Chapter 1

My husband, Jacob, swore to be my shield after my family's empire collapsed and I survived a fifteen-day kidnapping hell. I saw him as my savior, loving him with a desperation born from trauma.

Then his intern, Ema, entered our lives. When I became pregnant, he used her lies to call me "tainted" from my past and demanded I abort our child, the shock causing me to miscarry.

The final blow came during an explosion at our training grounds. He shoved me aside to shield Ema with his body.

"She's carrying my child," he said, his voice like ice. "You're expendable."

He left me to burn, promising a rescue team he never intended to send.

But he didn't know about the secret escape route, or my brother's plan. I faked my death, letting him find my "body" in the morgue.

He thought he had created a ghost. Now, he's about to find out you can't catch one when she's already free.

Chapter 1

Eloise Stephenson POV:

The world thought I was dead. They grieved, they speculated, they moved on. But I wasn't just dead; I was reborn, leaving a trail of ash and a legacy of vengeance.

My funeral was a spectacle. Jacob made sure of it. A lavish, heartbreaking affair that painted him as the grieving widower, a man broken by loss. They said he looked so lost, so utterly devastated, standing there in his bespoke suit, eyes shadowed by a grief that wasn't real. My brother, Hal, was there too, his face a mask of stone, knowing the truth. He watched Jacob, a quiet fury burning behind his eyes.

Later, in the quiet of his mansion, Jacob would hold the ornate urn I was supposedly in. He' d trace the cold metal with a finger, whispering my name into the empty air, then slide into bed with it beside him. The media called it devotion. I called it perversion. A twisted tribute to a ghost he thought he' d created. How ironic.

A year later, the scent of salt and freedom was in my hair. I swayed to the rhythm of a live band in a bustling European beach club, the kind of place where neon lights kissed ancient stone. My dress, barely there, caught the breeze, and a laugh bubbled up from deep inside me, light and genuine. A laugh I hadn' t known I still possessed.

A man, tanned and handsome, with eyes the color of the Aegean Sea, took my hand. His touch was warm, innocent. He pulled me closer, his lips brushing my ear as he whispered something in Italian I didn't quite catch but understood anyway. I leaned into him, my body fluid, unbound. This was my life now. Free. Alive.

Across the crowded dance floor, through the haze of colored lights and pulsating music, a pair of eyes locked onto me. They were Jacob' s eyes, even from this distance. Wide, disbelieving, sober. The music seemed to mute, the laughter around me faded into a distant hum. My heart, which had been so light, now throbbed with a slow, heavy beat, a familiar drum of dread and exhilarating triumph.

He just stood there, frozen. His drink, held loosely in his hand, seemed to tilt, but he didn't spill a drop. His face, once so sharp and arrogant, was now gaunt, etched with lines I didn't recognize. He looked like a man who'd been chasing shadows, haunted by his own cruelty.

Shock held him captive for what felt like an eternity, though it was probably only a few agonizing seconds. Then, a flicker. A slow, chilling smile spread across his face, not one of joy, but of a predator who had finally cornered its prey. It was a smile that promised retribution, a smile that said, You thought you could escape me?

He raised the glass to his lips, draining the amber liquid in one swift gulp. The glass hit the table with a sharp clink, a sound that cut through the music. Then, he lunged. A sudden, desperate surge through the crowd, like a shark spotting blood in the water.

But I was already gone. I melted into the throng of dancing bodies, a phantom of light and shadow, leaving no trace. He would search, I knew. He would rage. He would tear this club apart. But he wouldn't find me.

As I slipped into the cool night air, my phone buzzed in my hand. A message from an unknown number. My smile deepened, a cold, hard curve. I typed a single, final sentence. "You can' t catch a ghost, Jacob. Not when she' s already free." Then I blocked the number and tossed the phone into the churning waves below. Goodbye, Jacob. The game was over.

It was a tumultuous marriage, ours. A high-wire act of passion and destruction. Jacob Finley, the ruthless CEO who had seized control of my family's fallen empire, and me, Eloise Stephenson, the disgraced heiress. Our relationship had always been extreme, defined by a fierce intensity that bordered on madness.

He was the anchor in my storm, the protector who promised to shield me from a world that had already shattered me once. I believed him. I loved him with a desperation born of trauma, a love so consuming it bordered on obsession. I thought that kind of love, that kind of bond, could never be broken. I thought we were entwined, forever. I was wrong.

Then Ema Acosta walked in. She was a breath of fresh air, a whisper of innocence in the suffocating opulence of our lives. A shy intern, or so she seemed. Jacob, ever the rescuer, found solace in her apparent gentleness, a stark contrast to my "chaos." He saw her as a respite, a quiet harbor. I saw her as a threat.

He started spending more time with her. Late nights at the office, "mentoring" sessions that stretched into dawn. He' d come home smelling of her cheap perfume, a scent that clung to him like a cheap lie. I' d find anonymous photos in my inbox, blurry shots of their stolen kisses, their intertwined hands. Each image was a fresh stab into the already bleeding wound of my heart.

The old Eloise would have raged, thrown things, demanded answers. But something had shifted inside me. The endless betrayals had hardened me, polished the rough edges of my pain into a cutting cynicism. I watched him, I listened, and I planned. The fire in my eyes wasn't madness anymore. It was calculation.