Chapter 1

My husband’s high school sweetheart got behind the wheel drunk and left me for dead.

I begged my husband to get me to a hospital.

He’s one of the top lawyers in the state.

But instead of helping me, he covered up the evidence to protect her.

As he comforted his sweetheart, he shot me a look of pure disgust and hissed, “Can you stop the act? You’re scaring her!”

Later, staring at my lifeless body, my husband finally lost his mind.

……

After I died, my soul floated out of my body and drifted over to my husband, Ethan.

He was stroking Sarah’s hair as she lay in her hospital bed, his voice uncharacteristically soft.

“Don’t be scared,” he murmured. “I’ll handle everything.”

His eyes were filled with a devotion I’d never seen before.

In all our years of marriage, he’d always been so cold to me.

His voice, when he spoke to me, was always laced with impatience.

I’d never witnessed this kind of tenderness from him.

I told myself I was used to it, that I didn’t care, but that wasn’t true.

The bitter ache in my chest was becoming impossible to ignore.

His phone rang, jarring the quiet room.

He answered the call from the police.

“The crash had nothing to do with Sarah,” he said, his tone firm and absolute.

“It was Chloe who was being reckless, she deliberately crashed into Sarah’s car.”

He glanced at Sarah, who was now crying dramatically, and squeezed her hand, his face a mask of guilt.

As a nationally recognized attorney, he had won countless cases.

Even now, he was perfectly calm, using his expert legal knowledge to shift all the blame away from Sarah.

After hanging up, he seemed utterly convinced that I had maliciously tried to hurt Sarah out of some jealous fit.

His face was a mixture of frustration and self-reproach.

Just then, his phone rang again.

“Ethan, it’s Chloe’s mom. Her injuries are really bad. The doctors say she might not make it much longer. Can you please come?”

The man who had just been cooing at Sarah suddenly turned venomous.

“If she’s going to die, she should just get it over with,” he spat into the phone.

“She put Sarah in the hospital, and I haven’t even dealt with her for that yet. Now she’s calling me to play the victim? How disgusting.”

My mom’s voice trembled on the other end.

“The doctor said she could go at any moment, Ethan. This might be your last chance to see her.”

Hearing this, Sarah grabbed Ethan’s arm and started sobbing quietly.

Seeing her so frightened, Ethan’s face contorted with rage as he yelled into the phone.

“Chloe, have you not had enough? Are you ever going to stop this? You’re scaring Sarah!”

“If you keep this up, I swear you won’t like what happens next!”

Then he hung up.

After our car crash, Ethan had been furious with me.

He was convinced that because he’d asked for a divorce, I had tried to kill Sarah in a desperate, crazy act of revenge.

Sarah coughed twice, her voice a weak whisper.

“I’m so scared, Ethan. What if something really happens to Chloe? What would I do?”

Ethan’s gaze turned to ice.

“She’s just putting on a show for me,” he said coldly.

“Pulling these kinds of stunts at a time like this… she’s gone too far.”

In the last few minutes before I faded completely, my chest felt like it was being crushed by a thousand-pound weight.

The despair was suffocating.

Memories of my life with Ethan flashed before my eyes.

Two final tears escaped and rolled down my spectral cheeks.

I never thought the man I cared about until my very last breath would be wishing me dead for another woman.

After all these years, he didn't have a single ounce of trust in me.

He really thought I was that monstrous.