Chapter 1

For three years, I lived as a ghost in my own home.

My husband, Congressman Ethan Lester, had a car accident. A minor one, barely a scratch on the fender, but it was enough. He woke up claiming amnesia, his memory wiped clean of the last five years. Wiped clean of me, Maria Chavez, his wife. Wiped clean of our marriage.

He said he only remembered his life before me.

And that life included Sabrina Duffy, his high school sweetheart.

So, for three years, I was demoted from his brilliant political strategist and partner to a glorified caregiver. I watched Sabrina move into our Georgetown house, sleep in our bed, and stand by his side at galas. I became the "unstable, clinging woman" the press pitied and his staff ignored.

The breaking point wasn't my own humiliation. It was our son, Leo.

He got sick. A rare infection, the doctors said, but treatable with the right specialist, the right connections. Connections a powerful congressman like Ethan had.

I cornered him in the hallway outside his home office, the one Sabrina had redecorated.

"Ethan, please. Leo needs a specialist at Johns Hopkins. Your office just needs to make one call. They'll see him tomorrow."

He looked at me with that practiced, vacant expression. He adjusted his tie, a gift from Sabrina.

"I'm sorry, who are you again?"

My voice broke. "I'm Maria. Your wife. That's our son, Leo, in the upstairs bedroom. He's very sick. He needs his father."

He took a step back, a flicker of annoyance in his eyes. He was late for a fundraiser.

"I don't have a son," he said, his voice cold and clear. "I don't know you."

That night, Leo's fever spiked. We rushed him to the emergency room. A junior reporter, tipped off by Ethan's staff, ambushed him as he was leaving a five-star restaurant with Sabrina. They shoved a microphone in his face.

"Congressman, a woman claiming to be your wife says your son is critically ill. Do you have any comment?"

I saw the clip later, on the small TV in the hospital waiting room. Ethan looked directly into the camera, a mask of sad confusion on his handsome face.

"Who is she? I don't know this woman. That's not my son."

Leo died two days later.

The day of the funeral, a small, private affair I arranged, Ethan was on a morning news show. The host asked him about the "tragic situation with the child."

Ethan shook his head, his voice filled with false sympathy. "It's a terrible tragedy. Just some kid. My heart goes out to the mother, whoever she is."

That night, I was packing Leo's things, my body numb, my mind a hollow echo chamber of pain. I walked past Ethan's study. The door was ajar. He was on the phone, his voice low and triumphant, nothing like the confused amnesiac he played for the world.

"It was a worthwhile sacrifice," he said to the person on the other end. I knew it was Sabrina. "Leo's death? It cements my image. The tragic, sympathetic figure. The voters will eat it up. The VP endorsement is a lock now."

I leaned against the wall, my breath caught in my throat.

"Don't worry," he continued, a chuckle in his voice. "After I win the Senate seat, I'll have a miraculous recovery. I'll remember everything. I'll remember her. She'll be so overjoyed to have her husband back, she won't even care about the rest. She'll forgive anything."

The world tilted. The floor fell away.

He knew. He knew the whole time. He let our son die. For a Senate seat.

In that moment, the grief in my heart didn't just break, it crystallized into something hard and sharp. He wasn't just a man I didn't love anymore. He was a monster. And I was going to destroy him.