Chapter 3

The paramedics arrived in eleven minutes. They pronounced me dead on the scene.

My baby — a boy, perfectly formed, seven months grown — was gone with me.

Dominic sat on the bedroom floor with blood on his hands and his tie undone, staring at nothing. A paramedic tried to speak to him, but he didn't respond.

Meredith handled everything. She spoke to the police.

She called Dominic's family. She answered every question with tears streaming down her porcelain face, playing the role of the devastated friend.

"She'd been unwell for weeks," Meredith told the officer, dabbing her eyes. "We tried to get her to see a doctor, but she refused. She was… difficult. Dominic did everything he could."

I wanted to scream. I had begged for medical attention.

I had begged. Three days before my death, I'd collapsed in the kitchen.

The housekeeper, Mrs. Pratt, had found me on the floor and tried to call an ambulance. Meredith had stopped her.

"Don't make a scene. She's fine — she does this for attention. Dominic specifically said not to indulge her." Meredith's tone had been bored, dismissive.

Mrs. Pratt had looked uncertain but obeyed. She'd helped me to bed instead.

I'd grabbed her wrist and whispered, "Please. Tell Dominic about the medical report. The baby is in danger." She'd promised she would.

The next day, she was fired. Meredith had told Dominic that Mrs. Pratt had been stealing silverware.

Now, standing as a ghost in my own bedroom, I watched the paramedics zip my body into a black bag. Dominic flinched at the sound of the zipper.

"Sir, we need you to identify the body officially and sign some paperwork," one of them said gently.

Dominic stood mechanically. When they unzipped the bag to show my face, something cracked behind his eyes.

He reached out and touched my cheek — the first time he'd touched me in months. "She's cold," he said, as if this confused him.

"Sir—"

"She was always cold. She used to — she'd steal my jacket when she thought I wasn't looking." His voice was barely a whisper.

"I pretended not to notice."

I stared at him. He'd noticed that?

He signed the papers without reading them. Then he walked downstairs, past Meredith, past his security team, and out the front door.

He got in his car and drove away.

Meredith watched him leave, her tears drying the instant the door closed. She pulled out her phone.

"He just left," she said to whoever was on the other end. "No, he doesn't suspect anything. The assistant destroyed the medical reports like I told her to. There's no paper trail."

A pause. "Of course I feel bad." She laughed — actually laughed.

"But she was a surrogate, not a wife. She should've known her place. Now, about the will — his mother told me the family requires an heir before Dominic can inherit the full estate. With the baby gone, the clock resets. That gives us time."

She hung up and poured herself a glass of Dominic's whiskey. As she sipped it in the living room, she sat in my spot — the corner of the sofa where I'd spent every lonely evening for seven months, waiting for a husband who never came home to me.

She noticed a book wedged between the cushions. She pulled it out — it was a baby name book.

I'd dog-eared a page. The name I'd circled was "Luca."

Meredith tossed it in the trash without a second glance.

I looked at the book in the wastebasket, and something inside my soul shifted. The hollowness I'd felt since dying began filling with something darker, something sharper.

Not grief. Not even anger. Purpose.

If I was stuck in this world as a ghost, then I would make sure every lie Meredith had ever told was dragged into the light. And Dominic — the man who'd let me die through neglect — would have to live with every single truth.

Starting with the text message still sitting in Meredith's phone: "It's done. She's gone."