Alle Kapitel von His Dead Wife: No Longer the Surrogate Bride: Kapitel 1 – Kapitel 10

Something was wrong.Dominic Valtieri felt it the moment he stepped into the west wing corridor— an instinctive, primal sensation scraping down his spine.The air was too still.Too quiet.The mansion, sprawling and opulent, was never silent. Even at night there were murmurs, footsteps, distant conversations, guards doing their rounds, the hum of servants performing the invisible labor that kept the estate immaculate.But now— nothing.A suffocating hush pressed against his ears, thick and unnatural.A void.A warning.He moved faster, long strides slicing through the corridor.“Althea?”His voice echoed back at him, swallowed by the silence.No answer.He pushed open the door to her room.The first thing he saw was emptiness.The bed—rumpled. The curtains—billowing from an open window that should have been bolted. A glass—shattered, pieces glittering like ice on the floor. And on the dresser, small and delicate under the glow of the lamp— her necklace.The one she never removed.A sl

Dom watched the tail end of a car’s headlights vanish beyond the service road curve. One of his men shouted from the front of the motel when he saw a car screeching and driving towards the road.He didn’t move.Didn’t breathe.His voice was quiet, deadly certain.“She was in that car.”His men looked shocked.“How can you tell, sir? In the dark—”Dom’s jaw tightened, gaze still locked on the vanishing road.“I don’t need light to know my own wife.”His hand curled into a fist.“She’s alive,” he murmured, something fierce igniting behind his eyes. “And she’s running from me.”A beat.“No,” he corrected softly. “She’s running from the man I used to be.”He stepped forward.“Get the cars. We’re following.”Althea POVOnly when the motel lights vanished behind them did Althea finally break.Her breath came in sharp, painful gasps.“He found me,” she whispered, trying to stop herself from going into panic. Tears profusely spill down her face. “Jess… he found me.”Jessica reached over and s

Four years later…The ER of Mont-Beaumont Medical Center pulsed like a living organism on the brink of panic.Alarms wailed. Stretchers rolled in relentlessly. Doctors and nurses shouted over one another, each second pushing the staff closer to their breaking point.A twenty-car collision on the main highway had turned a calm evening into a battlefield.“Vitals dropping in Bay 3!”“Intubate him—now!”“We need three more units of blood—go!”The metallic scent of blood seeped into every crevice of the emergency department, mingling with antiseptic and adrenaline. Medics burst through the sliding doors with yet another patient, their voices cracking from shouting over sirens.“CODE CRIMSON! Blunt trauma, unresponsive, massive blood loss!”The air shifted. Every medical staff member paused momentarily at the code shouted.Code Crimson meant one thing: A life hanging by the last thread.A veteran nurse rushed toward the incoming stretcher, glanced at the patient’s vitals, and paled.“Her p

Dominic staggered back a step.Good thing Enzo was behind, who immediately steadied him. His bodyguard placed a firm grip on Dominic's shoulder to correct his bearing.His knees buckled under the weight of the shock. Because there, just a few feet away from him, standing beneath the white-hot lights of the auditorium stage was the ghost, haunting him for the past four years, wearing a smile.Althea.Her name slipped out of his lips in a sound that was barely breath, barely voice, barely human. More prayer than word. More wound than memory.She stood impossibly still at the center of the stage, poised in a way she never once managed during the years she lived inside his home. Gone was the fragile wife who flinched at the creak of the mansion floors or the raised voice of a servant or the sound of his footsteps after a long night of bloodshed. Gone was the trembling girl who fled from him under a splash of moonlight and heartbreak.This woman, this version of her walked onto the stage l

“Dominic!” his mother shrieked over the phone the moment he stepped outside the hall, heading towards the elevator. “We saw her on TV—she’s alive?!”“How the f8ck is she alive?!”“Bring her back with you! NOW!”Dom ended the call, turning it off in anger.He stepped inside the elevator, his eyes blazing with anger. The moment Althea took off, the atmosphere in the hall turned cold and the occupants knew not to approached him to start a conversation.Althea. He thought hardly as he pictured her eyes.Her eyes only wavered once. A quick reaction. But after that, it remained steady.But that one time gave him the answer he needed. It was brief and he was able to catch it.He couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathed. His family would move heaven and earth to get her back, and he suddenly realized that he had lose his right the way she had treated him a while ago.She had changed into someone formidable.And he knew that Althea would never, ever allow herself to be dragged into the Valtieri world