Every night, my husband dragged me into our garage, pressed a lit cigarette against my pregnant belly, and told me he would kill both me and our unborn child so he could take the house, the money, and the insurance with his new girlfriend. His mother stood beside him, handing him fresh cigarettes and urging him to finish it—but neither of them realized a neighbor had been recording everything.

By Tuesday night, the threshold of what my body could endure had finally crossed into numbness.

The pain wasn't a sharp shock anymore; it was a permanent, throbbing baseline. I lay curled on the cold garage floor, my knees pulled up as close to my chest as my pregnant frame would allow. I could barely feel my fingers.

"She’s burning up," Evelyn noted, nudging my hip with the toe of her designer leather shoe. "She has a fever. The burns on her stomach are infected."

Arthur was standing by his workbench near the back of the garage. He wasn't holding a cigarette tonight.

Instead, he held a heavy iron rod—a tool he had dragged out of his metalworking kit. He turned on the small blowtorch on his bench. The blue flame hissed violently into the quiet space, casting long, sharp shadows across the concrete walls.

He held the tip of the iron bar directly in the flame.

I watched through half-lidded, unfocused eyes as the dark metal slowly changed color—from dull gray, to deep orange, to a blinding, glowing red.

"Arthur... no," I wheezed, my lungs burning with every breath. "Please..."

"We're out of time," Arthur said. He turned away from the bench, holding the glowing bar out in front of him. Heat radiated from the tip, melting the cold air between us. "Julian called me an hour ago. The bank is asking questions about the trust execution. We have to finish this tonight."

Evelyn stepped over my trembling body, grabbing my wrists and pinning them above my head on the floor. "Keep her stomach exposed," she instructed her son, her voice cold and commanding. "One touch to the center. Make it look like an accidental electrical burn from the workbench wiring when the paramedics arrive."

"Finish it," Evelyn commanded, her grip tightening on my wrists. "Do it now."

Arthur lifted the glowing iron bar above my exposed, scarred stomach.

I stared at the red tip descending toward me. My body gave up. My mind detached from my frame, floating upward into the dark corners of the ceiling. I couldn't scream anymore. I couldn't fight. I closed my eyes and waited for the final, incinerating shock.