Chapter 1

The man who destroyed my life stood over my broken body, but he didn't recognize me. My husband, Carter, was just the lawyer handling the "Jane Doe" found at his client's construction site, worried only about legal complications.

As a ghost, I watched him dismiss every part of me. The silver locket I' d clutched in my hand?

"Just another piece of evidence," he said flatly.

The faded tattoo on my wrist? "An irrelevant detail." He called me a selfish liar when my severe heart condition kept me from donating bone marrow to his manipulative fiancée, Cecelia. He threw me out of his car and left me on a street corner, where her thugs found me.

He was consumed with finding justice for a stranger, blind to the fact that he was the one who had sentenced his own wife to death.

I thought he'd never know. But then, the police showed him security footage from a community center. He saw my face, alive and smiling. And in that instant, the man who refused to see me in life was forced to see me in death.

Chapter 1

Ava Bell POV:

The man who destroyed my life stood over my broken body, his expensive suit pristine, his eyes scanning the scene not for me, but for legal complications. It was Carter, my husband, and I was dead.

The stench of stale concrete dust and something far worse, something metallic and sweet, filled the air in the unfinished luxury condo. The morning light, filtered through a grimy window, cast long, distorted shadows across the cold, hard floor. My vision, no longer bound by flesh, saw it all with chilling clarity.

A construction worker, a young man with fear etched deep into his face, knelt a few feet away, vomiting onto a pile of sawdust. He was the one who found me. His trembling hands had fumbled for his phone, his voice a choked gasp as he called for help.

Sirens wailed in the distance, growing louder, closer. They were coming for me. They were coming for the mess I had become.

Uniformed officers burst into the cavernous space, their boots crunching on debris. Their faces were grim, their movements precise, trained. One of them, a stout woman with kind eyes, took in the scene. She barked orders, her voice firm despite the solemnity of the moment.

"Secure the perimeter! No one touches anything until forensics arrives."

Then, through the chaos, a familiar figure strode in. His presence commanded attention, even here, in this place of death. Carter Rios.

His firm, Rios & Associates, represented the developer of this building. He was here to manage the fallout, protect his client's interests. He was always good at that. Protecting interests. Just never mine.

He moved with an air of detached professionalism, his gaze sweeping over the construction site, analyzing the structural integrity, the potential liabilities. His eyes, dark and sharp, finally fell upon me.

I lay there, a crumpled heap, a stark contrast to the gleaming, aspirational promises of the unfinished luxury. My body was a canvas of brutality, painted with bruises and gashes. My clothes, what was left of them, were torn and stained.

The cold, hard floor seemed to suck the warmth from me, even in death. My limbs were twisted at unnatural angles, a macabre sculpture of pain. It was a violent end, a testament to someone's rage.

The smell of my own cooling blood, mixed with the acrid scent of fear and decaying matter, was overwhelming. It was a smell I would carry with me, a phantom sensation in my non-existent lungs.

Carter paused, a flicker of something in his eyes-not recognition, not grief, but a brief, unsettling calculation. He took a shallow breath, then exhaled slowly, regaining his composure. He was a master of his emotions, or rather, their suppression.

He knelt beside my body, his expensive trousers brushing against the concrete. His gloved hands, usually so precise with legal documents, moved with a strange, hesitant grace. He began his preliminary inspection, not as a husband, but as a lawyer, an expert.

I watched him, a ghost of a whisper in the echoing space. He was so close. Close enough to see the small, silver locket clutched in my lifeless hand. The one I had made for him.

It was a clumsy, handcrafted thing, hammered from scrap silver I'd found in an old art studio. Inside, I' d etched a tiny, almost invisible, heart. It was a symbol of my naive, unwavering love. A love he had mocked.

I remembered the day I gave it to him, my heart pounding with hope. He'd looked at it, his lip curling just slightly. "A locket, Ava? From a craft store? Really?" He tossed it onto the coffee table, a dismissive gesture that had sliced through me like a blade.

Now, it was clutched tight, a final act of desperate clinging. I knew he wouldn't recognize it. He never truly saw me.

One of the crime scene investigators, a young woman with a notepad, leaned closer. "Mr. Rios, do you recognize this?" she asked, pointing to the locket. Her voice was gentle, expecting a flicker of human connection.

Carter glanced down, his expression unreadable. He straightened up, his movements stiff. "No," he said, his voice flat. "Just another piece of evidence."

He turned away, the locket now marked for collection, just another object in a string of meaningless debris.