Chapter1

On our fifth wedding anniversary, I pushed open the bedroom door with champagne in hand—and saw my husband pounding my stepsister on our marriage bed.

He caressed her belly and sneered: "Isabella's just my background decoration."

Afterward, he ordered me to tend to his "sprained" mistress. My stepsister crushed my mother's heirlooms under her heel and tossed me and my dreams into the storage room.

They thought I'd cry, beg, grovel for scraps.

They were wrong.

I wiped my tears and activated "Project Ghost"—three months in the making.

Just wait, you cheating scum. You're about to watch the woman you trampled into the dirt walk away with your money and my child, elegantly sending you both straight to hell.

……

Tonight was supposed to be our fifth anniversary party. I should have been the happiest woman in the world.

Instead, I stood there like a fool—cradling his favorite bottle of Romanée-Conti, wearing the red dress he'd once told me was "perfect only on you."

I was going to tiptoe to the door and catch the look of surprise on his face.

After all, I had turned down every work commitment for this moment, decorated the dining room by hand, even spritzed on the perfume he loved most.

What I found when I pushed open the bedroom door was hell.

Sebastian was on top of my stepsister Olivia, moving frantically on our marriage bed.

That bed I smoothed with silk sheets every morning, the one I kept faintly scented with expensive fragrance—it was groaning now, a sound that turned my stomach.

The air didn't smell of a romantic candlelit dinner. It reeked of cheap desire.

I froze in the doorway. The champagne flute nearly slipped from my fingers.

I watched them, and it felt like a dull knife slowly carving open my chest. I couldn't breathe.

"Sebastian… don't… my sister's coming back soon…"

Olivia's breathy, theatrical voice sent a wave of nausea through me. She had clearly seen me push the door open. She was just pretending she hadn't—even hooking her arms around his neck in deliberate provocation.

What made my blood run cold was Sebastian's reaction.

He didn't stop. He laughed harder.

His hand moving over Olivia's flat stomach, he said in a voice dripping with contempt, "Who cares? Isabella's an idiot. Does she really think I'm going to sit through some anniversary nonsense with her tonight?"

His words bored into me like venom.

"She's a perfect backdrop," he rasped, never slowing. "Nothing more. You're my soulmate, Olivia. You actually understand me. She's just a wooden puppet who only knows how to spend money."

I had believed our love was unbreakable.

I remembered the night he proposed—in this very bed, sliding the ring onto my finger, telling me I was the only one he would ever love.

He had promised to protect me for the rest of his life. That he would never let anyone hurt me.

And now this man was holding my stepsister, in my bed, grinding my dignity to dust with every vicious word out of his mouth.

I bit down on my lip until I tasted blood, just to keep from screaming.

I looked at the defiance in Olivia's eyes, and suddenly everything was crystal clear.

All those times she had played the fragile little lamb. All those carefully performed acts of sweetness. It had all been theater.

She had been trying to take everything from me—and Sebastian, the man I had loved for five years, had been her willing co-star from the very beginning.

I quietly pulled the door shut, sealing the two of them inside.

The hallway was deathly still. The only sound was the thundering of my own heartbeat.

I couldn't let this slide. I couldn't become their punchline.

I dried my eyes. My gaze turned cold and clear.

I would make them regret this. I would show them exactly how stupid it was to cross me.

I stood up, smoothed my dress, and walked back to the living room as though nothing had happened.

I sat on the sofa and reached into the hidden compartment behind the vanity. Inside was a backup phone—the one I had kept as a last resort, with only a single number saved in it. A number I had promised myself I would only call in the direst of emergencies.

I drew a slow breath and dialed. It rang twice before someone picked up. A calm male voice said: "Go ahead."

My voice came out so steady it surprised even me. "Activate the Ghost Protocol."

A brief pause. Keyboard clicks. "Understood. Fake-death procedure is ready. Do you confirm?"

I looked out the window. My pale reflection stared back from the glass.

I thought of last night—Sebastian's arm around my waist on the balcony, pointing at the stars, telling me we were destined to be together forever.

Lies. All of it, lies.

"Confirmed." Each word fell like a shard of ice. "Erase everything about Isabella Selas."

"Copy that. Command issued. You'll receive your new identity documents within forty-eight hours. Good luck."