His Love, Her Blinding Hate

Ava Monroe. For five years, my marriage to Ethan Hayes was a bitter war, not a union. I publicly loathed him, clinging to my childhood sweetheart Liam, convinced Ethan was the villain in my life. Then, the unimaginable happened: Ethan died, stabbed by a masked intruder. His desperate, dying call? I dismissed it, hanging up my phone, thinking it just another attempt at control. But death didn't stop him; for five agonizing days, he was back, a visible, tangible spirit. Liam' s insidious whispers fueled my contempt, convincing me Ethan' s ghostly return was merely another manipulative game. I accused him of staging attacks, forced him to kneel publicly, and even held his head underwater in our pool, demanding confessions for lies. At a grand gala, after I slapped him for a supposed poisoning concocted by Liam, Ethan finally broke, slapping me back with a raw, desperate love in his eyes that I was too numb to see. He then vanished, leaving only a final, haunting note. I thought I was finally free, but the ensuing silence grew louder than any conflict. Until I found his horrifically decomposed body and that letter, detailing a fantastical "Gatekeeper," a five-day reprieve, and how my own icy "I will never love you" had sealed his fate. My world didn't just shatter; it exploded, revealing that I had inadvertently killed the man who had secretly loved me. With chilling clarity, the pieces clicked into place: Liam' s "sympathy," his manufactured chaos, his constant poisoning of my mind. He was the architect of Ethan's murder, the true monster, the puppet master of my destruction. My grief transmuted into a glacial rage, as Liam thought my husband's death cleared his path to me, yet he was about to learn just how wrong he was.