Till Death (By Him) Do Us Apart

Scarlett

When are you coming home, love?

My phone lit up with another text from my husband.

Just one text from him pushed the dread from the threats to the back of my mind. I should have been annoyed by the barrage of texts, but knowing they were just him ensuring I was safe softened the irritation. I hadn’t had time to reply properly, anyway—just a quick I’m okay or don’t worry.

He wanted to accompany me, but I refused. Not when there could be someone following me.

I’m not worried about myself, no. I’d be more worried for that person. I might only leave them with a black eye, but if Xaden got a hold of them... let’s just say it would be really fucking ugly.

I was about to click on the notification when Celia, my partner on the case, interrupted me. The only thing that truly unnerves me is a worried Celia because trust me, this woman was made for the job. She doesn’t flinch. She’s utterly unshakeable.

So when I see the color drain from her face, I know the news is going to wreck my whole day.

“What happened?”

“Someone reported a body on the east side of Vale. Most probably beaten to death. We need to go. Now.”

Beaten to death.

The words echoed in my head as I followed her. “How bad?”

“Enough for the man to die.”

Who in their right mind would do such a thing?

I had seen hundreds of cases. Bruised, broken, bleeding, cut, rotten—every kind of corpse. The inevitable hollow that follows the news of a life lost or stolen doesn’t vanish just because you hear it more often.

It took us thirty minutes to reach the warehouse. A worker had reported it. I couldn’t help but wonder if he wished he’d never shown up to work today, the regret was etched on his wrinkled face. We sent him off to give his formal statement.

Observation is a detective’s most critical virtue. If you can’t observe people, places, or even the weight of the unspoken emotions in the air, there’s no way to crack a case.

The site had been secured and taped off. I surveyed it all quietly.

As soon as I saw the corpse, I wanted to look away. He wasn’t beaten. He was assaulted. And by a monster, it seems. Deep, dark bruises. Swelling all over where the blows landed. His lips were split. His nose was broken. He must have died from the blood loss. But what really struck me were the defense wounds on his arms, hands, and forearms. Those were the kind of bruises you’d get from begging please stop to someone who, sure as hell, wasn’t listening.

Nothing at the scene suggested a weapon had been used. This was solely done by someone’s fists.

Celia documented everything, making sure her camera captured every single trace. Meanwhile, I collected all the evidence. The blood sample, fingerprints, DNA, fibers, footprints, and the most important of all—the phone.

The warehouse smelled like rust and rot. My gloved hands now had his blood all over them.

“Victim’s male, late thirties.” Celia murmured. She looked pale today. “No weapon yet.” She continued scribbling.

Christ. This man was fucking destroyed.

“Look at this,” Celia called. Her voice was so much more strained than her normal self. She held up a plastic bag. It was a scrap of paper or should I say the same paper that I had been receiving threats on. Typed letters and no fingerprints. “It matches the threats you’ve been receiving. Same formatting.”

My spine stiffened with the weight of all the unanswered questions.

First, this man had a part in sending me threats, which made no sense. I’d never seen him before, and I don’t forget faces.

She was already in motion, firing orders. I couldn’t find a single piece of identification on him. Typical. This was the job of a single person, not a gang.

Mental bullet points that might be helpful:

1. A hate crime. Whoever did it absolutely loathed him. 2. A quick look through his phone confirmed he indeed was behind some threats. There were still some pages missing from this book. 3. Somehow, this was all related to me—and perhaps Lucy’s murder. Was this man Lucy’s killer? Had he threatened someone close to her, prompting a rampage of revenge?

Possible. Not concrete.

Still can’t dismiss the likelihood of that. It’d serve for a motive. A goal—

My movements and my thoughts stilled altogether.

That jacket. My chest buzzed.

Habit betrayed me as I let my thoughts wander from the horrific scene in front of me.

Xaden wore the same kind where the pockets are awfully—in the name of fashion—located where the heart is. I purchased it for him once to make him smile after a hard day and embroidered ‘Scarlett’s property’ on the pocket.

