Chapter 1

Blood soaked through my white T-shirt after the fifth stab, and the knife pressed to my neck shook in the wrinkled fist of my wife's former colleague, Victor Clark.

"Call Melissa," he growled.

I hesitated, my face paling, and dialed her number with shaking fingers. "Melissa, Victor has taken me hostage. He stabbed me five times. We're on the rooftop of our apartment building. Please, hurry and get me."

Silence hummed on the line for a beat. When Melissa finally spoke, her voice was colder than I'd imagined.

"What are the odds? You just happen to get stabbed the same day Ethan breaks down and tries to end his life.

"Victor has taken you hostage? I kept our new address under wraps. How would he even know it? Next time you put on a show, try a lie that isn't so paper-thin, will you?"

The coldness in her words made Victor's hatred spike. He applied more force on the knife, and the blade scored a thin, stinging line across my throat.

Terror rattled me from head to toe, but I forced myself to sound calm. "I never tried to stop you from helping Ethan. If you don't believe me, send your people up here to see for themselves—"

"That's enough!" Melissa cut in, sounding impatient. "Drop the act. I don't have time for your drama. I'm going to save Ethan."

I heard her turn away and order the dispatcher, "Flag any calls about a rooftop stabbing as a false report. Don't respond to it, no matter who calls!"

With that, the line went dead.

The loathing in Victor's eyes deepened until it felt like the air itself had thinned.

I hadn't expected Melissa to be this ruthless, and a suffocating hopelessness crashed over me.

Memories from my previous life surged up like a riptide. Victor had held me the same way and stabbed me five times.

I had called Melissa repeatedly until she relented and left Ethan Hayes to come to me. When Ethan found out about it, he snapped. He set his rental apartment on fire and died in the flames.

That night, when I sensed something was amiss and asked if she was angry, Melissa softened toward me for once.

"Honey, how could I be mad at you? Ethan deserved it. Don't overthink it. Your birthday is in a week. I've got a big surprise for you."

She fussed over me day and night after that. I let myself believe that she had finally seen my worth.

On my birthday, she slipped something into my drink and tied me to a hospital bed. With bloodshot eyes, she drove a knife into me again and again, screaming for me to go to hell and pay for Ethan's death.

"It was just a few cuts. You weren't going to die. Why did you have to force me to save you that day? If you hadn't lied about how bad it was, I never would've left. I actually believed you. I was an idiot.

"Ethan died alone. He was scared of being alone. Just imagine how desperate he must have been at that moment.

"Lucas, do you know what it's like to lose the love of your life? Do you?"

Her blade rose and fell until my blood streamed across the floor.

I tried to explain how dangerous it had truly been, but my words only fueled her fury. She didn't believe me.

After half an hour, not an inch of skin remained intact, bone showed white in places, and I was barely hanging on.

Melissa placed Ethan's framed photo in front of me, forced my battered body to kneel before it, then lit a fire that consumed our home and vowed to finish me the way it had finished him.

The memory of that despair nearly burned away what little reason I had left.

In the present, when I couldn't get Melissa to come to my aid, Victor's eyes went red, and he stabbed me again and again. Blood dripped off my shirt and pattered onto the black rooftop.

Just when I thought the lights were going out for good, footsteps pounded up the stairwell.

Robert Lane, my father-in-law, burst onto the roof. He took one look at me, drenched in blood, and his legs buckled as if they might give out.