A Love Worth Killing For. Part II of III.

Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to SAW canon events, plot lines (or plot holes), SAW's characters or their origin stories. I have several Original Characters (OC) that I've developed from the last installment that will continue to play a part here. Some canon events in SAW will be twisted and tweaked to fit within my own fanfic. Any characters that sound or seem like real people are coincidental.

Author's Note: This installment will take place throughout SAW events. The last one was more pre-SAW than anything. I hope you enjoyed it, as I'm back to write more!

Prologue: We're All That's Left

I hated that feeling.

It was gut-wrenching. The kind of dread that grabbed hold of my insides, twisting them into uneasy, tangled knots, the feeling so unpleasant and uncomfortable, I wanted to puke.

The only other time I'd ever experienced this was on the day my father had taken a turn for the worse. That feeling had stayed with me all day. Throughout, I had chastised myself for overreacting, for being an anxious worry nut. Yet, my concern had been validated when I'd arrived home with my father's old detective partner and friend, Carmine Benson, sitting in my own living room, waiting to inform me that my father's days were quickly counting down.

That had been a year ago. To the day.

According to the digital clock that sat on the nightstand closest to my side of the bed, it was 10:00 P.M. Unconscientiously, I reached over to my left, yet I felt nothing but sheets and a pillow that had remained untouched since Mark had last gone to work.

'Another late night at the office.' It was my first thought, and I wouldn't have been surprised.

Mark was having stakeouts more often or he stayed late at the office, not realizing the time until much later.

A Homicide Detective rarely ever got any shuteye. Being a supervisor over that department as well as having the police captain breathing down his neck over Internal Affairs' most recent investigation was just one more thing on my husband's plate that kept him from coming home on time.

Luckily, for him, I was the most understanding of the police wives. My father had served 25 years as a cop, 15 of those had been as a detective, more specifically Homicide.

Mark's absence so late into the night never shocked me, particularly any time Internal Affairs set up shop in the department. It made everyone uneasy, leery of each other; people were much too attentive to let sleeping dogs lie. I'd frequently wake up, momentarily baffled before I came to the usual realization that he was putting in overtime.

However, it was the first time in a while where my anxiety had pulled me out of what I gathered had been a restless sleep, the evidence marked by the pillows which had been thrown down on the floor; and my night shirt was not the slightest bit wrinkled from sleeping in one position for too long.

My stomach was queasy and 'I might puke' quickly became 'did.'

I ambled out of the bathroom after I'd flushed the toilet, one hand on the bathroom doorknob while the other searched aimlessly for a light switch. Once I'd found the damned thing, I recovered my cell phone, peering at the messages on the screen.

There were two missed calls, and one voicemail.

The first missed call was from Angelina, my sister-in-law.

I distractedly wondered if she had enjoyed her colleague's going away party. She had been looking forward to it for a while. She'd asked me to come along, but I'd recently taken back the reigns of being my own restaurant's manager after I was able to mourn the death of my father; there was a lot of redecorating to do for the holidays. Now and again, I doubted if I had been ready to reclaim the responsibilities that owning a restaurant demanded.

Time hadn't healed all wounds; the physical ones eventually left scars, and the emotional damage had only dulled rather than disappeared. As with my mother, I could talk about Dad, but it still hurt.

Some months after my father's funeral, I'd returned to what was the new normalcy. I'd had several meetings with various people regarding my restaurant (lawyers, decorators, vendors) and a few more regarding my father's estate. These days, I was much too mentally exhausted by the end of it all, I knew I wouldn't be able to keep up with Mark's sister at a party full of her friends. Celebrations aside, she always had a bottomless pit of vivacious spontaneity. It was borderline supernatural!

The second missed call was from one of Angelina's colleagues, one of whom I'd met a handful of times. Her name was Denise.

The first time I met her was at a Halloween party I'd personally hosted at the Grotto. While Denise was casual, she was never my friend; occasionally, Angelina's hot-tempered boyfriend, Seth Baxter, would get too drunk and become aggressive and hostile towards everyone, including her. On those days, Denise always offered her place at which Angelina spent the night while the sleazy, greasy civil suit lawyer got over himself.

