Chapter 1

"Sign the divorce papers, Vivian. You've overstayed your usefulness." Alexander Blackwell's voice was ice. "Did you actually believe a contract wife could touch my heart?"

Five years of marriage. Five years of silence, humiliation, and invisible wounds. And on the night I miscarried his child on the bathroom floor, he was holding another woman's hand at a charity gala.

I remembered dying. I remembered the blood pooling beneath me, the coldness creeping through my limbs, and the absolute silence of a penthouse where no one came looking for me.

Yet here I was — standing in the Blackwell Group's CEO office, twenty-six years old again, staring at the man who would one day let me bleed out alone.

Alexander sat behind his mahogany desk, jaw sharp enough to cut glass, silver cufflinks catching the light. He was as devastatingly handsome as the day I first fell for him. But now, all I saw was the man who stepped over my body to answer a phone call from Serena Mitchell.

"The contract is simple," he continued, sliding the document across the desk without looking up. "Three years. You play my wife in public. In return, I'll fund your mother's medical treatment. No emotions. No expectations. No delusions."

In my previous life, I had signed this contract with trembling hands and a heart full of secret hope. I had thought — foolishly, desperately — that if I loved him quietly enough, he would eventually see me.

He never did.

"I'll sign," I said calmly.

Alexander's pen paused. He glanced up, clearly expecting me to negotiate, to plead, to blush the way the old Vivian would have.

Instead, I picked up the contract, flipped to the last page, and signed my name without reading a single clause.

His brow furrowed. "You're not going to read it?"

"I trust that you've made the terms perfectly clear, Mr. Blackwell. Three years. No emotions." I set the pen down and met his gaze. "That works for me."

Something flickered in his steel-gray eyes — confusion, maybe. Or irritation that I wasn't performing the role he'd already written for me in his head.

"One more thing," I added, turning toward the door. "I won't be living in the penthouse. I'll arrange my own accommodation."

"That wasn't part of the deal."

"It is now."

I walked out before he could respond. My heels clicked against the marble floor of Blackwell Tower, steady and unhurried, even as my heart hammered against my ribs.

In my last life, I had moved into his penthouse like a stray grateful for shelter. I had cooked meals he never ate, waited up for a man who never came home, and smiled through every humiliation his family threw at me.

I had loved Alexander Blackwell so completely that I forgot to love myself.

When I finally died — alone, on cold tile, calling his name with my last breath — he didn't find out until the housekeeper reported a "mess" in the master bathroom the next morning.

The coroner's report said I'd been dead for six hours.

Six hours. And he was three floors below me the entire time, sharing champagne with Serena.

I stepped into the elevator and caught my reflection in the polished steel doors. My eyes were dry. My hands were steady.

This time, Alexander Blackwell would get exactly what he asked for — a wife with no emotions, no expectations, and no delusions.

And when the three years were up, I would walk away without looking back.

Let him watch me leave the way he once watched me die.