My Dying Heart, His Cruel Vows

My fifth wedding anniversary gift was a call from my husband's publicist. He told me to come down to the 5th Precinct because there was a "situation." With my billionaire husband, Elijah, there was always a situation.

When I got there, I saw a young influencer accusing him of kidnapping. But the real shock wasn't the accusation. It was her face-she looked exactly like me, five years younger.

Elijah arrived, but instead of being angry, he showered her with affection, calling her "Kiley" and gifting her a diamond necklace. He treated the kidnapping claim like a lover's quarrel.

When his eyes finally met mine, the warmth vanished, replaced by ice. He looked at me like I was a piece of furniture. A cop muttered to his partner, "That's Mrs. Peters. The real one. Or, well, the first one."

He hates me. He blames me for his sister's death five years ago, believing I ran away and left her to die. He doesn't know I collapsed while running for help. He doesn't know about my terminal heart condition.

So he tortures me with my living replica, slowly killing the woman he vowed to love "till death do us part." The irony is, he doesn't have to try so hard. My doctor just told me I only have a few weeks left to live.

Chapter 1

Jamie POV:

My fifth wedding anniversary gift wasn't jewelry. It was a phone call from my husband's publicist.

The sterile, official tone on the other end of the line was a stark contrast to the hollow silence of the mansion I called home. "Mrs. Peters? This is Mark from Elijah's team. We have a bit of a situation. We need you to come down to the 5th Precinct."

A situation. With Elijah, there was always a "situation."

"What happened?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper. My hand instinctively went to my chest, a familiar tightness beginning to bloom there, a cruel reminder of the clock ticking inside me.

"It's... better if you see for yourself, ma'am. It's a media frenzy."

The line went dead.

I didn't waste a second. I threw on a simple coat over my dress, my hands trembling as I fumbled with the buttons. The drive downtown was a blur of traffic lights and the blare of horns, each sound grating on my frayed nerves.

The 5th Precinct was exactly the circus Mark had described. Reporters swarmed the entrance like vultures, their cameras flashing, microphones thrust forward at anyone who looked even vaguely official. I slipped in through a side entrance a security guard held open for me, my heart pounding a frantic, unhealthy rhythm against my ribs.

The main hall was chaotic. And in the center of it all, I saw her.

She was young, maybe twenty, with the kind of fresh, vibrant beauty that seemed to radiate under the harsh fluorescent lights. She was surrounded by a small crowd of officers, her face a mask of theatrical distress. But it wasn't her youth or her drama that made the air leave my lungs.

It was her face.

She looked just like me. A younger, brighter, unbroken version of the woman I used to be five years ago.

"He kidnapped me!" she wailed, her voice carrying across the precinct. "The billionaire, Elijah Peters! He locked me in his penthouse for a week! It was a week of... of intense, passionate... torment!"

Her words were accusatory, but her tone was something else entirely. It was laced with a spoiled, pouting coyness, a thinly veiled boast. She wasn't a victim; she was an actress on a stage of her own making, and this precinct was her opening night.

A veteran cop with a weary face leaned against a desk, sipping coffee from a paper cup, utterly unfazed. He'd seen this show a thousand times.

"Another one?" he muttered to his partner, a fresh-faced rookie whose eyes were wide with indignation.

"Sir, shouldn't we be taking this seriously?" the rookie asked, his hand hovering near his notepad. "She's accusing one of the most powerful men in the city of kidnapping!"

The veteran cop let out a short, humorless laugh. "Kid, that's not a kidnapping. That's what rich people call a 'whirlwind romance.' Elijah Peters could buy this whole city block with the change in his pocket. You think he needs to kidnap a girl?"

The rookie frowned, confused. "But... isn't he married?"

The veteran cop's eyes flickered past the girl and, for a brief, humiliating moment, landed on me, standing in the shadows by the wall. A flicker of pity, or maybe just awkwardness, crossed his face. "Yeah. He is."

Just then, the main doors burst open. The sea of reporters outside surged, but they were held back by a wall of black-suited security. Elijah Peters strode through the parting crowd like a king entering his court.

He was as breathtakingly handsome as the day I first met him, his custom-tailored suit clinging to his powerful frame, his chiseled face cold and impassive. His eyes, the color of a stormy sea, swept the room with an icy disinterest that made everyone instinctively shrink back.

Then his gaze landed on the young influencer, Kiley Smith.

And the ice melted.

In an instant, the cold billionaire was gone, replaced by a man consumed by a tender, all-encompassing affection. The change was so swift, so complete, it was like watching a mask drop. A mask he only ever wore for me now.

"Kiley," he murmured, his voice a low, intimate rumble that sent a shiver of memory down my spine. He closed the distance between them in three long strides, cupping her face in his hands as if she were the most precious thing in the world. "Are you alright? Did they scare you?"

Kiley's lower lip trembled. "Elijah," she sobbed, throwing her arms around his neck. "You're terrible! You locked me up and wouldn't let me leave. My fans were all worried sick about me!"

"I know, I'm sorry," he whispered, his lips brushing her hair. He pulled back slightly, his thumb stroking her cheek. "But I missed you so much. Was I really that bad?" His voice was a playful, teasing caress.

"You were awful!" she pouted, though her eyes shone with triumph.

