Chapter 1

The funeral was a grand affair, fit for a hero. The entire precinct was there, their blue uniforms a somber sea under the gray sky. They called my husband, Michael, a hero, a decorated NYPD detective killed in the line of duty.

I stood beside the open casket, our three-year-old son, Leo, holding my hand. I was supposed to be the grieving widow. I was supposed to be shattered.

But I felt nothing.

I looked down at the man in the casket. He had Michael' s face, Michael' s hair, Michael' s build. But it wasn' t him. It was his identical twin, Mark.

And the man standing beside me, the one they all called "Mark," the one whose arm was draped over my mother-in-law's shoulder as he sobbed for his "dead brother," was my husband, Michael.

I knew because I had lived this day once before.

In my first life, the moment I realized Michael was alive, I felt a surge of pure, unadulterated joy. I pulled him aside, my hands shaking.

"Michael, it's you! You're alive!"

He shushed me, his eyes darting around nervously. Later that night, I overheard him talking to his mother in the kitchen.

"It's the only way, Mom," Michael said, his voice low and urgent. "Mark is dead. If I tell Ashley the truth, it will destroy her. She's too fragile."

Ashley. His high school sweetheart. Mark' s fiancée.

"But what about Chloe?" his mother asked, her voice laced with a fake concern that I was foolish enough to believe back then. "And little Leo?"

"Chloe is strong," Michael said, the words cutting through me. "She'll manage. She has to, for Leo's sake. I'll take Mark's place. I'll marry Ashley. It's what Mark would have wanted."

I burst into the room then, screaming the truth. I told them they couldn't do this.

Michael' s response was swift. He told everyone I was hysterical, that my grief had driven me mad. He had me committed to a psychiatric hospital.

From my barred window, I watched him marry Ashley. A week later, Ashley complained that Leo' s crying was giving her headaches. That night, Michael came to the hospital. He told me Leo had been having trouble sleeping. He' d given him some of his own sleeping medication. Just a little bit.

My son never woke up.

The loss of my child, my freedom, my entire life... it was too much. I used the bedsheet from my hospital cot and I hanged myself. My last thought was one of regret. Not for marrying Michael, but for not calling my old college friend, David, the one who had always looked at me with such kindness.

Then, I woke up.

I was standing in front of the casket again. Leo' s small hand was in mine. The air was thick with the scent of lilies and the sound of muffled sobs.

I was back.

I knew everything.

I knew the man in the casket was Mark. I knew the scar above his left eyebrow, the one he got from a childhood accident, was missing. Michael didn't have that scar.

I remembered the conversation in the kitchen, his mother's weak protest, his cold, calculated dismissal of me and our son.

"Chloe is strong."

He had said it with such confidence, so sure of my love, so certain I would endure any pain for him. He thought I would quietly raise his son while he lived a happy life with the woman he truly loved.

He was wrong.

This time, I would not be strong for him. I would not endure.

This time, I would play the part he assigned me. The grieving widow.

And I would burn his world to the ground.