Chapter 1

My daughter asked for her father at 3 p.m. on her third birthday.

"Daddy coming?" she asked, crown crooked, eyes bright.

I lied and said yes. I'd been lying for three years.

I spent all morning baking her cake—pink frosting, fondant butterflies, three tiny candles waiting to be lit. She wore the dress I'd sewn for her.

Everything was perfect. Everything was a beautiful, careful lie.

By noon, he promised he'd be home.

So I waited.

Noon passed. Then one o'clock. Then two.

Iris sat in her high chair, her little crown tilting sideways, asking every ten minutes, "Daddy coming?"

"Soon, baby," I kept saying. "Daddy's coming soon."

By three o'clock, I called him. Voicemail.

I called again. And again.

Nothing.

I was about to give up when his assistant, Margot, picked up his office line.

"Mrs. Kade—oh, I mean, Solace—" she corrected herself quickly, the way everyone at Kade Enterprises did, because Lucian had made it clear I was never to be referred to as his wife publicly. "Mr. Kade left the office two hours ago. He said he had a personal matter."

"Personal matter?" I repeated. "Did he say where?"

A pause. Too long.

"Margot."

"He went to St. Catherine's Cemetery," she said quietly. "He goes every year on this date."

My blood went cold.

This date.

October 15th.

Iris's birthday—and the anniversary of her death. His first wife. Isabelle.

The woman whose portrait still hung in his study. Whose perfume still sat untouched on the bathroom shelf. Whose name he whispered in his sleep when he thought I couldn't hear.

I told myself it didn't matter. That grief was natural. That I couldn't compete with a ghost.

But then Margot said something that cracked the ground beneath my feet.

"Solace... he wasn't alone. There was a woman with him. I saw them leave together. She was... she looked exactly like—" She stopped herself.

"Like who?" My voice was barely a whisper.

"Like Isabelle."

I hung up. My hands shook so badly I dropped the phone.

That's impossible. Isabelle is dead. She died in a car accident three years ago. They buried her. Lucian identified the body himself.

But something dark and cold was coiling inside my chest. A feeling I'd been suppressing for three years.

I kissed Iris's forehead, handed her to our nanny, Rosa, and grabbed my car keys.

"Where are you going?" Rosa asked, alarmed.

"To find my husband."

I drove to the cemetery first. His black Bentley was parked near the east gate. I walked through the rows of headstones until I found Isabelle's grave.

Fresh white roses. A card in his handwriting.

"I kept my promise. She's coming home."

My knees buckled.

She?

I turned to leave—and that's when I heard them. Behind the mausoleum wall, partially hidden by the oak trees.

Lucian's voice. And a woman's laugh.

A laugh I'd heard a hundred times—in home videos, in voicemails he'd saved, in the recordings he played late at night when he thought I was asleep.

I stepped around the corner.

And there she was.

Isabelle Kade. Alive. Standing in the flesh, her arms wrapped around my husband's neck, her lips pressed against his jaw.

She pulled back and smiled up at him. "I missed you."

Lucian held her like she was made of glass. "I never stopped waiting."

The world tilted sideways. I pressed my back against the cold stone wall, biting down on my fist to keep from screaming.

Then Isabelle asked, "What about the girl? The one living in my house?"

Lucian's voice was ice.

"Solace? She was never my wife. Just the nanny I married on paper to keep custody of Iris. Now that you're back—I'll get rid of her by the end of the week."

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