He chuckled, a low, warm sound that I hadn't heard directed at me in five years. "Then I'll have to make it up to you." He reached into his pocket and produced a small, velvet box. Inside was a breathtaking diamond necklace, the centerpiece a sapphire that perfectly matched his eyes.

Kiley gasped. "Oh, Elijah... you know me so well."

"I know everything about you," he said, his voice dropping again, thick with meaning. He fastened the necklace around her neck, his fingers lingering on her skin.

She feigned a pout. "I'm still mad."

"Then I'll just have to turn myself in," he said, holding his wrists out in mock surrender. "Lock me up, officer. I'm guilty of loving this woman too much."

Kiley finally broke into a giggle, her fake anger melting away. "You're impossible!" She threw her arms around him again, burying her face in his chest. "I love you, Elijah."

He held her tightly, stroking her back. "Let's go home," he murmured.

As they turned to leave, his eyes, still soft from gazing at her, swept across the room and snagged on mine.

The tenderness vanished. The ice returned, colder and harder than before. It was as if he' d looked at a piece of furniture, something unpleasant and out of place.

"Jamie," he said, his voice flat and devoid of any emotion. "What are you doing here?"

Before I could answer, Kiley spoke, her voice dripping with condescending sweetness. "Oh, Elijah, don't be cross. Your PR team called her. You know, to help with the... mess." She waved a dismissive hand, as if I were a janitor called to clean up a spill.

Elijah didn't even look at me again. His focus was entirely on Kiley, his new love, my living replica.

The veteran cop from before muttered to the rookie, his voice low but audible in the sudden quiet. "That's Mrs. Peters. The real one. Or, well, the first one."

My heart, already a fragile, failing organ, felt like it was being squeezed by an icy fist.

The first one. A wife in name only. A ghost haunting the halls of my own marriage.

It wasn't always like this.

I closed my eyes, and for a second, the precinct faded away, replaced by the memory of a sun-drenched garden. I was a scholarship student, quiet and out of my depth at a lavish party, and Corine Peters, Elijah's vivacious younger sister and my best friend, was trying to coax me out of my shell.

Elijah had been there, a remote, intimidating figure, older and already a legend in the tech world. He seemed to exist on a different plane, and I was terrified of him.

But then, he' d turned his attention to me. He' d brought me a glass of lemonade because he noticed I wasn't drinking. He' d talked to me about classic literature, a passion we discovered we shared. His smiles, reserved for everyone else, were warm and frequent for me.

"My brother's got it bad," Corine had whispered to me later, giggling. "I've never seen him look at anyone like that."

His courtship was a whirlwind of breathtaking romance. He pursued me with a gentle intensity that left me breathless. He made me feel like the only woman in the world. Our wedding was a fairy tale, broadcast across the globe.

At the altar, he'd taken my hands, his stormy eyes filled with a devotion that felt eternal. "I, Elijah Peters, take you, Jamie Leblanc, to be my wife," he'd vowed, his voice thick with emotion. "To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part."

I believed him. I believed every single word.

Our forever lasted less than a year.

The home invasion was a blur of violence and terror. Two masked men. Corine and I were alone. They were brutal. Corine, brave, beautiful Corine, saw a chance. She shoved me toward a low window. "Go, Jamie! Get help! Run!"

I ran. I ran for my life, for her life. But as my feet pounded the pavement, a crushing pain exploded in my chest. The world tilted, went black, and I collapsed. They found me hours later, unconscious on the side of the road.

By then, Corine was dead.

I woke up in a hospital to two sentences that destroyed my world.

"Corine didn't make it."

And from a cardiologist with a grim face, "I'm sorry, Ms. Leblanc... you have hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. It's terminal. At best, you have a few years."

My world shattered. But my own grief was eclipsed by Elijah's. His sorrow was a bottomless abyss that quickly curdled into a corrosive, all-consuming hatred.

He found me in my hospital bed, his eyes hollowed out by pain and rage. "Why?" he rasped, his voice a raw wound. "Why did you run away? Why did you leave her there to die?"

I opened my mouth to tell him. To tell him about the pain, about collapsing, about the faulty, traitorous heart in my chest that had failed me, that had failed her.

But looking at his ravaged face, the words died in my throat. What good would it do? Would it bring Corine back? No. It would only add another layer of pain to his already unbearable grief-the knowledge that the woman he loved was also dying.

So I stayed silent. I let him believe the worst. I let him believe I was a coward who had abandoned my best friend to save myself. My silence was my penance.

His love, once my sun, became a black hole of hate. He didn't divorce me. That would have been too kind. Instead, he married me, just as he'd promised, "till death do us part."

And then he began his slow, methodical torture.

He found Kiley Smith, a girl who looked so much like the Jamie he once loved. He showered her with all the affection, all the tenderness, all the public declarations he had once given me. He made her my replacement, a living, breathing effigy of his lost love, and forced me to watch.

Every gentle touch he gave her was a slap to my face. Every loving word a dagger to my heart. He was performing our love story with another actress, and I was the sole, captive audience. He was killing me slowly, piece by piece.

He didn't know the irony. I was already dying.

My doctor had called last week. "A few weeks, Jamie," he'd said, his voice gentle. "Maybe a month, if you're lucky."

I felt a strange sense of peace. The end was near. Soon, I would see Corine again. I could finally tell her I was sorry.