You Played Dead, So I'll Bury You

For three years, I chased the ghost of my missing husband.

When I finally found him, my hysterical tears were met with chilling indifference.

"I'm not the billionaire heir you're looking for," Jaxson said coolly. "Stop stalking me. Mirelle is going to make me sleep on the couch again."

His devotion to another woman shredded my heart. I was ready to walk away forever.

Until I overheard him talking to his brother in the shadows.

"You faked your death on your honeymoon just to be with Mirelle," Kian hissed.

"And now you're faking amnesia to get the Cross Family Fortune back? Haven't you tortured Bryndis enough?"

Jaxson simply downed his drink.

"Mirelle is pregnant," he replied. "I have to bring her into the family officially. This is how I do it."

My despair instantly hardened to ash. The man I had mourned wasn't dead; he was just a monster.

I pulled out my phone and dialed my anxious in-laws, stopping them from rushing over.

...

"Torin, Elowen. Don't bother coming. I've confirmed it myself—this man is not Jaxson."

I hung up just as the doors of the lounge swung open.

Jaxson froze when he saw me standing in the dimly lit hallway.

The cold, calculated mask of an annoyed stranger slipped back over his features. He let out a heavy, theatrical sigh.

"I've said it a hundred times," he muttered, rubbing his temples in mock exhaustion.

"Drop it. I'm not your husband."

Kian stepped out behind him, wearing a mask of pity.

"Bryndis, please. You haven't slept in days. Let my driver take you back home."

I yanked my arm away from Kian's outstretched hand and locked my eyes onto Jaxson's.

"Not days. Three years." My voice shook.

"Since the day the Coast Guard called off the search, I haven't slept a full night. I was crucified by the media. I was branded a curse, the careless wife who let the sole heir to the Cross empire drown."

Jaxson's jaw clenched, but his gaze remained stubbornly blank.

"The stress broke me," I continued.

"I was so blindingly numb with grief that when I missed a step on the staircase, I couldn't even brace myself. I lost my baby. Our baby."

I dropped my gaze to his hands.

On his ring finger sat a cheap, plain-band ring—a mocking replacement for the custom platinum wedding band I had commissioned for him.

"I spent three years tearing my soul apart with guilt, hunting ghosts across the globe," I whispered, the bitterness coating my tongue.

"And my reward? My newlywed husband looking me in the eye, pretending his memory is wiped, just so he can play doting boyfriend to another woman."

A flicker of something real—undeniable guilt—breached Jaxson's stoic facade.

His thumb instinctively brushed against the cheap metal band on his finger, mapping its edges. For a split second, the veil lifted. Then his brow furrowed, and he buried the emotion.

"You've had a rough life, lady," he snapped, his voice sharp with manufactured impatience.

"But that has absolutely nothing to do with me."

I stared at his impassive face, the final, pathetic thread of my devotion snapping forever.

How could I have thought his death was the worst tragedy to befall me?

The truth was infinitely more devastating: he had engineered every second of my hell.

For weeks, I had poured my heart out to this man, weeping over our memories, begging him to just look at me and remember.

Was he mentally laughing at my desperation the whole time? Was he mocking the pathetic, clinging widow while entirely lucid in Mirelle's bed?

Finding my bloodshot eyes, Jaxson hesitated. He took a subtle half-step toward me, his hand twitching upward as if some buried muscle memory was commanding him to wipe away my tears.

Before his hand could lift, the sharp crack of a palm against my cheek shattered the silence.

My head snapped to the side. The metallic taste of blood flooded my mouth.

"Cut the victim act!" Mirelle Shay screeched, stepping into my line of sight to block Jaxson. Her finger jabbed inches from my nose.

"Stalking my man and and begging him to be your husband? Have you absolutely no shame? You're so desperately cheap."

Through the stinging heat radiating across my face, I looked past her shoulder.

Jaxson stood rigid, a flash of genuine shock breaking through his flawless amnesiac disguise.