A Wife's Tragic End, His Awakening
The man who destroyed my life stood over my broken body, but he didn't recognize me. My husband, Carter, was just the lawyer handling the "Jane Doe" found at his client's construction site, worried only about legal complications.
As a ghost, I watched him dismiss every part of me. The silver locket I' d clutched in my hand?
"Just another piece of evidence," he said flatly.
The faded tattoo on my wrist? "An irrelevant detail." He called me a selfish liar when my severe heart condition kept me from donating bone marrow to his manipulative fiancée, Cecelia. He threw me out of his car and left me on a street corner, where her thugs found me.
He was consumed with finding justice for a stranger, blind to the fact that he was the one who had sentenced his own wife to death.
I thought he'd never know. But then, the police showed him security footage from a community center. He saw my face, alive and smiling. And in that instant, the man who refused to see me in life was forced to see me in death.
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Chapter 4
Ava Bell POV:
Carter knelt beside my body again, his gloved hand hovering over my cheek. His brow was furrowed, a flicker of something akin to sadness in his eyes.
"No one deserves this," he murmured, his voice softer now, almost a whisper. "No one deserves to die like this."
You say that now, Carter. But when I was alive, you were the one who pushed me towards it. I wondered what he would say if he knew it was me. Would he still claim I deserved better? Or would he twist it, somehow, to be my fault? He was a master at that too.
His gaze drifted from my face, down my arm. He stopped at my wrist. There, a small, faded tattoo. A delicate, winding vine, with tiny, almost imperceptible thorns. It curved around my wrist like a protective bracelet.
I had gotten it years ago, after a particularly harsh rejection from Cecelia. It was a symbol of resilience, of growing despite the pain. It was small, discreet, barely noticeable unless you looked closely.
I remembered Carter' s reaction to it. "What's that monstrosity, Ava?" he' d asked, his eyes filled with disdain. "Looks like something a troubled teenager would get. Can't you hide that with a watch? It's unprofessional."
Now, he stared at it. Will he recognize it? Will it finally click?
He leaned even closer, examining the faded lines. Then, he straightened up. "Just a tattoo," he stated, his voice devoid of emotion. "Probably from years ago. Another irrelevant detail for the report."
My ghost heart sank. Of course. Irrelevant.
"Mr. Rios, we found this inside her." A forensic technician, a young man with glasses, approached, holding up a clear plastic evidence bag. Inside, nestled among folds of what looked like torn fabric, was a small, worn sketchbook.
Carter took it, his eyes narrowing in professional curiosity. He didn't open it immediately. "Analyze it," he ordered. "Every page. See if there are any clues, any names, anything that can help us identify her."
Just then, his phone vibrated. A distinct, melodic ringtone. Cecelia's. It was the only custom ringtone he had. He snatched it from his pocket, his stern expression immediately softening.
"Cecelia, darling. Are you alright?" His voice was laced with concern, a stark contrast to the cold efficiency he used for everyone else.
"Oh, Carter," Cecelia's voice, high-pitched and fragile, drifted from the phone. "I'm just so worried. About everything. This... this murder. It's so close to us. Are you safe? And Ava... have you heard from her?"
Her concern was a performance. I knew it. He didn't.
"I' m fine, sweetheart. Don't worry. I'll make sure you're safe," Carter promised, his eyes scanning the desolate condo, as if searching for an unseen threat to her. "As for Ava... she's probably just being dramatic again. Trying to get attention. You know how she is."
"Yes," Cecelia sighed dramatically. "Always causing trouble. I just hope she hasn't done anything to endanger herself, or worse, you, my love."
"She wouldn't dare," Carter scoffed. "She knows her place. If she's pulled one of her stunts, she'll regret it. Just focus on resting, Cecelia. I love you. I'll be home as soon as I can."
He hung up, the tenderness vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. He looked at the sketchbook in his hand, his eyes hardening.
"Find out what this girl was up to," he commanded the technician, referring to my lifeless body. "And quickly. We can't have this distraction on our hands."
Distraction. That's all I ever was to him. A distraction. Even in death. His words, overheard by my observing spirit, were a fresh wound, a confirmation of his unwavering blindness.
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7.2
On my husband Heath's birthday, I sent him a gift: the preserved embryo of the child I had just aborted.
It was my revenge. He had framed my father, driving him to prison and my mother to her grave, all for his mistress, Ember.
When he stormed into our apartment, his face twisted with rage, he slammed me against the counter. "You monster! How could you destroy our child?"
"You forfeited that right the moment you chose Ember over us," I spat back.
But my defiance only led to more horror. He had me committed to a mental asylum where Ember, the architect of my family's ruin, tortured me with electroshock therapy, trying to break my mind.
I feigned submission, then fought back, throwing both of us out of a third-story window. I survived; she was left in critical condition.
Lying in my hospital bed, Heath came to me not with remorse, but with a chilling demand. "Ember needs a tendon graft. You're a match. The surgery is tomorrow."
He thought he had me trapped, that he could force me to sacrifice a piece of myself for the woman who destroyed me.
But as he left to comfort his mistress, I made a call. The next morning, as he begged me not to go through with the "surgery," I walked away, leaving him in the ruins of the life he had shattered. He didn't know this wasn't a surgery. It was my escape, and the beginning of his end.
