Chapter 1: The Final Betrayal

The documents felt heavier than they should have.

My hands trembled as I signed my name across the final page, each stroke of the pen a surrender. Seraphine Arkwright Vale. Even my signature looked weaker than it used to, the letters slanting and uneven. Two years of chemotherapy, radiation, and false hope had reduced me to this,a hollow-eyed ghost in a hospital gown, signing away the only thing I had left.

"Are you certain about this, Mrs. Vale?" Lawyer Whitmore's voice was gentle, but I heard the concern beneath it. The old man had known me since I was ten years old, had watched me grow up after my parents died. Now he was watching me die.

"I'm certain." The lie tasted bitter, but what choice did I have? Adrian was my husband. For better or worse. In sickness and in health. Till death do us part.

Death was coming for me soon enough. One month, Dr. Chen had said. Maybe less.

I pushed the papers across the hospital table, each one a piece of my grandfather's legacy now transferred to Adrian's name. The Ravenport estate. The properties in the city center. The stocks, the bonds, the accounts I'd barely had four years to enjoy before the cancer came.

"He'll take care of everything," I whispered, more to convince myself than Whitmore. "He's my husband. He loves me."

Whitmore's silence spoke volumes, but he gathered the documents without argument. He'd tried to talk me out of this three times already. Suggested trusts, stipulations, safeguards. But I was tired. So tired. And I wanted to believe that my life hadn't been as lonely as it felt in this sterile hospital room.

"There is one more thing," I said, my voice cracking. "My last wish. I want to see Adrian. One more time. At the estate."

I'd been in this hospital for over two years, watching the seasons change through a window, my world reduced to four walls and the steady beep of machines. Adrian had visited. Of course he had. Every few weeks, sometimes with Maribel, my best friend since high school. They'd sit by my bed, hold my hand, tell me I was strong.

But I wanted to see him in our home. The estate I'd inherited too late to truly live in. I wanted to die with something beautiful around me instead of these white walls and the smell of antiseptic.

"I'll arrange it," Whitmore said quietly. "But Mrs. Vale, please. Let me come with you."

"No." I tried to smile, though my cracked lips made it painful. "I want to see my husband alone. Just us. The way it should be."

The way it never was, some traitorous part of my mind whispered.

I silenced it.

Three days later, I made the journey. The hospice nurse had protested, Dr. Chen had signed forms absolving the hospital of responsibility, and I'd left against medical advice in a private car Whitmore arranged. Every bump in the road sent pain radiating through my body, but I didn't care.

I was going home. To Adrian.

The estate rose before me like something from a dream. Golden stone glowing in the late afternoon sun, ivy climbing the walls, gardens I'd never had the strength to walk through. My grandfather had built this. My mother had loved it. And I'd only owned it for four years, three of which I'd spent dying.

The driver helped me out of the car. I'd refused the wheelchair, refused the nurse. I would walk into my home with dignity, even if it killed me faster.

The front door was unlocked.

That should have been my first warning.

The foyer was exactly as I remembered from my one brief visit before the hospital became my prison. Marble floors, a grand staircase curving upward, afternoon light streaming through tall windows. Beautiful. Empty. Silent.

Except it wasn't silent.

I heard it then. A sound that made my blood turn to ice.

Laughter. Low and intimate. Coming from the sitting room.

My feet moved without conscious thought, carrying me across the marble even as my heart began to fracture. No. It couldn't be. He wouldn't. Not here. Not now. Not after everything.

The sitting room doors were ajar.

I should have turned around. Should have left. Should have protected myself from what I knew, deep in my bones, I was about to see.

But I pushed the door open.

And my world ended.

They were on the sofa. My sofa. The white velvet one I'd chosen from a catalog in my hospital bed, imagining Adrian and I sitting there together, watching the sunset through the bay windows.

Adrian's shirt was on the floor. Maribel's dress was bunched around her waist. Her head was thrown back, blonde hair cascading over the armrest, and she was laughing. Laughing. That musical sound I'd always envied, always wished I could replicate.

