Chapter 1

One

I died on a Tuesday.

I woke up on a Thursday — inside my own coffin, listening to my husband laugh.

My name was Brielle Ashford. My fingers scraped against satin lining in the dark, and the muffled sound of voices filtered through the wood above me.

I couldn't breathe. My chest burned. My nails split against the lid.

Then I heard him.

"Finally," my husband Dominic said, his voice carrying the lightness of a man who had just been freed. "Do you know how long I've been waiting for this day?"

A woman giggled. I knew that giggle. I'd grown up hearing it.

My sister, Vivienne.

"Dom, keep your voice down. People are still outside."

"Let them grieve. They're mourning a fool."

My blood turned to ice. Then to fire.

Memories from my past life crashed into me like a freight train — every single one. The slow poisoning. The mysterious illness that doctors couldn't explain. The way Dominic held my hand at the hospital while Vivienne brought me soup laced with something that made my organs shut down one by one.

I remembered dying. The flatline. The darkness.

And then I remembered what came after.

My soul had lingered. I had watched them — for months. I watched Dominic move Vivienne into our bedroom before my body was even cold. I watched them forge my will, transferring my entire estate — the Ashford family fortune, the company my grandfather built, the properties across three continents — all into their names.

I watched Vivienne wearing my jewelry, sleeping in my bed, raising my son and teaching him to call her "Mom."

My son. Asher.

He was four years old, and they told him I had abandoned him before I died. They made my baby believe I never loved him.

That was what finally shattered my soul in the afterlife.

And now — somehow — I was back.

Not as a ghost. Not as a memory.

I was alive, breathing, and sealed inside a coffin at my own funeral.

I pressed both palms flat against the lid and pushed.

The wood creaked. Light flooded in.

I sat up.

The chapel went silent. Two hundred faces stared at me — pale, frozen, mouths open.

Dominic dropped his glass. It shattered on the marble floor.

Vivienne screamed.

I climbed out of the coffin, my white burial dress dragging across the floor, my bare feet cold against the stone. I must have looked like a ghost — pale skin, dark circles, hair falling loose around my shoulders.

Good. Let them think I crawled out of hell.

I looked directly at Dominic. His face had drained of all color, his eyes wide with the kind of terror that only a guilty man could feel.

"Miss me?" I said.

Vivienne grabbed Dominic's arm, her nails digging into his sleeve. "That's — that's not possible. She was dead. The doctors confirmed—"

"The doctors you paid off?" I asked calmly.

The room erupted into murmurs. Camera phones appeared. Someone screamed.

I didn't care about any of them.

I only cared about one thing.

I turned my gaze back to Dominic, and I smiled.

"Dominic, sweetheart," I said softly, stepping closer, watching him flinch. "We need to talk about your inheritance."

His jaw clenched. I could see the gears turning in his head — calculating, scheming, trying to figure out how to spin this.

But I wasn't the same Brielle who trusted blindly and loved recklessly.

That Brielle was dead.

The woman standing before him now had watched from the other side and memorized every single sin.

And I intended to collect on every one of them.