It’s all over. It’ll be better this way. Faster.

I had already been dying inside for as long as I could remember. From that terrible day in Papa’s study, when I overheard him discussing plans for the rest of my life without the benefit of my presence.

The look on his face when I had made my presence known. He wasn’t even sorry to see me cry. Annoyed, more like. Annoyed that I was bothering him with my emotions. How dare I? And how dare I labor under the illusion that my life was my own?

There was still one thing I could do. One step I could take. One statement I could make. A final statement. The punctuation at the end of the short, pathetic sentence that was my life.

I parked the Jeep as close to the cliff as I dared. I could’ve driven it over the edge, but I didn’t want there to be any questions as to how it happened. No way to pretend it was an accident, that I had made a wrong turn or something.

I wondered if it would hurt very much.

A balmy breeze blew through my hair as I stepped out of the car, carrying the scent of the sea with it. I would never smell it again. I would never feel the water rising around me and the sand under my feet as I went in for a swim. I would never go fishing again or write again or do anything, ever.

Is it worth it? I asked myself this question as I stood there, pebbles and bits of earth scattering as I approached the edge.

A few small, loose stones tumbled over. I didn’t dare watch their descent. I’d know how they felt soon enough.

Was it worth jumping? The idea of escaping a lifetime of imprisonment? I looked out over the wide expanse of sea—but instead of seeing its sparkling waves, I saw him. My fiancé. Soon to be my husband.

I didn’t have to twist my imagination too hard to picture the sort of life he’d inflict upon me. One of loneliness, but I would prefer the loneliness because it would mean being without him.

I thought back on all the awkward dinners with him and my father, seated across from each other with absolutely nothing to say. Well, I had nothing to say—he, on the other hand, never stopped talking about things I supposed were meant to impress me. Or Papa. Probably Papa, come to think of it. This business deal, that meeting he attended, the big such-and-such he had entertained on his family yacht. And Papa would be impressed and would shoot looks at me, telling me I should act equally as impressed or even more so. And I would pretend, since it was what he wanted and I knew better than to refuse him.

But there were parts of Antonio’s business which he would never discuss in polite company, because it wasn’t the sort of thing one spoke about in between the soup and main course. Rumors I had picked up on the salt breeze. Corruption. Bribes. Threats. Intimidation. Physical violence. And worse. There was blood on his manicured hands, on the cuffs of his tailored shirts.

And his women. That was worst of all.

I shuddered at the idea of being just another one of them. Something he could use until he grew tired of me. What then? I’d play the part of the smiling, empty-headed accessory. The broodmare. The concubine living a life of quiet desperation who would probably turn to pills or alcohol or a combination of the two in order to ease the pain. And there would be pain.

The dark, empty look he sometimes got in his eyes when I denied him a kiss or a fondle—only when my father wasn’t around, only when we were supposed to be taking time to get to know each other—promised many nights of pain once there was nothing standing in the way of him taking what would legally be his.

How was I supposed to let that happen?

You’ll go to Hell.

All of my mother’s teachings came back to me in a rush as I stood at the edge of the cliff. It was her voice I heard, reminding me that suicides went straight below and suffered an eternity of hellfire and torture. Images from my childhood, from the religious books I used to flip through as a little girl teased at the edges of my memory. I wasn’t a little girl anymore, and I couldn’t bring myself to believe that any so-called merciful God would punish me for eternity when all I was doing was sparing myself a certain lifetime of misery. Didn’t my anguish matter? It had to balance out. It just had to.

I was wasting time. Stalling.

It wasn’t as if I wanted to jump. I didn’t want to die. I had to, though. That was the rub. I had to end it. It was the only way. The fear of what waited for me on the other side was what held me back, kept me from flinging myself over the edge.

Tears spilled over and rolled down my cheeks, soon to be just a tiny part of the salty water below. Maybe I would see Mama waiting for me. She would understand, if nobody else. She would speak up for me in front of whoever it was who judged these things. If there was any such person. Maybe there was only nothingness. Just blank, empty space. Even that would be preferable to life as Antonio’s sex slave.

One more look at the world I was about to leave. The tears flowed fast and hot as pain spread through my chest. I didn’t want to go, but there was no other way out. What had I ever done to deserve this? I’d never fall in love or have babies. I’d never see my words published. Nothing I had dreamed of would come to pass. Because I was born in the wrong place, to the wrong man.

A gust of wind picked up my hair and blew it out behind me like a flag, wrapping the thin, cotton dress around my legs.

I shivered in spite of its warmth.

It was a case of now or never. I had to do it before somebody found me—with my luck, somebody would. And I’d never get another chance.

“I hope you can forgive me for this,” I whispered to nobody in particular.

God, I guessed, even though I had stopped believing years earlier. Around the time of Mama’s funeral. Even so, the old fears and superstitions were there. They had only been sleeping. Waiting for a moment of crisis.

One… two… three.

Goodbye.

I closed my eyes and jumped.

And I immediately wished I hadn’t.

No! No! No! I take it back!

But there was no taking it back. I was falling and crashing, and the snap of bones rang in my ears as pain, real pain as sharp and hot as fire, consumed my consciousness before everything went black.