Choosing The Imposter Over His Dying Wife

My fiancée sacrificed five years of her life to save my family, falling into a deep coma.

But when she finally woke up, I didn't greet her with love. I greeted her with pure hatred.

Convinced by my mistress, Hailie, that Ericka was a traitor faking her illness for sympathy, I became her tormentor.

When she told me she had stage four cancer, I laughed and accused her of manipulation.

I locked her in a freezing safe house.

I forced her into a sauna until her skin blistered, then doused her failing lungs with ice water.

I dragged her out of the hospital to kneel in the rain until she collapsed.

Even when she fell from a balcony, broken and bleeding, I let my men beat her.

I watched her waste away, believing every one of Hailie's lies over Ericka's desperate truths.

It wasn't until I saw her cold, blue body on the rocks below the cliffs that the truth finally shattered me.

The autopsy confirmed the cancer I mocked was real.

A hidden recording revealed Hailie had framed her all along, admitting she treated me like a dog on a leash.

I realized I had tortured the woman who saved my life until she bought her own grave just to escape me.

I burned Hailie alive at Ericka's funeral, but death was too easy a punishment.

I lived in agony, a scarred monster praying for the end.

But when I finally closed my eyes in the fire, I didn't die.

I heard a beep.

I opened my eyes, and the date on my phone was three years ago.

The day Ericka woke up.

Chapter 1

Ericka POV

I sacrificed five years of my life to the void to save the heir of the Chicago Outfit. But when I finally clawed my way back to the surface, I wasn't greeted as a savior.

I was looked at like a mistake that had the audacity to survive.

The hospital room smelled of antiseptic and expensive lilies-the scent of a funeral, not a recovery.

My body felt heavy, anchored by lead instead of blood.

I tried to speak, but my throat was lined with sandpaper.

"She's awake," a voice said.

It wasn't my mother.

It wasn't my fiancé, Caleb.

It was a woman I didn't recognize.

My vision blurred, then sharpened into cruel focus.

Standing at the foot of my bed was a petite brunette with doe eyes and a trembling lip, clutching my mother's hand.

My mother, Beverley Reid, the Matriarch of the Outfit, looked at me.

There were no tears of joy.

There was only a tight, inconvenienced line where her smile should have been.

"Ericka," my father, Franklin, said from the corner. His voice was the same gravelly baritone that commanded armies of soldiers, but it was stripped of all warmth.

"You're back."

It sounded like an accusation.

I looked around the room, desperate for a familiar anchor.

Then I saw him.

Caleb Skinner.

The Underboss. The man who had promised to burn the world down if anyone touched a hair on my head.

He was leaning against the doorframe, his suit cut sharp enough to bleed on.

His dark eyes were cold. Dead.

He wasn't looking at me with love. He was looking at me like I was a liability he had forgotten to liquidate.

"Caleb," I rasped.

He didn't move.

The brunette squeezed my mother's hand. "I'm so glad you're okay, Ericka. We were all so worried. Especially Fitzgerald."

Fitzgerald. My brother. The one whose leukemia I had cured with my bone marrow-the very procedure that had sent my body into shock and trapped me in the dark for half a decade.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"I'm Hailie," she said softly. "I've been... helping the family while you were away."

*Helping.*

I looked at Caleb again.

Hailie let go of my mother and walked over to him. She placed a hand on his bicep. A possessive, familiar touch.

Caleb didn't shake it off.

My heart hammered against my ribs, a painful, frantic rhythm that threatened to crack bone.

"Where is my brother?" I asked.

"He's busy," my father said. "Running the family. Something you wouldn't understand anymore."

The air in the room shifted. It became suffocating.

I tried to sit up, but my muscles had atrophied into useless strings.

"I need to go home," I said.

"You aren't going to the Estate," Caleb said.

His voice was a low rumble that used to make me feel safe. Now, it made my skin crawl.

"What?"

"You're unstable," Hailie chimed in, her voice dripping with fake concern. "The doctors said the coma might have... affected your mind. We can't risk the Family's security."

"My mind is fine," I snapped.

"See?" Hailie flinched, burying her face in Caleb's shoulder. "She's aggressive."

Caleb's jaw tightened. He looked at me with pure disgust.

"You're going to the safe house in the Marsh," Caleb said. "Until you learn your place."

"My place is here. My place is with you."

"That place was taken," he said, looking down at Hailie. "By someone who actually puts this Family first."

*

I was discharged three days later.

I wasn't taken home.

I was put in the back of an armored SUV.

Hailie sat in the front seat with Caleb.

I watched them through the rearview mirror. She whispered something in his ear, and his hand rested on her thigh.

A scream built in my throat, but I swallowed it down. It tasted like bile and betrayal.

Suddenly, the car swerved.

Hailie screamed.

"She grabbed the wheel!" Hailie shrieked, pointing back at me through the partition gap. "Ericka tried to crash us!"

I was handcuffed to the door handle. I hadn't moved.

"I didn't touch anything!" I yelled.

Caleb slammed on the brakes.

The SUV skidded to a halt on the gravel shoulder.

He got out. He ripped my door open.

He didn't ask for an explanation.

He dragged me out by the hospital gown.

The gravel bit into my bare feet.

"You want to kill us?" he growled, shoving me against the hood of the car. "After everything Hailie has done to keep your memory alive?"

"She's lying, Caleb! Look at the handcuffs!"

He didn't look. He didn't care.

"You broke Omertà when you were awake before," he hissed, repeating a lie I knew Hailie must have planted. "And now you try to kill the future Don's right hand?"

He leaned in, his face inches from mine. I could smell his cologne-sandalwood and gunpowder. The scent of the man I loved; the scent of the man who was destroying me.

"You aren't a Princess anymore, Ericka. You're a prisoner."

He threw me back into the car.

We drove in silence to the Marsh.

He locked me in a house that smelled of mold and neglect.

"Three years," he said through the heavy oak door. "You stay here until I say you're fixed."

I slid down the door, my knees hitting the floor.

I didn't cry.

I realized then that the Ericka Reid who went to sleep five years ago was dead.

And the men who killed her were the ones she died to save.