Chapter 2

I smiled at Ethan, a weak, tremulous smile I hoped looked genuine. "Thank you for being here, Ethan."

He stroked my cheek. "Always, my love."

Liar. The word screamed in my mind, but my face remained a mask of weary affection. I had to keep him unsuspecting. My escape depended on it.

The private investigator I' d secretly hired with the last of my grandmother' s inheritance delivered his report two days later. A plain brown envelope, slipped to me by a sympathetic nurse Ethan hadn't bribed.

Chloe Sanders was alive.

Not just alive, but thriving. The photos showed her laughing, sun-kissed, on a beach in Santorini with a handsome, dark-haired man. The date stamp on one photo was from three years ago, just weeks after her supposed "suicide."

The report was concise. Chloe had faked her death to escape her engagement to Ethan.

She' d been terrified of the Knight family' s reaction, of Ethan' s possessiveness, if she' d simply broken it off.

She' d chosen a dramatic exit to elope with her true love, a struggling musician her family and the Knights would never have approved of.

My world, already shattered, fractured into a million more pieces.

All of it – the lost babies, the orchestrated accidents, the impending theft of my kidney and womb – all for a woman who hadn't died, who hadn' t suffered because of me.

My torment, my grief, Ethan' s monstrous revenge, it was all built on a lie. A selfish, cowardly lie by Chloe Sanders.

A hysterical laugh bubbled in my chest, a sound so alien I barely recognized it. It was absurd. My life, destroyed for a ghost who was happily sunbathing in Greece.

Ethan' s "final blow" at the engagement gala. He wanted to humiliate me. I would give him a show he' d never forget. My own grand finale.

He came into my hospital room, laden with gifts. Flowers that filled the sterile space with a cloying sweetness. Jewelry boxes containing diamonds that glittered coldly. "For my brave Elara," he cooed, oblivious.

The gifts felt like stones, heavy and meaningless. I managed a faint, "They're beautiful, Ethan."

He tried to kiss me, but I turned my head slightly, a grimace of pain my excuse. "Still sore," I murmured. His lips brushed my cheek, and I fought the urge to recoil.

Later, he spoon-fed me soup, his brow furrowed with feigned concern. "You need to get your strength back, darling."

"Ethan," I said, my voice carefully neutral, "if... if I can't have children again... after all this... what will we do?" I needed to see his face, to hear his lies one more time.

He smiled, a brilliant, reassuring smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Don't you worry about that, Elara. We'll have a whole brood of children. We can adopt, we can try other ways. We' ll have our family."

He didn' t know I knew about the planned hysterectomy. The casual cruelty of his reassurance was a fresh stab of pain. He was promising a future he was actively working to destroy.

"Ethan," I said, my voice soft, almost a plea. "Before the gala... can we visit the children' s rosebush again? Just once more?" The one he'd planted in the hospital garden. It was a lie, but it was a landmark in my mental map of his deceit.

He looked pleased. "Of course, my love. Anything for you."

That night, I couldn' t sleep. I heard Ethan on the phone in the adjoining suite, his voice low, but the walls were thin.

"Yes, the ashes are scattered. No, not in any sentimental place. A landfill upstate. Good riddance."

He paused, listening.

"The rosebush? Just some generic planting the hospital did. She thinks it's for them. Pathetic, isn't it?"

My children. Their non-existent ashes. Scattered in a landfill. The memorial, a lie upon a lie.

The last vestiges of any doubt, any misplaced hope that there was a shred of humanity left in him, died.