Chapter 1

The first thing I felt was a single tear tracing a path down my temple.

It was a strange, foreign sensation. For ten years, my body had been a prison, a vessel for a consciousness trapped in a silent, black ocean. I couldn't move. I couldn't speak. I could only exist.

But this tear was mine. It was proof.

David Chen, my fiancé, stood over my bed. His face, once the center of my world, was a mask of shock.

He saw the tear.

"Sarah?" he whispered, his voice trembling.

Behind him, my sister Emily shifted uncomfortably. She wore a dress made of a shimmering, iridescent fabric I didn't recognize. Her success was painted on her face, sharp and predatory.

"It's just a reflex, David," she said quickly, her tone dismissive. "The doctors said this could happen."

David wasn't listening. He stared at me, his eyes wide with a dawning horror, or perhaps, guilt. He reached out, his hand shaking, and gently wiped the tear from my skin. His touch felt like a brand.

"Sarah," he said again, his voice cracking. He leaned closer, his confession a poison whispered into my ear. "If it weren't for that accident... Emily would have been my fiancée. We wronged her."

The words didn't shock me. In the endless darkness of my coma, I had heard them. I had heard everything. I had felt everything.

I had felt the repeated injections, the strange chemicals Emily tested on my skin for her "revolutionary" fabrics. Dyes that burned, cosmetics that left my face scarred and tight. I was her human mannequin, a silent canvas for her ambition. My body, once something I took pride in, was now a roadmap of her cruelty, covered in faint scars and discolored patches.

I had heard David agree to it all. I had heard him authorize the transfer of my fortune, the wealth I had built with my own two hands as an architect, to fund Emily's reckless ventures. He had stood by, my loving fiancé, and watched as my sister dismantled my life and my body.

He had declared his love for Emily at her biggest fashion show, the one that made her a star. He held her hand on a stage lit by my money and called her his true love, while I lay in a managed care facility, a footnote in my own story.

Now, seeing that flicker of consciousness in my eyes, he thought he could fix it.

"Just one more treatment, Sarah," he pleaded, his voice thick with false sincerity. "Emily is so close to a major breakthrough. This last one... it's for her. After this, I promise, I'll love you. I'll take care of you forever."

His belated affection was worthless. His promises were ash in my mouth.

Another tear escaped, but this one wasn't for sorrow. It was for rage. A cold, hard fury that had been simmering for a decade.

It was the last tear I would ever shed for him.

That night, a fire started in Emily Miller's celebrated design studio. It wasn't an accident. It was a message.

The brilliant, consuming blaze lit up the night sky, a signal that Sarah Miller was back.

And his love was the last thing I wanted.