All Chapters of Wed or Dead: Chapter 1 - Chapter 8

"Lucifer, I'm begging you. Can I go back and take a look first? Just a quick peek."I stood on the cold stone floor, staring intently at the misty shadow seated behind the desk.Lucifer side-eyed me."The rules are clear: you can't go back and change the past!"However, I can give you one flashback opportunity for each marriage. You can only watch, not touch. Once you've seen everything, you make your decision. But there's a catch.""What catch?" I asked eagerly."If you choose a wife this way and still end up dying a miserable death after the marriage, your soul will be completely obliterated, erased from existence forever. But if you pick right now without looking, even if you die horribly again, you'll just have to wait in line here for another hundred years before you can reincarnate. Think carefully."My fingers dug hard into the icy stone. Obliterated from existence? Or suffer another hundred years here?Spending a century in this dreary Hell until my soul went complete

I sat there on the cold stone bench down in Hell, nervously twisting the hem of my shirt between my fingers.Lucifer's words kept spinning on an endless loop inside my head. "She was making sure you were still hers."Mandy didn't beat me out of pure malice. She did it just to confirm I still belonged to her.And Rosie? Well, Rosie's gambling sprees at least started as a desperate bid to give us a comfortable life.So what about Olivia? The very same woman who had broken down crying while carrying that untouched bowl of soup back into the kitchen.Out of the three of them, she was the only one who had ever truly made my heart soften. More importantly, she was the only one who shed actual tears the day I died.What if she could finally stand up for herself? What if I forced her to grow a spine this time around?"Let me see the third one." I looked up to meet Lucifer's gaze."Last one on the list," Lucifer said, closing the Book of Life and tapping his fingernail against the cov

The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was Rosie's face. She was lying sideways next to me, her phone still glowing brightly in her hand.On the screen was a supplier price quote time-stamped at two-thirty in the morning. Her brow was lightly furrowed, as if she was still crunching numbers even in her sleep.I didn't move an inch. Lying there in bed on the very first morning of our marriage, I stared up at the ceiling, my heart pounding wildly against my chest.I had chosen Rosie, not because I forgave her or thought she was the best of the bunch, and certainly not because I believed a gambling addiction could magically be cured. Rather, it was a difference I noticed as those three flashbacks replayed in my head.When Rosie first sat down at a poker table, what crossed her mind was scraping together the vacation money for our trip to the Maldives.When Mandy first struck me, what crossed her mind was that I shouldn't be looking at anyone else.When Olivia first put her phone

"Matt wants us to buy out his stake."Rosie came back late at night, her voice raspy.I brought her a bowl of soup I'd kept warm on the stove."What are his terms?" I asked, sitting down across from her.Rosie offered a bitter smile. "He wants thirty percent of the factory, cashed out at three million dollars. If I refuse, he'll make sure I can't land a single order in the industry."I didn't say anything right away. Instead, I asked, "How much did he actually put in when he first came on board?" "One hundred fifty thousand dollars," Rosie muttered, staring down at the floor.He wasn't pulling out his shares; it was outright theft."What are you thinking?" I watched her closely."After all, he's helped me out for years..." Rosie rubbed her face with her hands.I knew exactly what that word "helped" meant.Rosie still couldn't fully bring herself to believe Matt was sabotaging her. Two decades of friendship couldn't be overthrown by a few spreadsheets alone.I stayed silent