Empire of Lies

I struggle to breathe as my lungs catch fire, stumbling through the woods with every step I take. My clothes are soaked from the night’s pouring rain, and tears are falling down my face. Even though my mind is telling me that I’m doing the right thing, my heart is begging me to turn around and run back.

I refuse to listen.

Last time I managed to escape, I miscalculated—tried to do too much, too soon, but this time, he won’t catch me. My lying, unfortunately—gorgeous and charming as ever—husband won’t have enough time to realize that I’m gone.

And when he does, it’ll be too late. Far too late.

Making my way past the mouth of the small town’s river, I stop and lean against a tree. Looking up, I can see my guiding light—the brightly lit billboard with my name and face printed on it. It takes everything in me not to break down and scream.

MISSING:

Meredith Alexis Thatchwood

If found or seen, please call: 1-855-MER-TIPS

Reward: $500,000

(for any information leading to her safe return)

www.meredithmissing.com

The large picture onscreen features me smiling in front of a sunset, wearing my one-of-a-kind wedding dress. It’s an off-shoulder black gown, all in lace, with hints of silver in the seams. I can still remember the stu

Since I’ve been gone, I’ve managed to read one article by The New York Times, one where a so-called journalist wrote, “Perhaps Miss Thatchwood knew something no one else around her did. Perhaps she was well aware that she was dressing for her funeral, and not her wedding.”

His attempt at treating my disappearance like a pretty poem still hurts.

Trying to block out u

Our memories cross my mind in hallucinatory flashes—him fucking me, him loving me, him promising that he’d never hurt me. I try not to blame myself for agreeing to marry him so soon, for being sucked into the instant pull he had on me, but there’s no one else I can fault for this.

I honestly thought I was marrying the man of my dreams. Not the monster who locks me in a house seven days a week and keeps me on a schedule, like I’m some type of pet.

Focusing on the path ahead, I keep my eyes on the ferry in the distance. It’s eight miles at best, but if I can make it there by midnight, I’ll be able to finally breathe.

Headlights suddenly appear around the bend of the road ahead. Not wanting to risk trusting a stranger right now, I move behind a tree and keep still as it picks up speed and races down the street.

It moves past me, and I let out a sigh. Before I can make a move, the car comes to a complete stop. Then it rolls in reverse.

It takes me all of five seconds to realize that the black luxury car doesn’t belong to any random stranger. It’s my husband’s.

My heart pounds loudly in my chest as he drives a few feet away from me. His lights flash a few times, and my heart races as the vehicle comes to a complete stop.

I freeze as the sound of the driver’s door opening and shutting cuts through the night. The sound of footsteps on the gravel is behind me, to the left. Then to the right.

The footsteps come nearer, and I sense him as he gets closer.

Suddenly, he’s stepping in front of me, his deep green eyes looking stu

“Please just let me go,” I say, feeling fresh tears fall down my face. “Please. I won’t tell anyone that you took me, I swear. I’ll keep quiet, and we can pretend like this never happened.”

“That’s not an option,” he says, closing the gap between us. Keeping his eyes on mine, he looks exactly like he did on the night we met. Perfect. Tortured. Pained.

“I’ve been missing three whole weeks,” I say, trying to plead my case again. “Don’t you think my family is crying and wondering if I’ve been murdered? Have you ever thought about the toll this is taking on them?”

He doesn’t answer. He wipes my tears away with his fingertips until they stop falling. Then he slips an arm around my waist and holds me against his side as he leads me to his car.

I know there’s no point in screaming, no point in making a threat I have no power to deliver, so I try the emotional route once more.

“You’re hurting me,” I say as he opens the back door. “You’ve hurt me more than any other person in my life.”

“I haven’t hurt you at all.” He looks offended. “I’ve given you whatever you needed.”

“Except freedom.”

“Because that’s the last thing you need right now.” He cups my face in his hands, and the warmth from his skin instantly soothes me; my body reacts against my will. My foolish heart feels at ease for some strange reason.

He runs his fingers through my hair for several seconds, looking directly into my eyes. “I honestly don’t want to do this to you,” he says.

“Then don’t.”

He looks as if he considers that option for half a second, but then he shakes his head. He presses a cotton swatch over my lips, two strips of duct tape over my mouth next. He picks up a rug and tightly rolls me inside of it. Then he lifts me up and places me onto the backseat, so that my eyes are in perfect view of his via the rearview mirror.

Sliding behind the wheel, he turns on the heat and pulls onto the road. He gazes back at me and looks as if he wants to say something harsh, but his cell phone begins to ring.

“Yes?” he answers via the car’s speaker.

“Mr. Anderson, this is Sergeant Ware, do you have a few minutes?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I’m sorry to call you so late, but we just received a few tips about your wife,” he says. “Someone thinks they may have seen her at a diner two hundred miles outside of the city, so I have a team heading there to check it out.”

“Fingers crossed that it’s really her this time,” he says, his eyes meeting mine. “I’m really struggling to cope with her missing for yet another week.”

“Trust me, sir. We have our best guys on it. Would you mind coming to the station tomorrow morning? We’ll keep you posted throughout the night on when the officers arrive at that town.”

“Absolutely,” he says. “Thank you so much for working so hard to find her.”

“You’re welcome, sir. See you in the morning.”

The call comes to an end with a long beeping sound, the same sound I hear whenever I walk through the rooms of the secured mansion where he’s been keeping me.

“I need you to trust me, Meredith,” he says. “That’s the entire foundation of a marriage, is it not?”

“Fuck. You.” I mumble through the tape. “Fuckkkk you.”

He smiles as if he understands my words. “We haven’t done that since our honeymoon, but I’m more than open to that again, if you like.”

I repeat my words a little louder this time.

“Question,” he says, as he veers the car onto a bridge. “Let’s assume that you could have anything in the world right now, that I had the power to give it to you. What do you think that would be?”

Even if I could answer, I wouldn’t.