
When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the exact moment the kidnapper's call had come in.
——
"We have your husband. If you want him alive—"
That phone call confirmed it. I had truly been reborn. Hatred surged through me so violently I nearly told them to kill him.
Then a wave of cold sweat drenched my body.
In my last life, Thaddeus James had staged his own kidnapping to force me into holding a fake funeral, making the outside world believe I was really dead.
Then he came home and tortured me to death.
It was premeditated.
The whole thing was designed to eliminate me and install Geraldine Simmons as his wife.
If I told the kidnappers to kill him, Thaddeus almost certainly had a backup plan to deal with me. He had more than enough power and cunning for that.
"Mrs. James, did you hear what I said?"
The kidnapper's voice yanked me back. I played along, feeding him the same responses I'd given in my previous life.
After I hung up, my heart was still hammering.
I'd agreed to hold the funeral. That bought me time to run.
Running took money. If I wanted to escape Thaddeus's grasp, I needed resources.
I packed every piece of jewelry and designer watch in the house, then booked the earliest flight overseas.