Chapter 1 - The Handwritten Ghost
She looked up at me with eyes that I recognized instantly.
They were the exact shade of hazel that had haunted my nightmares for eight long years.
She held out a damp, crumpled envelope with trembling fingers.
"Could you read this letter?" she asked in a tiny, shivering voice.
"It is very important," she added, refusing to break eye contact.
I knelt down on the expensive rug, ignoring the water soaking into my tailored trousers.
I took the envelope, noticing my own name written in a cursive script I thought was buried in a cemetery.
I tore the paper open, and my heart completely stopped in my chest.
The letter began with the words, Dominic, my love.
It was Elena's handwriting, perfect and unmistakable.
Elena was the woman I was supposed to marry eight years ago.
She was the woman who supposedly died in a tragic car fire before our wedding.
I read the frantic, hurried words scrawled across the page.
She wrote that she was alive, trapped in a medical facility against her will.
She wrote that the little girl standing in front of me was named Mia.
Mia was my daughter.
I looked up at the eight-year-old child, seeing my own stubborn jawline reflected in her pale face.
I asked her who gave her this letter.
Mia whispered that a nice nurse had smuggled her out of a tall white building.
I reached back into the envelope and pulled out a small, glossy photograph.
It was a picture of a medical bed, with Elena lying unconscious hooked up to machines.
In the background of the photo, a clear reflection was visible in the room's mirror.
May you like
It was a reflection of the man paying the doctors to keep her sedated.
I dropped the letter as I stared at the face of my oldest, most trusted friend.
