Chapter 1

When the Manhattan morgue finally managed to reach my husband, Victor Hawthorne, he was in the penthouse suite, fucking another woman.

"Mr. Hawthorne, this is the city morgue. We need you to come down and identify your wife's remains."

"Identify what?" he snapped, his thrusts not missing a beat.

"Burn her," he ordered. "Don't bother me with her pathetic ploys."

He tossed the phone onto the nightstand, his focus entirely on the woman beneath him.

Then my body was pushed into the incinerator.

When I was nothing but ashes, the funeral home called him again.

Selena pouted, trailing a nail down his chest.

"Is Cecilia acting up again?"

"I'll go end this farce then," Victor sneered, getting out of bed.

——

It took Victor three whole hours to finally drag himself to the funeral home.

When he walked in, his lips were still swollen.

There was a lipstick smudge stamped right on his cheek.

It's pathetic, really.

While he was getting off on another woman, my body was being shoved into the incinerator.

"Where are Cecilia's ashes?" he demanded. "Didn't you call me down here to claim this mess?"

The funeral director brought out a heavy oak urn.

"Mr. Hawthorne, please lower your voice out of respect for the deceased," the director pleaded.

"Respect?" he sneered, snatching the urn.

"She lost the right to my respect the day she put my sister in a coma."

He stared at the urn.

"Is this really my wife in here?" He asked. "Or did you just scoop up some dead stray dog from the alley to scam a funeral fee out of the Hawthorne Group?"

The director turned pale.

"Sir, that is inappropriate!"

He pushed a stack of official paperwork across the counter.

"We have the official cremation logs right here. You can check it out."

He didn't even bother to glance at the documents.

"No need."

I let out a silent breath of relief from where my soul hovered near the ceiling.

I didn't know why my spirit was still trapped in this world.

Now that Victor had accepted my death, I foolishly thought he might at least give me a quiet burial.

Even with all the hatred between us, we had shared wedding vows once.

But my naive hope was shattered in the very next second.

Victor turned his back on the desk and walked out the front doors.

He stopped at the top of the icy concrete steps leading down to the street.

He held the urn out over the edge.

"Oops," he said.

His fingers opened.

The oak urn plummeted toward the freezing ground.

My gray ashes exploded outward, scattering across the dirty snow.

The funeral director ran out the doors, screaming.

"What are you doing?!" he yelled. "That is a human being!"

Victor didn't blink.

"This?" Victor pointed at the gray dust with a ruthless smile.

"This is just a murderer throwing another tantrum."

He stepped forward and crushed the pile of dust under his shoe.

I stared at his eyes and opened my mouth to scream.

No sound came out.

The humiliation burned worse than the incinerator fire ever could.

Victor stepped back, looking down at the mess with satisfaction.

"Make sure you pass a message to Cecilia when she stops hiding," he told the trembling director.

"Tell her this new fake death trick is creative, but ultimately a failure."

His voice dropped.

"She has until tomorrow morning to crawl to Chloe's ICU room."

"She will kneel on that hospital floor and beg for forgiveness."

He narrowed his eyes.

"Otherwise, even if she really is dead, I will dig up her corpse and feed it to the hounds."

The venom in those words made my soul shiver.

I knew he was entirely capable of making good on that threat.

I was suddenly thankful that my body was already burned to ash.

Before the director could respond, Victor's phone rang.

He turned on his heel and walked straight toward his car.

A strange, inescapable magnetic pull dragged my soul right behind him.

I was forced to sit in the passenger seat of his car.

Selena's voice echoed through the speakers.

She had always been my understudy back when I was the lead ballerina of the city's premier dance company.

She spent years spreading vicious rumors about me out of jealousy.

And everything changed after the car accident that paralyzed his sister.

"Victor, did you clean up the mess?" Selena asked softly.

"The press is starting to ask questions about the hospital."

Victor's jaw clenched tight.

"Let them ask."

"We both know she isn't really dead anyway."

Selena's voice grew probing.

"But what if she isn't playing a game this time, Victor?"

She paused.

I instinctively turned to look at the man driving the car.

The old Victor would have lost his mind with grief if I even got a papercut.

He used to hold my face in his warm hands and call me his "Manhattan Rose."

He used to look at me like I was the only woman in his entire world.

"Then I would rent out the entire Lincoln Center for three days of straight champagne."

I stared at his face with wide, disbelieving eyes.

The man who once loved me more than life itself, truly wished I was dead.