After I Died, He Regretted

Nathan finally came on the seventh day after my death. He did not come to pay his respects. He came to smash my mother’s urn. My spirit hovered, watching as he led Ariana inside. “Kimberly, I know you’re here. Enough theatrics.” Nathan’s voice was cold, flat. “Faking your own death to force me to call off my engagement? How pathetic can you be?” Beside him, Ariana’s voice trembled with a practiced sob. “Nathan, please—maybe she just needed to get away. Let’s not push her.” “Get away?” He raised his voice, addressing the empty air. “Kimberly, I’ll count to three. If you don’t come out, don’t blame me for what happens next.” From the inner room, my father rushed out—white-haired, leaning hard on his cane. A retired detective, now just a broken old man. “Nathan! You monster! Kimberly is dead! Dead because of you and that poisonous witch! What more do you want from us?” Nathan’s brow furrowed at the sight of him. “You’re in on this insanity too, old man? Move aside.” “I won’t! Not unless I’m dead!” “Fine. Have it your way.” He gave a slight nod to the bodyguard behind him. “Smash it.” He was pointing at my mother’s urn. The one I’d nearly died retrieving from a drug cartel’s revenge blast. … I watched, powerless, as the two men in black moved toward the altar. My father roared and lunged—only to be shoved easily to the floor. Ariana gasped and buried her face against Nathan’s chest, her shoulders trembling like a frightened fawn. He patted her back gently, his voice softening. “Don’t look, Ariana. I’m here. This ugliness is beneath you.” How laughable. The “pure, kind-hearted Ariana who couldn’t bear anything dirty” was the same woman who, just ten days earlier, had stood before me and spoken the vilest words in the sweetest tone. “Kimberly, you know… when your mother was blown up, they say there wasn’t a single piece of skin left intact. What a *hero*.” I was a prisoner in the villa then. It began at a party. I overheard Ariana and her friends laughing, calling my mother “a worthless fool who got herself killed.” I couldn’t hold back—I threw a glass of red wine straight into her face. Nathan slapped me. Hard. In front of everyone. He dragged me home and locked me away, his reasoning crisp and cold: “Ariana’s naive. She spoke without thinking. Was that necessary? You’re too angry, Kimberly. You need to cool down.” He stripped the villa of every phone, every line out, leaving only four bodyguards to “watch over” me. Ariana came later. She had the master access card Nathan had given her. After dismissing the guards, she settled gracefully into the chair across from me, wearing a perfect, placid smile. “Nathan says you’re too full of rage, Kimberly. I have to agree.” She tilted her head, a portrait of innocent cruelty. “But don’t worry. Soon you’ll be with your heroic mother. Oh, and Nathan’s given me the highest clearance at his Group. He says he feels safe with me beside him.” I thought she was only here to gloat. Then she took out her phone, dialed, and recited the villa’s address, casual as ordering takeout. “Just one woman here. Unarmed.” That’s when I understood. She hadn’t come to taunt me. She had come to end me.