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Gray was howling in agony, screaming out for help over and over again as I watched.

I thought back to my husband’s crumpled face and his apology fourteen years ago when he beat me and locked me in that closet in San Francisco.

I’m a terrible, broken man , he had said then. I heard it so clearly so many years later.

“Terrible. Broken. Yes, you fucking are,” I whispered to the screen.

I could have called the police and an ambulance to go rescue him. I just sat there.

I didn’t kill my husband, but I didn’t save him either.

I watched.

I had hoped it was almost over. But then Mars clocked Gray one last time on the side of the temple.

Blood streamed out of my husband’s skull.

Marsden looked up then. He must have seen the tiny red light on the camera above him.

He grabbed at a wrench lying on the barn floor and hurled it into the rafters with the exactness of a major league pitcher. The screen went dark.

I waited an hour after watching the screen go black.

I sat in silence in my room before trying Marsden’s phone.

Straight to voicemail. Then Gray’s. Same thing.

I called Olivia. I had no one else to turn to.

She stayed cool as hell the whole time even though I was hysterical.

She picked me up, said we had to get out to the barn, had to know what we were dealing with.

But she never seemed surprised. That stuck with me afterward.

Why wasn’t she more shocked when I called her?

Only Gray’s car was left in the driveway when we arrived shortly after midnight. For a moment I held out hope that he might have survived, that Marsden had relented and dropped him off at the nearest ER.

I nearly slipped on the blood seeping across the barn floor.

Marsden had turned off the lights when he left and I could barely make out Grayson’s limp body propped like a scarecrow on the blades of the brand-new shiny piece of farm equipment that sat in the corner of our barn.

Two of the blades sliced cleanly through his lower back, filleting him wide open.

It was a gift from the machinery company, a potential sponsor of mine.

They were willing to pay $30K for one picture of the kids and me riding on it.

More if Gray did some reels with it. It never even left the barn.

“We need to leave,” Olivia whispered. “Now.”

“I’ll call the police,” I stuttered as I stumbled closer to Gray.

My legs gave way as I tripped over the large wood ax we usually kept in the corner.

The one I used when I was pretending to chop wood in videos on my Instagram and in one intensely viral TikTok.

Its blade is always dull because no one actually uses it, but that night it was covered in splatters of nearly black blood.

I squinted into the dim light and realized what the ax was used for, what was chopped off of Gray’s body as a souvenir. My stomach retched again.

“Let’s go,” Olivia said more forcefully.

“No. The police. I have the video of Marsden killing him,” I said.

“Before it went dark. Before he climbed up there and took it down. It recorded into the cloud. We can go to the cops with it right now. He beat the hell out of him. I watched it. And afterward he must have done this. It wasn’t enough to break open his skull.

He had to destroy him. He’s a monster.” I imagined Marsden throwing Gray’s limp body onto the blades after the camera went dark.

It wasn’t sympathy for my husband that I was feeling, not exactly. It was mostly rage and fear at Marsden.

“We’re not going to the cops just yet,” she said evenly.

“Let’s make a plan first. Play offense instead of defense.

I don’t think the police will let you get away with calling Marsden the only monster here.

You ordered that camera with your credit card days ago.

You put it there. Didn’t you bring them together tonight?

The cops will figure that out. This is messy, Rebecca.

You could lose everything if you don’t play your cards right.

We can’t let Grayson be the only victim here.

He hurt you and the world needs to know that.

We have to get your story out first. We have to be patient, and we have to pivot slightly.

It’s the only way to save everything we’ve worked so hard for. ”

I wavered. Screw the deals, screw the money, I screamed. I just wanted my kids and me to be safe. I worried that I’d lit a powder keg under Marsden. He could find a way to kill us to protect himself.

“You can have the money and be safe,” Olivia kept assuring me. “Trust me.”

So, I did. I went back into the house and left the Polaroids for Lizzie to find.

I’d planned to show her anyway when I finally had the chance to explain why I’d abandoned her years ago.

I had them ready. I just had to find a way to get her in my house so she could see my reality.

I wanted her to see how I lived so she could tell my whole story.

Olivia grabbed me by the shoulders and looked directly into my eyes. “You are going to be fine. Better than fine. We just have to pivot. Shift the plans. Do you trust me?”

I trusted her more than I had ever trusted anyone in my entire life, probably even Lizzie.

Olivia had helped me realize dreams I didn’t even know that I had and she had been my key to a future of stability and happiness far away from my husband.

“A man is never the plan,” she’d told me the first time we met.

“You are the plan.” But as I gazed into her eyes I saw a glint of something devious that I knew I had overlooked for all these years.

A chill ran down my spine, but I nodded. “I trust you.”

We left Gray’s body for the farmworkers to find in the morning. By the time they called the police I was nowhere to be found.

***

As Marsden drives me through the inky black night, I run through Gray’s last moments again in my mind. Was he still alive when Marsden impaled him on those blades? When he came at him with the ax?

The gate to our house comes into view now. Marsden strokes my leg with his long fingers, the same shape as the ones my daughter uses to play the piano so beautifully.

He sneers over at me with pure evil in his gaze, shearing away my remaining hope for escape. “Time to go home, Rebecca Sommers. For good.”