"Buried up to my neck in my own backyard while pregnant, I listened as my husband laughed from the porch and called it “discipline.”

By the second morning, the pain has evolved from sharp agony into a dull, throbbing numbness.

My lips are cracked and bleeding around the green plastic straw. My neck is stiff, locked in a permanent, agonizing spasm from the weight of the dirt pressing against my shoulders. My left foot, trapped deep in the cold mud below, stopped sending signals hours ago; it feels like a block of ice attached to the end of my leg.

I haven't eaten since they threw me down here on Tuesday night. Yesterday afternoon, Mara left a half-eaten turkey sandwich on the edge of the porch railing as a cruel joke, but a gust of wind blew it off into the grass, where a swarm of red ants quickly claimed it.

The front screen door rattles. Heavy footsteps pad across the porch wood.

Julian steps into my line of sight, crouching down at the edge of the pit. He is holding a green plastic garden pitcher filled with lukewarm tap water.

“Still stubborn, Clara?” he asks, tilting his head with a sickening display of faux concern.

He unscrews the top of the pitcher, lifts it over my head, and begins to pour.

Water cascades down my hair, soaking into the dirt around my face, turning the crusty mud into a slick, heavy sludge. He pours slowly, deliberately avoiding the tip of my straw—not out of mercy, but because he doesn't want me to suffocate too quickly. He wants me alive for the main event.

“See?” Julian says, setting the empty pitcher down on the grass. “We’re taking care of you. Even after what you did with the corporate accounts, even after your little hysterics at the dinner party last week... we’re still here, trying to reform you.”

What I did with the corporate accounts.

That was the lie that started it all. Three weeks ago, I discovered that Julian had been systematically siphoning funds out of my inheritance trust—money left to me by my late grandfather—to bail out his failing real estate venture. When I confronted him with the bank statements, he didn't apologize. He smiled, locked me in the guest bedroom for two days, and told me that my mind was finally giving out under the stress of pregnancy.

He didn't just want to steal my money. He wanted to rewrite reality so completely that I would doubt my own sanity.

“All you have to do,” Julian whispers, lowering his face close to mine so his breath smells of stale coffee and stale malice, “is look me in the eye, take the blame for the missing funds, and sign the power-of-attorney papers Eleanor drew up. Then I’ll pull you out, give you a hot bath, and pretend none of this ever happened.”

I stare up at him through mud-clogged eyelashes.

I give him nothing. No tears. No begging. Not a single word.

Julian’s jaw tightens. The mask of calm domestic reformer slips for a fraction of a second, revealing the furious, insecure tyrant beneath.

“Fine,” he snarls, standing up and dusting off his designer jeans. “Rot down there a little longer. Maybe the worms will teach you some manners.”

He turns and walks back toward the porch, where Eleanor is knitting a baby blanket with pastel blue yarn.

As soon as his back is turned, I slide my right hand slightly deeper into the loose soil near my shoulder. My index finger finds the cold, rectangular edge of the Ziploc bag.

Click.