9.2
The body of my sister, Annabelle, was found brutally stuffed inside an ottoman in our living room.
The house was locked from the inside, and the police didn't have a single lead.
Before she died, Annabelle left a note: "Beware of the Other Mom."
7.1
I was living as a ghost in a run-down trailer park, trying to outrun a past that would kill me if it ever caught up. Then the storm hit, and a dying monster collapsed through my door, bringing the smell of copper and the promise of a very different kind of death.
I tried to defend myself with a cheap butcher knife, but Darius didn't just disarm me—he acquired me. Before the rain even stopped, I was drugged and whisked away on a private jet, waking up in a luxury penthouse that was nothing more than a high-tech cage overlooking the city skyline.
He didn't just want my silence; he wanted total control. When I begged to check on my sick grandmother, he threw a manila envelope on the table filled with surveillance photos of her at her nursing home.
"I own the board of that facility," he said, his voice cold as ice. "One call from me, and she dies alone on the street."
He vetted my life in that trailer park down to my medical records and childhood diaries, convinced he had every lever of power needed to keep me obedient. He forced me into silk dresses and expected me to be his domestic pet, a quiet girl waiting for him to return from his world of shadows and blood.
I played the part, letting him pull me into his lap and bury his face in my neck, pretending to be the broken girl he thought he’d bought. I watched his security cameras, calculated his blind spots, and waited for the moment his exhaustion outweighed his instinct.
Darius thinks he knows me because he saw where I lived, but he’s never been more wrong. His investigators found the pauper, but they completely missed the princess with an Ivy League degree and a family name that carries more weight than his illegal empire.
He thinks he’s the one holding the leash, but he has no idea who he’s actually brought into his home. The game has just begun, and this time, the "asset" is going to be the one who burns the house down.
9.6
My family and fiancé begged me to donate my last remaining kidney to my twin sister, Kyleigh. They didn't know I was already dying.
My fiancé, Axel, gave me an ultimatum.
"Donate the kidney, or I'll break our engagement and marry Kyleigh. It's her dying wish."
I agreed, only for them to frame me for plagiarism with my own thesis, forcing me to confess on camera. They never knew I was the one who secretly saved our father with my other kidney five years ago-a sacrifice Kyleigh had stolen all the credit for.
As they wheeled me into the operating room, they celebrated with Kyleigh, promising her a future built on my death. I was already a ghost to them.
But I died on the table. The surgeon, seeing the old surgical scar and the poison riddling my body, walked out to face them.
"This wasn't a donation," she announced, her voice cold as steel. "This was murder."
9.5
Bridget left the office early on her anniversary, her pocket heavy with a custom velvet ring box meant for her fiancé.
But when she pushed open the bedroom door, she found him tangled in their bed with her best friend, Chloe.
"Bridget! Wait, it's not what it looks like!" Jacob stammered, his eyes wide with panic.
"Evidence," Bridget stated coldly, snapping a photo of their naked bodies before fleeing into the freezing New York night.
Desperate to numb the betrayal, she got blackout drunk at an underground lounge and threw herself at a dark, terrifyingly handsome stranger.
She woke up in a penthouse suite alone, finding only a limitless black credit card left on the nightstand.
Humiliated and feeling like a cheap escort, she ran away, swearing to forget the nightmare.
But the nightmare had just begun. When she rushed into the office, she discovered the stranger was Jevon Rocha—the ruthless billionaire CEO of her company.
He didn't fire her. Instead, he trapped her in a twisted, obsessive power game, forcing her into his private life and demanding she report to his penthouse.
Bridget couldn't understand why a ruthless billionaire was so dangerously fixated on a low-level employee.
Until she stumbled upon his secret social media account and saw a crayon drawing of a little kid, captioned with a single word: "Finally."
A wave of absolute horror washed over her. He wasn't just playing games; he was hiding a secret child and a messy, high-stakes family drama.
She refused to be the naive collateral damage in a billionaire's twisted life.
Trembling, Bridget hit "Block" on his profile, determined to escape his dangerous web.
9.2
I woke up suffocating in the dark, only to find my mind trapped inside a tiny, plump, and entirely uncoordinated body.
A cold, mechanical voice echoed in my brain, announcing that I was dead in my original world and had transmigrated into a corporate revenge novel as the six-month-old illegitimate daughter of Edward McClure, the story's ruthless villain.
The system mercilessly outlined my doomed fate. Tonight, my cold-blooded father would abandon me to a state orphanage. By age two, he would officially sign my rights away, leaving me to die miserably at the hands of human traffickers. Outside my nursery, I could hear his terrifying footsteps approaching, his voice devoid of any human warmth as he debated throwing me out like garbage. I was completely helpless, trapped in a baby's body, staring up at a man who looked at me with pure, visceral disgust.
Why did I have to be reborn as the tragic cannon fodder of a tyrant destined to put a bullet in his own head? How was I supposed to win over a severe germaphobe when my unequipped infant reflexes made me literally pee and vomit all over his pristine Tom Ford suits?
"Your ultimate mission is to prevent Edward McClure's self-destruction. Step one: Survive tonight's abandonment crisis."
Hearing the system's terrifying ultimatum, I swallowed my adult panic, forced a pool of pitiful tears into my large eyes, and reached my chubby little hands toward the monster.