Chapter 4 - The Woman Before Me
Detective Moreno returned that evening.
When I showed him the photograph, he became very still.
“I know the man beside your husband,” he said.
“Who is he?”
“His name is Daniel Pike. He is currently serving a sentence in another state.”
“For what?”
The detective looked at me carefully.
“Assault. Witness intimidation. Financial fraud.”
My heart began pounding.
“What does he have to do with my husband?”
“Years ago, they worked together at a private security company.”
I stared at the photograph.
“Did they hurt someone?”
“We are looking into it.”
The next day, Detective Moreno brought me information about a woman named Lauren Price.
Lauren had dated my husband before he met me.
She disappeared from the city seven years ago.
At the time, everyone believed she moved away suddenly after a difficult breakup.
But the police report told another story.
Neighbors heard arguing.
Lauren told a coworker she was afraid of my husband.
She tried to file a report after he threatened her.
Then she withdrew it.
Three days later, she vanished.
My husband told everyone she left him for another man.
I held the report in my hands and felt sick.
“She’s alive?” I asked.
“We don’t know,” Detective Moreno said. “But Daniel Pike may know.”
The photograph was not a threat.
It was a warning.
Someone wanted me to understand that my husband had done this before.
Maybe not exactly.
Maybe not in a garden.
But he had used fear before.
He had made another woman disappear from her own life.
That night, I lay awake listening to my daughter’s heartbeat on the monitor.
I placed both hands over my stomach.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
Not because I had failed her.
But because I had waited so long to see the truth.
In the morning, I asked Detective Moreno for one thing.
“If Lauren is alive,” I said, “tell her she does not have to be afraid anymore.”
A week later, the answer came.
Lauren was alive.
She had been living under a different name in Oregon.
After receiving information that my husband had been arrested, she contacted the detective herself.
She had watched the news.
She heard about the garden.
And she finally decided to speak.
Her statement confirmed years of threats, control, intimidation, and violence.
She described him taking her phone, checking her receipts, accusing her of cheating, and threatening to ruin her reputation if she ever told anyone what he did.
The pattern was undeniable.
May you like
I was not the first.
But I would be the last woman he convinced to stay silent.
