The last thing my husband did before trying to murder me was kiss my forehead.<\/p>\n
It was such a gentle kiss.<\/p>\n
That was the part I remembered most clearly.<\/p>\n
Not the roar of the helicopter blades.<\/p>\n
Not the glittering Pacific thousands of feet below us.<\/p>\n
Not even the expression on Richard’s face when he finally stopped pretending to love me.<\/p>\n
It was the kiss.<\/p>\n
Warm lips against my skin.<\/p>\n
One hand resting lightly on my shoulder.<\/p>\n
Then he smiled.<\/p>\n
“Move a little closer to the door, Amelia,” he shouted over the engine. “The view is incredible.”<\/p>\n
I looked at him.<\/p>\n
My husband of four years.<\/p>\n
The father of the child growing inside me.<\/p>\n
The man who had spent the morning telling me how beautiful I looked.<\/p>\n
The man who had arranged a private helicopter flight because, according to him, pregnancy had made me “too serious” and I deserved an afternoon where I didn’t have to think about lawyers, board meetings, trusts, or quarterly reports.<\/p>\n
Anyone watching us would have seen a billionaire husband taking his pregnant wife on a romantic flight along the California coast.<\/p>\n
I saw something else.<\/p>\n
I saw the way Richard kept glancing at my harness.<\/p>\n
I saw the tension in his jaw.<\/p>\n
I saw his fingers trembling.<\/p>\n
And I remembered every question he had asked me during the previous six months.<\/p>\n
Who controlled the Hayes family trust?<\/p>\n
What happened to my voting shares if I died?<\/p>\n
Had I updated my will after becoming pregnant?<\/p>\n
Would my husband automatically inherit?<\/p>\n
What happened if both the baby and I died before delivery?<\/p>\n
Questions that sounded innocent when separated.<\/p>\n
Questions that became terrifying when placed beside one another.<\/p>\n
So I smiled.<\/p>\n
And I moved closer to the open door.<\/p>\n
Wind tore through my hair.<\/p>\n
Far below us, the Pacific stretched toward the horizon, blue and beautiful and impossibly distant.<\/p>\n
I put one hand over my stomach.<\/p>\n
My baby moved.<\/p>\n
Just a flutter.<\/p>\n
But I felt it.<\/p>\n
For one terrible second, I almost changed my mind.<\/p>\n
I almost screamed.<\/p>\n
Almost demanded that the pilot turn around.<\/p>\n
Almost confronted Richard with everything I knew.<\/p>\n
Then his hand closed around my arm.<\/p>\n
Hard.<\/p>\n
I turned.<\/p>\n
The smile was gone.<\/p>\n
There was no hesitation in his eyes anymore.<\/p>\n
No affection.<\/p>\n
No guilt.<\/p>\n
Only determination.<\/p>\n
“Richard?”<\/p>\n
He shoved me.<\/p>\n
There was no speech.<\/p>\n
No confession.<\/p>\n
No dramatic goodbye.<\/p>\n
Just one violent movement.<\/p>\n
My body went through the open doorway.<\/p>\n
The world disappeared.<\/p>\n
Then I was falling.<\/p>\n
The scream came automatically.<\/p>\n
Wind swallowed it.<\/p>\n
Sky.<\/p>\n
Ocean.<\/p>\n
Sky again.<\/p>\n
My stomach lurched as my body spun.<\/p>\n
Every instinct told me I was dying.<\/p>\n
But underneath the terror was something else.<\/p>\n
Training.<\/p>\n
Memory.<\/p>\n
Preparation.<\/p>\n
Because Richard had made one catastrophic mistake.<\/p>\n
He thought I had come onto that helicopter trusting him.<\/p>\n
I hadn’t.<\/p>\n
Three months earlier, I had begun preparing for the possibility that my husband might try to kill me.<\/p>\n
And that afternoon, hidden beneath the loose jacket he’d insisted looked adorable on me, I was wearing the one thing he hadn’t thought to check.<\/p>\n
A compact emergency parachute.<\/p>\n
My fingers fought against the violent wind.<\/p>\n
For one horrible moment I couldn’t find the release.<\/p>\n
Panic exploded through me.<\/p>\n
Not for myself.<\/p>\n
For my child.<\/p>\n
“Come on…”<\/p>\n
My fingers found it.<\/p>\n
I pulled.<\/p>\n
Nothing.<\/p>\n
My heart stopped.<\/p>\n
Then something ripped violently behind me.<\/p>\n
My body jerked so hard I cried out.<\/p>\n
The spinning stopped.<\/p>\n
The ocean stopped rushing toward me.<\/p>\n
Above me, the canopy opened against the California sky.<\/p>\n
I was alive.<\/p>\n
For several seconds, I couldn’t breathe.<\/p>\n
Then I began sobbing.<\/p>\n
Not gracefully.<\/p>\n
Not quietly.<\/p>\n
I screamed into the wind.<\/p>\n
“YOU BASTARD!”<\/p>\n
The helicopter was already banking away.<\/p>\n
Richard never looked down.<\/p>\n
Or maybe he did.<\/p>\n
Maybe he saw the tiny canopy beneath him.<\/p>\n
Maybe that was the first moment he understood that the wife he had underestimated for years had finally stopped underestimating him.<\/p>\n
I didn’t know.<\/p>\n
All I knew was that I was descending toward the coastal terrain we’d deliberately flown over before heading farther offshore.<\/p>\n
Deliberately.<\/p>\n
Because that had been part of my preparation too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The last thing my husband did before trying to murder me was kiss my forehead. It was such a gentle kiss. That was the part I remembered most clearly. Not the roar of the helicopter blades. Not the glittering Pacific thousands of feet below us. Not even the expression on Richard’s face when he finally […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","class_list":["post-415","sr_chapter","type-sr_chapter","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fantatv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/sr_chapter\/415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fantatv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/sr_chapter"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fantatv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/sr_chapter"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fantatv.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fantatv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/sr_chapter\/415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fantatv.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}