Chapter 3: The Shift in the Room
The silence returned, deeper and colder than before. Rosa shifted her position slightly, placing her body directly between Victor and the coffin, using the crowbar like a boundary line on the floor.
Victor slowly straightened his posture. The mask of the grieving, overjoyed husband began to fracture right before the eyes of fifty witnesses. The color didn’t return to his cheeks—instead, his expression flattened into something cold, calculating, and terrified.
“She’s confused,” Victor said smoothly, though his voice had lost its emotional pitch. He took half a step backward, looking around at the stunned crowd. “She’s had anoxic delirium. She doesn't know what she’s saying.”
“She knows exactly what she’s saying,” Rosa replied, keeping her gaze locked on him.
Emily clung tighter to Rosa’s sleeve, pulling herself up an inch. Her voice was barely more than a scratchy whisper, but every person in the front three rows heard every word.
“He buried me… before I could tell them the truth.”
A murmur broke out among the guests. Victor’s cousin stood up from the front pew, his brow furrowed in horror. “Victor… what is she talking about? The doctors pronounced her dead two days ago at the estate!”
Before Victor could answer, sirens blared in the distance, growing louder as emergency vehicles pulled into the funeral home’s driveway. Rosa had called 911 before snatching the crowbar from the maintenance closet, and now the heavy oak doors of the chapel burst open. Two paramedics rushed in with a stretcher, followed closely by two uniform police officers.
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“Step back!” the lead officer demanded, assessing the bizarre scene: a broken coffin, a maid holding a crowbar, a terrified husband, and a woman sitting up in her own burial clothes.
As the paramedics slid Emily onto the gurney, securing her with blankets and an oxygen mask, her eyes never left Victor. And Victor, standing amidst the splintered remnants of the casket, watched her go with eyes that revealed his darkest secret: he hadn’t just made a medical mistake. He had built a grave.
