Until Death

Until Death Cover Title Page Dedication Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Chapter Thirty-Three Chapter Thirty-Four Chapter Thirty-Five Chapter Thirty-Six Chapter Thirty-Seven Chapter Thirty-Eight Chapter Thirty-Nine Chapter Forty Chapter Forty-One Chapter Forty-Two Chapter Forty-Three Chapter Forty-Four Chapter Forty-Five Chapter Forty-Six Chapter Forty-Seven Chapter Forty-Eight Chapter Forty-Nine Chapter Fifty Chapter Fifty-One Chapter Fifty-Two Chapter Fifty-Three Chapter Fifty-Four Chapter Fifty-Five Chapter Fifty-Six Chapter Fifty-Seven Chapter Fifty-Eight Chapter Fifty-Nine Chapter Sixty Chapter Sixty-One Epilogue A Letter from Alex Acknowledgements About the Author Also by Alex Khan Copyright Cover Table of Contents Start of Content Dedication To my fellow warriors in the NHS who battled Covid-19 for all of us. Prologue The sun began to set into the black waters of the Bosphorus. Despite the heat Millie Beaumont felt herself shiver. She was wearing a summer dress, a light shawl in her lap. She closed the car window, turning her gaze away from the cliff-edge roads the SUV was hurtling along. The driver didn’t even flinch as he took sharp turns and rounded corners with no idea what was coming in the opposite direction. Millie tried to alter the images in her head, some vehicle bearing down on them, knocking them through the flimsy barrier on the side, the SUV hurtling down the sheer mountainside. They would be dead before they got to the water. She closed her eyes and rested her head against the car seat, not even bothering to look at her husband, Oscar Hayat. She knew he would be engrossed on his phone, lost to her and oblivious to anything around him. How instantly things had changed. For months he had made her the centre of his existence, his every breath for her, he had claimed. There was nothing that would make him feel differently, he had told her. She had let him lead her to the altar, exchange their love in front of everyone. Only to find herself alone and adrift on the night of the wedding itself. There were some things, then, that would make him feel differently. Millie felt the familiar pounding in her head, the migraines regular since the wedding day, warnings that everything was wrong. How could she have been so blind? How did she let a man do this to her? Of all the clichés, the naivety and the downright stupidity. How could she have let him play her like this? She felt a mixture of rage and despair itching under her bronzed skin, trying to break out and scream. She wouldn’t though. Girls like Millie weren’t expected to scream. They were meant to get on with it. Paint their faces, dress their bodies in the finest labels and live the lives that had been bestowed on them like some sort of charity. Millie Beaumont, the poor girl who had strayed into the marquee of the wealthy. She should have been the cocktail waitress or the one serving the starters; instead, she dared to want to be the one giving the toast. Her audacity. She had to be grateful for life. As her spirit broke inside, she had spent the last week in Bali, the Indian Ocean paradise of white sand and sapphire waters, smiling for the thousand guests and cameras. Her wedding was a buzz online, social media commenting on what she wore, how she looked, trying to gauge her mood. The world watched, hating her and loving her, vicariously wanting what she had. It was the same lie the world got told over and over. That wealth was the key to happiness. Money would solve your problems, pay your bills, let you live a life of luxury and escape. Millie wanted to laugh. She had seen through the façade, seen the dead eyes, people living lives of quiet desperation, masking their cracks with designer handbags and Kensington flats. Money might buy them everything, but not happiness. Oscar had hidden this side of his world so well. As she played her part in the marriage of the century, Millie had felt her life ebbing. The secrets in her head squeezing her from the inside, crushing the breath from her brittle bones and tight skin. The fake laughter around her hammering at her, mocking her Vera Wang dress and her Louboutin shoes. Sixty different dishes were served; as the wedding banquet lasted from breakfast to afterparty, the guests fed on tables laid out on the beach, served by exotic-looking men and women with model bodies. It was grotesque in its opulence, the groom arriving on a flotilla from his father’s yacht which was parked a mile off the island. They were married under a canopy erected on the beach, and when she had looked out across the waters, Millie pretended it was just the two of them and the officiator. Only they were not alone: the applause from the thousand people behind them after they kissed was oppressive. Millie opened her eyes and looked at her husband. He was tapping and swiping on his phone, far enough for her not to see what he was so interested in. Whatever it was, it wasn’t Millie. She studied his profile, thinking again how beautiful he was. Not pretty, but a man displaying the confidence that came with his lot in life. He had his father’s dark eyes, his mother’s facial structure and jaw; he looked Italian. She often joked with him about that. Back when they were pretending to be young people in love. Both pretending. Millie, at first, had thought she could carry on the pretence through their marriage. She knew what she was fighting for, what she wanted from him. But he didn’t want the same;