The Last Minute

"60...59...58..."

As Wesley Forsberg was crawling on the floor gasping for air, he heard a countdown hovering over him. He knew that he had about a minute left in this world, and he wasn't the only one who knew it. The person hovering over Wesley counting down the seconds also knew it, and it was someone very familiar to him: his wife, Josephine Roman.

"45...44...43..."

Josephine walked behind Wesley holding a cellphone, but she had no intention of using it to call for help. She did see her husband in trouble, but once Wesley reached for the phone, Josephine snatched the phone away, and started closely following her dying husband, as he was clinging to life--a life that was slowly fading with every second.

"30...29...28..."

For Josephine, these were the final seconds of a fiendish plot that had been percolating in her mind for five years. When she married Wesley, her life improved. She wanted the good life. She felt she deserved it after coming from nothing. Ironically, Josephine's knowledge of what she wanted was what attracted Wesley to her, yet that nature is the very thing that is resulting in his slow and steady demise.

When Josephine and Wesley met, they clicked instantly. Those who saw them together bore witness to two people who were deeply in love with each other, and that love appeared to be there on the very day that they said they said "I do" to each other. However, while Wesley's focus was his love for Josephine, his lovely bride only had one thing in mind: getting what she felt was hers.

Wesley's refusal to sign a pre-nup helped a bit, but it wasn't enough for Josephine. An insurance policy that would make Josephine quite well off marked the beginning of Wesley being on the receiving end of many "mishaps" that nearly eliminated him. A cut brake line in his car, falling objects coming withing a hair of his head. Josephine even hired a hitman to carry out Wesley's murder, but even that failed.

Finally, Josephine appeared to have been successful in her latest attempt: slipping antifreeze into his favorite bottle of brandy. She counted on Wesley having a glass of brandy every time the Nashville Predators were on, and like clockwork, he did just that.

"At long last," the evil Josephine gloated. "I will have everything that I deserve. Everything I plotted and schemed for...will soon be mine! Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven..."

However, Josephine's twisted countdown was interrupted by a sound she didn't think she'd hear.

"No! How could they have known?! I was so close!"

The last 60 seconds of what Josephine Roman saw as the perfect murder plot ended with the scheming and greedy wife in handcuffs. Unbeknownst to Josephine, Wesley began to suspect that something was up, and relied on a friend of his, Lila O'Reilly, to track Josephine. Sure enough, Lila spotted Josephine purchasing the antifreeze, and after snapping a series of photos, she sent them to Wesley, who sent them to the proper authorities. A swap of bottles and a staged poisoning later, Josephine Roman ended up arrested for the many attempts on Wesley, who pulled off a good acting job in order to expose his wife's wicked schemes. Josephine thought that she would kill her way to fortune. She thought she was only a minute away from getting what she felt that she deserved. Instead, she ended up exposed by Wesley, and as a result, Josephine went from being 60 seconds away from completing a greedy murder scheme, to serving the rest of her live in a prison cell.