The story told from the perpetrator's point of view is a fictionalized rendering of facts drawn from a real murder conviction handed down in 2024.
The image is created with AI-elements based on the original concept of the illustrator Albena Limoni.
My name is Marin, and the ashes of this story are still warm.
I met my girlfriend in 2022. She was bright, young, with that kind of smile that makes your stomach tighten. She liked me. I liked her. That's how it all began.
We moved in together almost immediately. First in France, with my parents. Then we came back to Bulgaria. I have an apartment here, and my parents helped… we couldn't find work right away, but we managed and so on. I wanted to start something of my own — transportation, with a van, legally. To do it, I needed money. A lot of money. Her parents didn't help.
She said she would talk to them. I let her call them from my phone; I took hers as soon as we moved in together. What did she need it for — she had me, so who would she need to call behind my back? I let her speak with her parents, of course. But only in my presence. I didn't want her to be one of those women who talk behind your back. How was I to know what she might say?
Then I began following her with my eyes when she moved around the room. Was she looking out the window? Who was it she greeted if I went down to the shop and came back a little late? Who had messaged her some time ago? Why was her old social media account logged out?
There were days when I couldn't breathe from anxiety about what she might be doing when she wasn't in my sight. Just hearing voices in the building entrance would make me certain she was talking to someone, and then she'd lie to me when I asked. I didn't need proof. Her silence was enough for me.
I didn't insult her without cause. I told her a hundred times — if you don't give me a reason, there's no reason to worry. But I was sure she was lying to me about something, I was sure, there was simply no way.
I just couldn't bear the thought that she might be cheating on me. Every time she asked to go somewhere alone, something inside me stretched to breaking. She didn't understand. She said I was making her feel guilty. That I kept her like a prisoner. Nonsense!
One morning I heard voices on our floor as I was coming back from the shop. Workers, doing repairs in the apartment across from ours. I could swear one of them knew her. I don't have any evidence of it — what kind of evidence? You can sence these things — by her glances, by the way she breathes, if you like. I knew he and she had been talking, that they were talking about me, maybe more than that… Just because I didn't see it, just because I didn't hear it, that didn't matter — I knew it! This was no innocent chat. This was a betrayal.
When I asked her, she denied it as always. Everything went black before my eyes. I couldn't take it nymore, all those days when I'd checked her phone, watched where she had been looking, counted the seconds of silence. All of it just came to the surface and overwhelmed me.
Of course I didn't want to kill her. I loved her and I deeply regret that it happened that way.
She simply shouldn't have provoked me, like I told her a hundred times…