Denise was helpful, attentive. But as I had mentioned, she was more of Angelina's friend, not mine. To this point, she rarely ever called me.

As it turned out, the voicemail belonged to her as well.

Curiously, I listened to it.

"Hey, Alexis, it's me: Denise. Yeah, um, a bunch of us were meeting at work, the going-away for Marie—Angie said she was going to come, but no one's seen her. Normally, I'd just brush it off, you know, but we've had this thing planned for weeks, and no one's heard from her, so I thought maybe she was with you? I don't know. I'm going to call a few other people to see if anyone else heard from her—you never know, she might just be sick. We get her sick, remember, she doesn't get us sick." (Denise chuckled at her own joke.) "Anyway, the party's still in full swing if you want to come. None of us are planning to leave until midnight anyway, so, yeah. Anyway, bye, girl!"

The dread that had been swimming lazily and too casually in my stomach had started to crawl up my throat.

Angelina was never late. She was punctual, sometimes arriving 30 minutes early to events, parties, small gatherings. Why would she not have made it? And if she had gotten sick, she would've told someone.

Don't panic. I started to panic. Don't overreact.

I could hear Mark's voice in my head. Not because I was going insane, but because he'd be saying the exact same words to me if he saw my hands trembling or the paleness in my face as my mind swarmed with the world's worst-case scenarios.

Don't panic. You never think before you leap. Think now.

I hit number '2' on the speed dial, the phone placed to my ear as I started getting dressed. I'd hunt Angelina down if I had to—otherwise, there was no chance of me going back to sleep. Not until I knew she was okay.

Someone else answered the phone: "Yeah…?"

I glanced at my own, taken aback. "Mark?"

"Lex?"

"Yeah. What—I'm sorry, I meant to call Angie."

"You did."

If a voice had ever been a likeness of a deadpan stare, his response was as stoic as they came. Also, talkative, as ever.

"Why'd you answer her phone?" I questioned. "Is she with you? No one has heard from her; people have been looking everywhere for—"

"—Well, they can stop looking."

That dread wasn't going away. In fact, it doubled down, and I held my stomach, hoping it'd ease my panic.

No such luck.

"You sound upset. Where are you?" I asked uncertainly.

"I'm at the Coroner's."

"…Why?"

Mark's voice broke as though he were trying not to cry or convey the amount of boiling rage I knew was bubbling under the surface as he said, "Seth killed her."

"No…"

"He fucking killed her."

In that moment, every conversation I'd ever had with Angelina about that fucking boyfriend of hers came rushing back, all the warnings I'd given her dismissed and ignored, all the red flags. Angelina had been so certain that he loved her and would never hurt her. In the end, she'd been wrong.

I collapsed on the bed as though the rug had been snatched from beneath my feet, feeling numb to the pain at least until everything became real and only then would the reality of the situation begin to hurt. The painful realization that it was just one more person ripped away.

Cancer had taken my father from me.

My mother had been killed by a faceless, nameless drunk driver.

Dad had been, at times, a dirty cop even though he'd had good intentions of keeping his partner and myself safe. My mother hadn't always been a good affluential role model—if the drunk driver hadn't killed her, her temper might have.

Angelina was the kind of person you would have wanted to believe in you, someone who only lifted people up. For some reason, I thought Angelina would have been untouched by the same kind of violence. Because of her purity, her decency.

Apparently, anyone was fair game.

"Do you want me to—" I barely had gotten the words out before Mark responded.

"No, don't," he said firmly, although there were still the traces of a broken man behind those words.

"But—"

"—Don't come down here."

My heart broke for him, not wishing to imagine the kind of horror that had been Angelina's last moments.

I asked gently, "What do you want me to do?"

"I don't know." He sounded so lost. "Just don't come."

"—But—"

"—I said, 'Don't'!"

"Okay, okay, I won't. I won't."

"I don't want you to see her. Not like this."

If I could have reached through the phone and held him, I'd have done so in a millisecond.

I submitted, "If that's what you want. I promise. I won't come down."

"Good." He paused. There was some muffled feedback on his end, likely the coroner coming over to ask him questions, so he said, "I have to go. I'll see you soon."

"Okay. I love you."

He whispered the words back. "I love you too."