What Was Once Mine

I've been married to the prince of the underworld for ten years and have endured countless life-or-death situations by his side. My hands, once trained to play the piano, are covered in calluses from holding guns and stained with blood.

But at 28, my husband ends up falling for a young woman from the slums. She's as delicate and pure as a chamomile. She's his well-kept little secret—until I run into them at the woman's prenatal appointment one day.

I storm up to him, demanding an explanation, only for him to nonchalantly hand me divorce papers. "Sonia is a devout follower of the church and can't have a child before marriage. I must make an honest woman out of her. Sign these, and you'll get 40% of the company's shares."

I refuse to do as told, so he corners me. In the end, he has my crippled younger brother tied up and forced under a hydraulic compression machine.

"Sign the papers, Maeve, or watch your brother become a human mince pie. The choice is yours."

I fall on my knees and beg him to stop. As the machine turns on, my hands fly to my aching lower belly, and I scream as I lose consciousness.

When I wake up again, I'm back in the hospital, in the same spot where I ran into my husband and his mistress at her prenatal appointment.

This time, I don't confront him. Overnight, I make arrangements with a sanatorium abroad, get divorced, and run away from home.

Yet the moment I truly disappear, my husband loses his mind.

I hid behind the wall, shrinking into myself and shaking as I covered my mouth. My younger brother Morgan Emerson's gruesome death still flashed before my eyes.

"Once the pregnancy has stabilized, we'll get our marriage license," my husband, Gabriel Fuller, promised Sonia Westley.

I didn't lose my mind when I heard these words again. After I'd stormed up to Gabriel and confronted him in my last life, he'd been so worried Sonia would find out that she was a side piece that he shot me in the jaw.

That memory had me hiding further in the shadows.

Gabriel held Sonia close to him and turned to leave. I waited until I was sure they wouldn't turn back before entering the consultation room with my test results.

The doctor pointed out kindly, "Ms. Emerson, given how thin your uterine wall is, it'll be hard for you to conceive after you abort this baby."

I stared at my two-month prenatal test results. All I could think about was the tenderness brimming in Gabriel's eyes when he pressed his ear to Sonia's baby bump.

I'd fallen for that same look ten years ago. I'd passed up the chance to further my studies abroad and given up my dreams of becoming a pianist for Gabriel. My hands, classically trained for the piano, had since learned to pull triggers instead.

Over time, I grew used to a life of bloodshed