PART 3: The Resurrection
I stepped into the grand cathedral. My combat boots left heavy, melted tracks of gray slush and dark mud along the pristine, white marble aisle.
The velvet-lined pews on either side of me became a blur of pale, horrified faces. High-society couples recoiled, gasping as I passed them. I was a walking nightmare in the center of their carefully curated luxury: my camouflage uniform was torn and stiff with frozen mud, my hands were raw and black with soot from the thermal fire I had engineered to stay alive, and a jagged, dark line of dried blood marked the temple where I had hit the ice.
In my right hand, dragging against the stone with a dull, terrifying metallic scrape, was the heavy iron padlock Dominic had used to seal my grave.
The silence that filled the cathedral was absolute, broken only by the rhythmic, agonizing clink-drag of the iron against the floor.
Dominic’s gold-plated microphone slipped from his fingers. It hit the altar steps with a deafening, electronic screech that vibrated through the audio system, cutting the priest’s eulogy short.
“V-Vivienne?” Dominic stammered. His voice was raw, reeking of sudden, unadulterated terror. He stumbled backward, his hand flying off Chloe’s shoulder as if he had been struck by lightning. His face drained of color so quickly it turned a translucent, sickly gray. “No… no, this is impossible. You’re… you’re dead. The mountains… the storm…”
“Sorry I’m late to my own funeral, Dominic,” I said. My voice wasn’t loud, but it carried across the vaulted ceilings of the cathedral with the freezing, unyielding force of a mountain gale. “The traffic in the blizzard was brutal. But I brought a souvenir.”
I lifted my arm and swung the heavy iron padlock forward. It hit the polished, empty mahogany casket with a concussive, wood-splintering CRASH. The impact sent a cascade of expensive white orchids scattering across the altar floor.
Chloe let out a sharp, piercing shriek, scrambling away from the casket as the high-society guests bolted upright in their pews. The media lenses, which had been tracking Dominic’s manufactured tears, instantly pivoted. The rapid, blinding flash of a hundred camera shutters began to illuminate the altar like a frantic lightning storm.
“Vivienne, sweetie… please,” Dominic’s mother wailed from the front row, clutching her chest. “You’re alive! It’s a miracle! Dominic has been completely out of his mind with grief—”
“Dominic hasn’t been grieving, Mother,” I cut her off, my gaze locking onto his trembling frame. “He’s been budgeting.”
Dominic tried to recover his composure, his narcissistic instincts desperately searching for a way to rewrite the narrative in front of the cameras. He stepped forward, forcing a trembling, theatrical sob into his chest. “Vivienne… thank God. You survived. You must have gotten lost in the mountains… your mind is confused from the hypothermia… let the medical team take you—”
“I didn’t get lost, Dominic,” I said, stepping up the altar stairs until I was standing less than three feet from him. The smell of smoke and raw survival on my clothes completely overwhelmed the expensive French cologne he was wearing. “You locked me in an abandoned cabin. You stripped me of my satellite phone and my parka. You left me to freeze to death so you could collect a multi-million-dollar military life insurance payout, the deed to the estate, and my pension.”
“That is a lie!” Chloe screamed from behind him, her voice cracking with desperation. “You have absolutely no proof! You’re unhinged!”
I offered them a slow, cold smile.
“You spent so much time planning the aesthetics of this funeral,” I said softly. “That you forgot who taught you how to pack a rucksack, Dominic.”
