Chapter 3
Alice
The invisible chain jerked me forward as Nicolas drove away from Warrior's Haven, but we weren't heading home.
Instead, he took the familiar route toward UC San Diego campus.
My alma mater. The place where I'd earned my PhD, where I'd built my reputation as one of the youngest experts in trauma psychology.
'What the hell are we doing here, Nicolas?'
The psychology department building looked exactly the same—red brick facade, students clustered around the entrance with their coffee cups and backpacks.
But seeing it through my ghostly eyes felt like watching my own funeral.
Nicolas strode through the corridors with purpose.
He stopped at the department office where Dr. Patricia Chen was waiting.
"Mr. Reeves." Patricia stood up from behind her desk, her expression a mixture of professional sympathy and barely concealed excitement. "Thank you for coming. I know this must be difficult."
"Get on with it," Nicolas said flatly.
Patricia's smile faltered slightly. "Well, as I mentioned on the phone, Alice's research on PTSD treatment innovations is ready for publication in the Journal of Military Psychology. This could be groundbreaking work—her approach to trauma-focused therapy could help thousands of veterans."
'Three years of my fucking life,' I thought, watching Nicolas's face remain completely unmoved.
"Her methodology was revolutionary," Patricia continued, shuffling through papers on her desk. "The way she combined cognitive processing therapy with—"
"Burn it."
Patricia blinked. "Excuse me?"
"Burn the research. All of it." Nicolas's voice was ice cold. "She doesn't deserve any academic legacy."
'What did you just say?'
Patricia's face went white. "Mr. Torres, this research could help thousands of veterans. Alice worked on this for three years..."
"My wife was unstable," Nicolas cut her off. "Her research is worthless."
The words hit me like physical blows.
'Three years of my life's work... and you're destroying it like you destroyed everything else.'
'You Bastard!'
Patricia led us to my office—or what used to be my office. My PhD certificate still hung on the wall next to various academic awards.
"Everything goes," Nicolas said, "I don't want any trace of her academic bullshit."
'Academic bullshit?' My entire identity, reduced to garbage.
But then Nicolas's hands froze on a particular research file: "Revenge Fantasies in PTSD Patients: Masking Deeper Emotional Wounds."
Suddenly, I was drowning in memories again. Not the recent nightmare of my murder, but older ones. Sweeter ones that now tasted like poison.
(Flash Back)
"Alice Crawford," Nicolas had said, dropping to one knee on the restaurant balcony overlooking the water. "You taught me what love really means. You showed me that broken people can heal."
"Marry me, Alice. Let me spend my life proving I'm worthy of your love."
I'd been so fucking moved. Here was this damaged soldier who understood the weight of trauma, who respected my work with veterans.
"Nicolas... this is so sudden. My career, my research..."
"I'll help you reach new heights. We'll be partners in everything."
'Partners. What a fucking joke.'
More memories flooded back, each one more painful than the last.
Our new apartment after the wedding. My books mixed with his military awards on the shelves. Everything looked so perfect, so romantic.
"Baby, you're working too hard," Nicolas had said, massaging my shoulders as I graded papers. "You've already proven yourself. Now let me take care of you."
"But my research is at a critical stage..."
I remembered how gradually, insidiously, he'd convinced me to cut back my hours, to focus on being a "good military wife." How he'd packaged every reduction in my independence as caring concern.
"Those patients don't deserve your sacrifice," he'd said. "You're too good for them."
Three months later, our same apartment. I was wearing an apron, cooking dinner while my academic books sat packed in boxes.
"Alice, you're giving up everything for a man you barely know," my colleague Dr. Lisa had warned me during one of our last conversations.
"He needs me, Lisa. Some people are worth the sacrifice."
'Worth the sacrifice. I sacrificed everything, including my soul.'
I remembered the brief happiness when I'd gotten pregnant.
Finally, I'd thought, life was falling into place. I'd have Nicolas's children, build the family he'd never had, prove that love could heal even the deepest wounds.
What a naive fucking fool I'd been.
Back in the present, Nicolas had moved deeper into my research files. He'd found something that made him go completely still: my unpublished study on revenge psychology in military personnel.
"Subjects who achieve revenge often experience profound existential crisis," he read aloud in a shaking voice. "The anticipated satisfaction rarely materializes, leaving the individual in a state worse than their original trauma."
"Mr. Reeves?" Dr. Chen called from the doorway. "Are you alright?"
Nicolas spun around like he'd been caught stealing. "I'm... I need to go."
He practically ran from the office, leaving Dr. Chen standing there with boxes of my life's work at her feet.
"Mr. Reeves, are you sure about destroying her work?" she called after him.
"I'm sure about nothing anymore," he shouted back without stopping.
'Nothing anymore? What the hell does that mean, Nicolas?'
I followed him to the parking lot where he sat in his car, hands trembling as he pulled out my research on revenge psychology.
Watching him, a terrible realization began to form in my mind.
As a psychologist, I recognized the signs: the emotional volatility, the desperate clinging to my research, the way he looked... lost.
A satisfied killer doesn't need to study the psychology of revenge. A man who'd gotten what he wanted wouldn't be sitting in a parking lot, shaking like a leaf over his victim's academic work.
Nicolas was experiencing exactly what I'd written about in that paper—post-revenge syndrome.
The crushing emptiness that comes when you realize that destroying your enemy hasn't filled the void inside you.
But that raised an even more disturbing question: if killing me was supposed to be his triumph, why did he look like he'd lost everything that mattered?
'What the fuck did you really want, Nicolas? Because it sure as hell wasn't just my death.'