He loved it so much, he ordered a dozen more the next day.

He made it a ritual: he’d write something poetic on a note, ‘hide’ it in that pocket, and ask me to find it and like how head over heels I am, I’d pretend not to know where it is and touch him everywhere but there to annoy him. He never got frustrated; he loved every second of our playful moments as much as I did.

And for some reason, I couldn’t remember the last time we did that.

The closer I looked, the odder the patch looked on the cloth enveloping this man.

Out of instinct or pure muscle memory, I reached for it.

The pocket looked odd—it was stitched in place.

And to my fucking surprise, there was something metallic. A bottle cap? It was circular.

A ring.

The crime scene was colder all of a sudden as my heart dropped. A coincidence.

This was a coincidence, right? It wasn’t as if me and my husband are the only ones who knew about those jackets.

I carefully cut it open.

And my blood froze.

My own husband’s wedding ring.

Our wedding ring.

Our.

Wedding.

Ring.

Smeared.

In.

Blood.

The ring my husband never removed. The ring he treated like a second heart. Here it lay in front of me, smeared in the victim’s blood.

The noise of the warehouse vanished as reality slammed into me. Threats. This man. Xaden finding out. Xaden beating him to death.

My better senses made me put the ring in an evidence bag before Celia or anyone else saw it. My fingers were trembling. I always knew what Xaden was capable of, but this?

Oh god, what was I supposed to do now?

Air. I needed air.

Everything else faded into the background as I told Celia I had to go. There was no way I could wait for protocol. She didn’t say anything, probably thinking the scene had shaken me. It had, but this was my job. I was used to it. That didn’t make it any easier to see a body and not wonder about the pain of their final moments.

Xaden... how could you?

I debated whether to tell Celia or report it. But I shoved that thought right where it came from. No, this was between me and my husband.

After storming out of the warehouse, I must have broken every speed limit. In that moment, there was nothing I wanted more than to teleport home. The pieces kept clicking together during the drive. The brutality matched Xaden.

He did this. For me. For the threats.

He’d stitched the pocket. Hidden the ring. He knew I was the one who collected evidence.

This was all planned, holy fuck.

Why did he not tell me?

I tried to swallow all this realization but it tasted so bitter. My pulse was this close to detonating by the time I finally reached home.

With each second, the evidence bag in my pocket somehow mocked me.

Your own husband beat a man with his fists. He did it for me...

I didn’t knock; my stomach kept on twisting. I kicked the door open and it swung wide.

And there he was—

Xaden.

He lounged on the sofa, legs extended and one arm draped casually over the backrest. The collar buttons of his shirt were undone. His head tilted slightly, as if he’d heard my car as soon as it left the crime scene.

His eyes slid over me, drinking me in like he had been starving.

A smirk was plastered across his not-good-looking-because-he-killed-a-man face.

That fucking smirk.

It was written all over his face.

He’d been waiting for me to catch him.

With his slow, knowing, and sinful voice, he asked softly, “Back early, love?”

My hand didn’t tremble when I aimed the gun at his head and held up the evidence bag—

The proof of our union smeared with someone else’s blood.

Even when everything was right in my view, I still stupidly glanced at his hand. His ring wasn’t there. Some part of me still hoped this was a dream, but it fucking wasn’t. Now it was too late to look back.

His eyes flicked to it, just for a second. Then back at me. A look that screamed—

“So, it takes a little crime scene chaos to make my wife come running home to me, yeah?”

His voice was so calm and arrogant with not even a single trace of remorse. It hit me like a slap.

“Xaden,” I whispered, “You call blood a little chaos?”

“Oh, love...” He smiled, infuriatingly calm even with a gun aimed at his head. “I call it what finally made you look at me again. I needed you home. I needed you to look at me.”

My breath shook. ”What have you done?"

“What I had to,” he said, pausing. “For you.”