And Adrian. My Adrian. His hands on her bare skin, his mouth on her throat, his body moving against hers with a hunger I hadn't seen in years. Had I ever seen it directed at me?

The sound that escaped my throat wasn't human.

They froze.

Time seemed to splinter. I watched Adrian's face change. Shock. Then calculation. Then something worse than guilt. Annoyance.

"Seraphine." He didn't even have the decency to sound remorseful. He sounded inconvenienced. "What are you doing here?"

What was I doing here? In my own home? Dying of cancer and hoping for one last moment with my husband?

Maribel sat up, making a show of adjusting her dress. Her lipstick was smeared, her eyes bright with something that looked like satisfaction. "Oh, Sera. This isn't what it looks like."

The words were so absurd I almost laughed. Almost. But I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Couldn't process what I was seeing.

"How long?" The words came out as a rasp.

Adrian stood, pulling on his shirt with maddening casualness. "Does it matter?"

"How long?" I repeated, louder this time. Stronger.

Maribel hesitated—just for a moment—before answering softly, "Since after your wedding."

The words hit harder than a slap.

"Not before," she added, tilting her head, voice laced with something like mercy. "But it just happened."

Once I got sick.

Once I became weak.

Once I became disposable.

Every hospital visit. Every time she’d held my hand. Every time she’d cried on my shoulder while sharing my husband’s bed.

"The properties," I whispered. "I just signed them over to you. Everything my grandfather left me. Everything I am."

Adrian's expression shifted to something almost triumphant. "I know. Whitmore sent the paperwork through this morning. Thank you for that, by the way. The estate alone will cover most of my debts."

Most of his debts. The debts I'd been helping him with for years. The debts that had bled me dry before I even got my inheritance. The debts I'd thought we were fighting together.

"You knew I was coming today." It wasn't a question.

"Whitmore called." Adrian shrugged. "We thought you'd be later."

We. They were a we. Had always been a we.

And I had been nothing but a bank account with a terminal illness.

The pain in my chest had nothing to do with cancer. This hurt worse than any tumor, any treatment, any diagnosis. This was my heart being torn from my body while I was still alive to feel it.

"Did you ever love me?" I had to know. Even if the answer destroyed me.

Adrian looked at me then, really looked at me. At my bald head covered by a scarf. My skeletal frame. My sallow skin. And I saw the truth in his eyes before he spoke it.

"No."

One word. Two letters. The epitaph of my entire adult life.

"I'm sorry, Sera," Maribel said, standing now, smoothing her dress. "But you have to understand. Adrian and I are meant to be together. You were just—" She paused, searching for the word. "convenient."

Convenient. My love. My loyalty. My inheritance. Convenient.

I wanted to rage. To scream. To tear them apart with my bare hands. But I had no strength left. The cancer had taken my body. And they had taken everything else.

"Get out," I whispered.

"This is my house now, Seraphine," Adrian said calmly. "Legally. You signed the papers. Perhaps you should be the one to leave."

I stumbled backward, my hip hitting the doorframe. The pain was distant. Everything was distant now, like I was watching this happen to someone else.

I turned. Somehow I made it back across the foyer. The marble floor that had seemed so beautiful now felt like ice. My legs were giving out. Each step was agony.

The staircase loomed before me. I just needed to reach the front door. Just needed to get outside. Call Whitmore. Go back to the hospital to die in peace.

But my legs wouldn't hold me.

I grabbed for the banister, missed, and felt myself falling.

No. Not falling.

I felt hands on my back. Pushing.

I had one moment of perfect clarity. I saw Maribel's face above me, her expression cold and decided. Adrian behind her, watching.

And then I was tumbling down the marble stairs, my body breaking with each impact, and all I could think was: they're going to get away with this.

They're going to get everything.

And no one will ever know the truth.

The last thing I heard before the darkness took me was Maribel's voice, calm and practical: "Call it an accident. She was weak. She fell. No one will question it."

And as consciousness slipped away, as my blood pooled on the beautiful marble floors of the home I'd never truly had, one thought burned through my dying mind like fire.

Please. Someone. Anyone. Let me have another chance.

Let me make them pay.