“Leave him. Before you become his third wife.”
The letter was on the table at 27B, Riverside Heights, in italics threatening her. A month after the wedding, the letters continued to appear – nine in all.

She asked Michael. He laughed, said it was a joke. But one Friday night, she discovered a wedding photo of him and another woman, taken in New Jersey, six months before they were married. The caption read “first wife.”

Her heart froze. All the lies, all the secrets she had kept for so long now surfaced. She flipped through old letters, emails, text messages – finding a chain of contacts with secret email addresses, and dates – each message pointing her toward a plan that would change her life and that of her three-month-old child.

She was scared but curious: who was the other woman? What was Michael hiding? And what is it about apartment 27B – where the last letter fell – that makes him so cold…?

👉 Full story & unexpected twist here: [Link to first comment]

The tenth letter arrived on a Tuesday that smelled of rain and baby powder.

Elena found it propped against the coffee machine in apartment 27B, Riverside Heights, the new place she and Michael had moved into exactly one month after their courthouse wedding. The envelope was heavy cream stock, her name typed in the same slanted italic font that had haunted her for weeks.

Leave him. Before you become his third wife.

She had received nine already. The first slipped under the door of their old walk-up in Chelsea the morning after they returned from city hall. The second tucked inside her coat pocket at the obstetrician’s office. The third wedged between the pages of What to Expect When You’re Expecting. Each one identical, unsigned, postmarked from different zip codes across the tri-state area.

Michael had laughed them off. “Some bored ex with too much time and a printer,” he’d said, kissing her forehead. “Ignore it, babe. People are crazy.”

But Elena couldn’t ignore the tenth.

Because this one contained a photograph.

A Polaroid, edges curling. Michael in a charcoal suit she didn’t recognize, arm around a dark-haired woman in a simple lace dress. They stood on the front steps of a little white church in Cape May, New Jersey. The timestamp burned into the bottom corner read: 04-14-2023.

Six months before he met Elena. Nine months before he slid a diamond onto her finger.

On the back, in the same italic handwriting: First wife. Ask him about the second.

That night she waited until their son, Luca, was asleep in the white-noise hush of the nursery. Then she opened Michael’s laptop while he showered.

The password was still her birthday. He had never changed it.

She found the hidden folder in less than five minutes—buried inside an old tax-return directory labeled “2021 – DO NOT DELETE.” Inside were scans of two marriage certificates and one death certificate.

The first marriage: Michael Evan Caldwell to Rebecca Marie Lang, Cape May, New Jersey, April 14, 2023. The second: Michael Evan Caldwell to Sarah Elizabeth Hart, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, October 28, 2023. The death certificate: Sarah Elizabeth Caldwell, age 29, died February 9, 2024, from complications following premature childbirth. Cause listed as “postpartum hemorrhage.” Place of death: apartment 27B, Riverside Heights, Manhattan.

Elena’s blood turned to sleet.

This apartment. The one they were living in now. The one with the wide Hudson views and the nursery painted the exact shade of robin’s-egg blue that Sarah had apparently chosen, according to the untouched can of paint still in the closet with her name written on the lid in Sharpie.

She heard the shower shut off. Bare feet padding down the hallway.

Elena closed the laptop and slipped into the nursery, heart jackhammering. She stood over Luca’s crib, watching his tiny chest rise and fall, and tried to breathe.

Michael appeared in the doorway, towel around his waist, hair dripping.

“You okay?” he asked softly. “You look pale.”

She turned. “Tell me about Sarah.”

His face didn’t change, not really. Just a flicker—like a TV losing signal for half a second.

“Who?” he asked.

“Sarah Elizabeth Hart. Your second wife. She died in this apartment. In our bedroom, Michael. While giving birth to a baby that isn’t mentioned anywhere on the death certificate.”

For a moment the only sound was the white-noise machine shaped like a sleepy owl.

Then Michael smiled, the same gentle, lopsided smile that had convinced her he was safe.

“Someone’s been telling you stories,” he said. “Come to bed, love. You’re exhausted.”

He reached for her. She stepped back.

