Chapter 1

"Ava, are you sure about this?"

The question came from Director Miles, a stern man with kind eyes who had worked with Dr. Eleanor Vance for decades. We stood in a sterile, white room, the kind of place where secrets were born and buried.

"Taking over the project means your old life is over," he continued, his voice low. "Your identity, your home, everything you know... gone. You'll become a ghost."

I looked at the file on the table between us, its cover stamped TOP SECRET. This was my mentor' s life' s work. The sustainable energy initiative she poured her soul into. The work that might have killed her.

"Dr. Vance dedicated her life to this," I said, my voice steadier than I felt. "It was everything to her. It's my duty to see it through."

It was more than duty. It was a promise I made to her in the quiet moments, a shared dream of a better world. And it was the only thing that made sense after her death.

Director Miles sighed, a heavy, tired sound. "Your husband, Ethan... Dr. Vance's son. He won't understand."

"He doesn't have to," I said, a cold knot forming in my stomach. "This is bigger than us."

He saw the resolve in my eyes. "Eleanor was right about you. She said you had a fire in you that could change the world." He pushed the file toward me. "Go home. You have seven days to put your affairs in order. Tell no one where you are going. After that, Ava Riley ceases to exist."

I took the file. Its weight felt immense.

Walking out of the building, the city air felt foreign. My mind wasn't on the future; it was stuck on a memory from three weeks ago.

The hospital room. The rhythmic, relentless beeping of machines keeping Eleanor alive. She was a shell of the brilliant woman I knew, her body ravaged by a rare, aggressive illness that the doctors couldn't explain. Her eyes, once so sharp and full of life, were clouded with pain.

She had been working on the project's final, critical phase when she collapsed. The illness came on fast, too fast. I knew, with a scientist's chilling certainty, that it wasn't natural. It was a targeted attack, a way to stop her work.

Her work was the key to energy independence, a breakthrough that would destabilize global powers. Powerful people wanted it stopped. They couldn't get the data, so they eliminated the source.

That last night, she had a moment of clarity. Her fingers, frail and cold, squeezed mine. "Protect it, Ava," she whispered, her voice a dry rasp. "Don't... let them win. Don't... let me suffer."

She had a DNR, a Do Not Resuscitate order, hidden away. But the project was too sensitive. A public record of her death, an autopsy, official inquiries... they would expose everything. We couldn't risk it. The project had to remain a ghost, and so did she.

So I made the hardest decision of my life.

I leaned over and kissed her forehead. "I'll finish it, Eleanor. I promise."

Then, with my heart shattering into a million pieces, I reached for the plug on her life support machine. My hand trembled, but my resolve was firm. It was an act of mercy. It was an act of protection.

Just as my fingers closed around the plastic, the door flew open.

"Ava! What the hell are you doing?"

Ethan stood there, his face a mask of horror and disbelief. He saw my hand on the plug. He saw his mother, still and silent. He saw a murderer.

"Ethan, it's not what it looks like," I started, but the words died in my throat. How could I explain a secret that wasn't mine to tell?

Chloe Hayes, his childhood friend, was right behind him. She rushed to his side, her eyes wide with fake shock. "Oh my God, Ethan! She's... she's killing your mother!"

Her words were the poison that sealed my fate.

"Get away from her!" Ethan screamed, shoving me so hard I stumbled back, hitting the wall. The sound of my head cracking against the plaster was sharp and loud.

He lunged for the machine, trying to plug it back in, but it was too late. The long, flat tone of the heart monitor filled the silence.

His grief turned to a white-hot rage. He spun around, his eyes burning with a hatred I had never seen before.

"You killed her," he whispered, his voice shaking. "You killed my mother."

He slapped me. The force of it snapped my head to the side, my cheek stinging, my ear ringing.

"You bitch," he snarled.

Chloe wrapped her arms around him, burying her face in his chest, sobbing. "Ethan, I'm so sorry. I can't believe she would do this. After everything your mother did for her."

That was the beginning of the end. In the days that followed, Ethan transformed. The loving, gentle man I married was gone, replaced by a monster fueled by grief and Chloe' s lies.

He moved into the guest room. He stopped speaking to me, except to hurl insults.

"Murderer."

"I wish I'd never met you."

He started drinking heavily, coming home late, smelling of cheap perfume and whiskey. Chloe was always with him, a constant, cloying presence in our home.

I remembered the day we bought this house. Ethan had carried me over the threshold, laughing. "To our forever, Ava," he'd said, kissing me deeply. Now, that memory felt like a story about two other people.

He started draining our joint bank accounts, buying lavish gifts for Chloe. A diamond necklace I had admired once now hung around her neck. She wore it to a dinner party with our friends, her smile triumphant as she held Ethan's arm.

"Isn't Ethan the sweetest?" she'd cooed, loud enough for me to hear. "He knows how to treat a woman."

I tried to talk to him, to explain without explaining. "Ethan, please. There are things you don't know. Things I can't tell you."

He just laughed, a bitter, ugly sound. "What, your secret lover couldn't wait for you to get your hands on my mother's inheritance? Is that why you killed her?"

The accusation was so vile, so far from the truth, it left me speechless.

One night, he came home drunk, stumbling into our bedroom where I was sleeping. The smell of alcohol was overpowering. He pinned me to the bed, his weight crushing me.

"You took my mother from me," he slurred, his face inches from mine. "I should take something from you."

He ripped my nightgown and forced himself on me. I stopped fighting, my body going numb, my mind detaching. It was easier than feeling the pain.

A few weeks later, I felt the familiar nausea of morning sickness. I stared at the two pink lines on the pregnancy test, a wave of cold dread washing over me. A baby. His baby.

A tiny, foolish part of me hoped this could fix us. A child, a piece of him and me, a reason to find our way back.

I found him in his study, sitting at his mother's desk, a bottle of scotch beside him.

"Ethan," I said softly, holding the test in my shaking hand. "I'm pregnant."

For a moment, his expression flickered. I saw a hint of the old Ethan, a flash of shock, maybe even hope.

But then Chloe walked in, wrapping her arms around his shoulders from behind. "Pregnant? Oh, Ava. How can you be sure it's Ethan's?"

Her words were a lit match to his volatile anger.

"Get out," he said, his voice dangerously low.

"Ethan, please," I begged. "This baby..."

"I said get out!" he roared, standing up so fast his chair crashed to the floor. "Whose is it, Ava? Who have you been screwing behind my back?"

"It's yours!" I cried, tears streaming down my face. "How can you even ask that?"

Chloe smirked. "She was always jealous of our friendship, Ethan. Maybe she's trying to trap you."

That was all it took. He lunged at me, his face contorted with rage. He grabbed my arm and twisted it behind my back.

"You think a baby will save you?" he spat. "You think you can replace my mother with some bastard child?"

He shoved me. Hard. I lost my balance, my feet tangling in the rug. I fell backward, my stomach hitting the sharp corner of the desk with a sickening impact.

A searing pain shot through my abdomen, so intense it stole my breath. I crumpled to the floor, gasping.

I looked down. Blood was soaking through my dress, a dark, spreading stain.

The life inside me, the tiny, fragile hope I had clung to, was gone.

Ethan just stood there, watching, his chest heaving. Chloe had a faint, satisfied smile on her face.

As the pain ripped through me, a chilling clarity washed over my grief. This was not a man I could save. This was not a love I could salvage.

It was over.

All I had left was the project. My promise to Eleanor.

Lying in a pool of my own blood, I made a new vow. I would disappear. I would complete her work. And I would never, ever look back.