Choosing The Imposter Over His Dying Wife

Ericka POV

I woke up in the hospital again, the sterile smell of antiseptic doing little to mask the scent of smoke that still clung to my memory.

My skin felt too tight, blistered and raw from the heat and the shock of the explosion.

Caleb was sitting in the chair next to the bed.

He wasn't reading. He was just watching me, his gaze unreadable.

"You're a danger to yourself," he said, his voice devoid of warmth. "And to everyone around you."

"I have cancer," I whispered, my throat dry and scratching. "I have broken ribs. I have burns. And you think *I'm* the danger?"

"Stop lying," he snapped, the sound sharp like a whip crack. "Dr. Evans told me everything."

"He told you I was dying."

"He told me you paid him to fake the report."

My blood ran cold. Hailie. She had gotten to Evans. Or maybe she had just threatened his family. Either way, the trap had snapped shut.

"I didn't..."

The door swung opened. Hailie walked in, holding her arm delicately against her chest. It was wrapped in a bandage.

"Oh, Caleb," she whimpered, her lower lip trembling. "It hurts."

Caleb was out of his chair in a second. "What happened?"

"When she... when she pushed past me at the sauna," Hailie lied, her eyes tearing up on command. "She shoved me into the doorframe. I think it's fractured."

I hadn't touched her. I had crawled out of that sauna on my hands and knees, gasping for air.

Caleb turned to me. The look in his eyes was terrifying. It wasn't just anger anymore. It was pure hatred.

"You hurt her," he said, his voice dangerously low.

"I couldn't even stand!"

He walked over to my bed. He reached out, wrapped his fingers around the plastic tubing, and ripped the IV line out of my arm.

Blood spurted —a stark, violent red against the white sheets.

"You don't deserve comfort," he said. "Get up."

"Caleb, please."

"Get. Up."

He dragged me out of the hospital room, ignoring the nurses who stared but dared not intervene. He didn't sign discharge papers. He was the Underboss; he didn't have to.

He drove us to the Family Cemetery in silence.

It was raining. A cold, grey Chicago drizzle that felt like ice against my feverish skin.

He pulled me out of the car.

"Walk," he ordered.

We walked to the plot where his father was buried. The father who died in the fire he thought I tried to replicate.

"Kneel," he said.

"Caleb, the gravel..."

He kicked the back of my knees.

I collapsed instantly. The sharp stones tore through my thin hospital pants, digging into my skin like teeth.

"Apologize," he said. "Apologize to my father for disrespecting his memory. Apologize to the Family for being a traitor."

Hailie stood under a black umbrella, watching. She looked like a widow grieving a husband who wasn't dead yet.

"I'm sorry," I sobbed, the rain mixing with my tears until I couldn't tell the difference. "I'm sorry I loved you. I'm sorry I saved Fitzgerald. I'm sorry I didn't die in the coma."

"Louder," Caleb said.

I screamed my apologies to the wet earth until my voice gave out into a broken rasp.

He left me there.

He took Hailie and drove away, leaving me alone with the dead.

I knelt in the rain for an hour, shivering, bleeding.

Finally, I stood up.

My knees were raw meat.

I limped to the cemetery office. The caretaker, an old man who knew the Families, looked at me with pity.

"Miss Reid?" he asked. "Should I call your father?"

"No," I said, my voice hollow. "I need to buy a plot."

"For whom?"

I pulled a crumpled wad of cash from my pocket—emergency money I had stitched into my gown before the coma, the only thing Hailie hadn't found.

"For me," I said.

He hesitated.

"Do it," I said. "Somewhere far away from the Reids. In the pauper's section. I don't want them to find me."

I signed the papers with a shaking hand.

It was the first decision I had truly made in five years.

I realized then that I wasn't just buying a grave. I was buying my freedom.