“I saw the certificates,” she whispered. “I saw the paint can with her name on it. The letters warned me, Michael. First wife. Second wife. They’re trying to stop me from becoming—”

“Third,” he finished quietly.

The air in the nursery changed, grew thick as wet wool.

Michael closed the door behind him with a soft click.

“Rebecca left me,” he said, voice calm, almost tender. “Walked out two months after the wedding. She’s living in Portland now with some sculptor. Sends me Christmas cards.”

He took one step closer.

“Sarah… Sarah was different. She wanted the baby more than she wanted me. When she started bleeding, I called 911. They came. They tried. She died anyway. I couldn’t—” His voice cracked, real grief or perfect theater, Elena no longer knew. “I couldn’t stay in that apartment after. I put everything in storage. I left. I met you.”

Another step.

“But the building had a vacancy clause. They offered me 27B again at a discount. I thought… new memories. A new family. A clean start.”

He was close enough now that she smelled his soap, the same cedar-and-bergamot scent he’d worn the night he proposed.

“I should have told you,” he said. “I was ashamed. And terrified you’d think I was… cursed.”

Elena’s back touched the crib. Luca stirred but didn’t wake.

“The letters,” she said. “Who’s sending them?”

Michael’s eyes flicked to the rocking chair in the corner.

The chair was moving.

Slow, gentle rocking, though no one sat in it.

From the hallway came the rustle of paper.

An eleventh envelope slid under the nursery door as they watched, coming to rest against Michael’s bare foot.

He picked it up, turned it over. No writing on the outside this time.

He opened it.

Inside was a single Polaroid, fresh and glossy.

Elena and Michael on their wedding day outside city hall, her white dress fluttering in the wind, his hand cradling the small bump she had hidden under a draped silk sash.

Written across the bottom in red marker, still wet:

Third wife. Due date: December 21.

Michael looked at the photo, then at Elena.

His face drained of color.

“That’s not possible,” he whispered. “I just took that picture last week. It’s still on my phone.”

The rocking chair stopped.

A woman stood behind it—tall, dark-haired, belly swollen beneath a blood-soaked nightgown. Sarah. Transparent enough that Elena could see the owl night-light glowing through her.

Sarah’s lips moved. No sound came, but Elena heard the words anyway, inside her skull like a migraine.

He keeps us in the walls.

Sarah lifted one translucent hand and pointed to the far corner of the nursery.

The wall there was freshly painted, smooth, perfect.

Except for the faint outline of a door that had never been there before.

Michael dropped the Polaroid. “Elena, listen to me. We have to leave. Right now.”

He reached for her arm.

Sarah flickered.

Suddenly Michael’s grip became crushing. His head snapped toward Sarah, eyes black as wet tar.

“Shut up,” he snarled, but it wasn’t his voice anymore. It was deeper, layered, as if two men spoke at once.

Sarah smiled—a terrible, sad thing—and dissolved into mist that poured straight into Michael’s open mouth.

He staggered, choking, clawing at his throat.

When he looked up again, his eyes were brown. Normal. Terrified.

“Elena,” he rasped, “the storage unit. Key’s in my sock drawer. Box 47. Go. Take Luca and go.”

He collapsed to his knees.

Behind him, the outline in the wall began to open inward, exhaling cold, metallic air that smelled of blood and baby powder.

Michael looked at her one last time.

“I tried to stop it,” he said. “I really did.”

Then something dragged him backward into the dark.

The wall sealed without a seam.

The nursery was silent again.

Elena stood frozen, clutching the crib rail, until Luca let out a thin, sharp cry.

She scooped him up, grabbed the diaper bag, and ran.

In the elevator she found the twelfth letter taped to the mirror.

This one was different. Handwritten, in Michael’s own writing, ink still wet.

I’m sorry. Burn the building if you have to. Just keep our son away from apartment 27B.

The elevator doors opened onto the lobby.

Security cameras swiveled to follow her as she fled into the rain.

Behind her, twenty-seven floors up, the lights in 27B flickered once—then went dark forever.

Somewhere inside the walls, two women began to sing a lullaby in perfect harmony, waiting for the third voice that would never come.