“You killed him,” I snapped. “You beat him to—”

He chuckled.

Chuckled.

My grip on the gun faltered as his eyes softened. In this moment, they looked so warm. Like a predator’s. He was terrifyingly sure of what he had done.

“You...did all this because I wasn’t home enough?” I whispered, my chest tightening.

Had this damn gun always been so heavy?

“Put it down,” he whispered as if he had some telepathic abilities.

“You know you won’t shoot me anyway, darling.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yeah?” His expression curled into a cocky grin. “Is that so, love?”

I took a step closer. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t arrest you right now.”

Slowly and deliberately, he came closer until the barrel of the gun was pressed to his forehead.

“That’s quite easy,” he murmured. “Why did you come home, Agent Scarlett? Why haven’t you called for backup?”

My breathing grew uneven.

He wasn’t wrong.

“You’re not angry I killed him,” he said softly. “You’re angry I didn’t tell you.”

My jaw clenched hard.

“So, so angry because a part of you is glad he’s dead,” he added, his eyes burning into mine.

I wasn’t ready to face that. Yet.

I tried not to show as he read me like an open book. Telepathic abilities, 100 percent.

“This. Is. Not. Sane.” My voice cracked. “Xa—”

I was too stunned by this whole situation and barely had the thought before he moved. His fingers wrapped around my wrist, yanking me towards him and suddenly, my back hit the sofa.

His grip was so firm, as if he was afraid I’d vanish the second he loosened it, like the only thing keeping him from falling apart was holding me down.

He took the gun from my hands carefully and tossed it aside.

Everything started falling perfectly, or horribly, into place:

The quiet dinners, the way he’d stopped reaching for me. The nights he stayed awake after I fell asleep, tired from chasing criminals all day.

He wasn’t pulling away. He wasn’t distant.

He was waiting. He was planning.

His grip tightened on my arms. It wasn’t rough. He was terrified.

He could have shared it with me instead of dirtying his hands. Now we’d dug an even bigger ditch for ourselves.

“You should’ve noticed sooner... I was running out of sane ways to get you back.”

Sane ways. Had I been so blind that the only option left for my husband was to commit homicide?

He could have just—hello—messaged me or something.

Okay, maybe I hadn’t been the best at replying to his texts but if only there had been proper communication, we would not have to get ourselves in this kind of situation.

Although him being completely unpredictable was one of the reasons I had fallen for him.

It was not suitable for the kind of lifestyle I had been aspiring for the both of us.

I don’t know when or how he’d freed one hand while the other held both my wrists. I couldn’t look away.

I felt him. He was everywhere as his body caged mine.

“You know I don’t handle distance well.” His voice, god, his voice was so desperate. All I wanted to do in that moment was to close the distance between us and smash my lips against his.

I despised the distance between us as much as he did but I had been so scared that he’d see the stress from the threats written all over my forehead that I had avoided him on purpose.

The aftermath I was so worried about has now happened anyway. Damn him.

And as if teasing my self control, he leaned in.

Fuck him for knowing everything related to me.

I was sure he wanted me to make the first move, to be sure it was okay.

I knew it well. The hunger in his eyes, in his movements, in every breath. It was killing him not to kiss me right now.

Why was he so fucking charming and considerate in all situations?

When I couldn’t muster up any reply, his thumb brushed my jaw as he tilted my chin up.

“Hold still... I’m trying to memorize you again.”

_

Author’s Note: If you made it till here, thank you so much! It would be really kind of you to leave comments about the parts you liked. You can even dm me on @nyxiansdiary on Instagram! 💌

I’ll try for frequent updates and btw this was originally supposed to be two chapters but I compressed it into one.

Next chapter will be Xaden’s POV. Hope you guys enjoyed and again tysm! The only thing that truly makes me happy is writing and it’s an even more incredible experience if even one or ten people are with me!

If you’ve read the next part on Instagram. You know what’s coming next👀. Keep the excitement high!