Once His Wife, Now His Wrecker: Eva's Cold Revenge.

CHAPTER FOUR

EVA'S POV

"Please." My voice came out wet and broken. "Please, just let me go. I won't say anything. I won't go to the police. I swear. Just — let me go."

Neither of them answered.

Oliver was digging. Jessica stood a few feet away, watching him work, arms folded, one foot tapping against the ground like she was waiting for a bus. The shovel hit the earth again and again in the dark. Slow. Steady. Unbothered.

Like this was nothing.

"Damn," Jessica muttered, watching the hole grow deeper. "How long does it take?"

Oliver stopped, wiped his forehead, and looked down at his work with something close to pride. "Finally got it." He drove the shovel into the pile of dirt beside him. "You have any idea how long it takes to dig a grave large enough to fit her?"

Jessica snorted.

Something in me —that had been trying to hold on to dignity, to composure, to any small shred of the woman I used to be — just snapped.

"Please." I was crying now and I couldn't stop it. "Please don't do this. Please, I'm begging you—"

Jessica walked toward me, grabbed my arm, and started dragging. I dug my heels in. I grabbed at the grass, at the dirt, at her wrist. She grunted with the effort.

"God," she breathed, straining. "It's like pushing an elephant." She got behind me and kicked me hard in the back. "Move."

"Stop — Jessica—"

Oliver clapped his hands together. Dusted them off. Looked at me with the same calm expression he used to wear when he watched Sunday football.

"One," he said.

"Oliver, please—"

"Two."

"I am your wife—"

"Three. Push."

They shoved me together.

I went in hard. The sound my body made when it hit the bottom of that grave — I will never forget it. The impact shook through my bones, through my teeth. Dirt rained down on me from the edges. The sky above was a small rectangle of dark blue, and both of them were standing at the edges looking down.

Jessica was breathing heavily, hands on her knees.

Oliver extended his hand to her. She took it. They shook like they had just closed a business deal.

"Done," he said.

I lay there at the bottom, staring up at them, and something moved through me that I had no name for. Not just pain or fear it was something older and darker and much angrier.

"f**k you," I said. "Both of you."

Jessica blinked.

"I hope you never see a single dollar of that insurance money. Not one cent."

"Save your nasty breath," Jessica said, already turning away. "You're not getting out of this alive, Eva."

Oliver picked up the shovel.

The first scoop of dirt hit my legs.

"You want to know what I hope?" My voice was shaking but I kept going. I had nothing left to lose. "I hope you suffer. Both of you. I hope whatever life you think you're building on top of my grave falls apart and buries you instead. I hope every single thing you've done to me comes back and—"

The shovel came down fast. The flat of it caught me across the face and everything went white.

"Shut up," Jessica snapped, and her voice had finally lost its bored, easy tone. There was something raw under it now.They kept going.

Dirt on my chest. Dirt on my arms. Heavy, pressing, suffocating. I cried. I couldn't help it — I cried in a way I had never cried before, not the quiet dignified crying of a woman trying to hold herself together, but ugly, anguished, gasping sobs that no one would ever hear. The weight on top of me grew and grew.

Oliver laughed. Loud and free.

Jessica laughed with him.

Their voices faded as they walked away, shoulders bumping against each other, exhausted and satisfied.

And then there was silence.

Just the earth pressing down on me. Just the dark. Just my own heartbeat, fast and terrified and furious.

I don't know how long I lay there.

But somewhere in the black, between the weight and the cold and the pain, something in me refused. Not loudly. Just quietly, stubbornly, the way a weed pushes through concrete without asking permission.

No.....Not like this.

I moved my fingers first. Then my hands. I pushed against the dirt above me — loose at the top, still settling — and I pushed again, harder, even though my arms screamed and my ribs felt cracked and my face throbbed where the shovel had caught it.

I pushed.

And pushed.

And the dirt gave way.

I broke through the surface gasping, dragging in lungfuls of night air, clawing at the grass at the edge of the grave until I was out — fully out — lying on my back on the cold ground above it, staring up at the open sky alive.