Chapter 1

I signed the last form for my body donation.

The administrator looked at me with pity.

"Are you sure, Ms. Miller?"

I nodded.

"Yes. It's all I have left to give."

My time was short. This was a final act, a way to make sense of the end.

The fluorescent lights of the donation center felt cold.

I thought about my grandmother, then my mother. Now me.

This illness, it ran in our blood, a cruel inheritance.

I drove back to the house Ethan bought.

Our house, he called it. It never felt like mine.

Music was playing. Loud. Not my kind.

I heard a woman' s laugh from the master bedroom.

It was a sharp, bright sound. It cut through the heavy air.

My hand froze on the doorknob.

This was not new. This was our life now.

I pushed the door open slowly.

Ethan was there, on the bed, with a woman I didn' t recognize.

She was young, blonde.

She giggled, pushing a strand of hair from her face.

"Oh, Ethan, you're too much."

Ethan didn't even look at me.

He said to the blonde, his voice smooth, "You know, I still love my wife more than anything."

The blonde laughed again, a disbelieving sound.

"You're terrible. Saying that in front of her."

She thought he was joking, being cruel in a playful way.

I knew better.

His words weren't for her. They were for me.

A twisted declaration. A reminder of what he thought I threw away.

Each word was a perfectly aimed dart, meant to hit the deepest part of my pain.

Because he did love me once. Or I loved the him that was.

I remembered university.

Ethan Hayes, with his bright eyes and easy smile.

He wasn' t rich then. Just a hardworking student.

He' d save his lunch money to buy me a small bouquet of daisies.

We studied together in the library, his arm around me.

He' d whisper jokes, making me stifle laughs.

He believed in us. He believed in forever.

"Sarah," he' d said, his voice earnest, "I'll work hard. I'll give you everything."

I believed him. I loved him with an intensity that scared me.

Our small apartment, filled with second-hand furniture and dreams.

Leo, our ginger cat, a tiny kitten then, curled between us on the worn-out sofa.

Those days felt like a different lifetime. Warm. Real.

Then the diagnosis came.

The same path my grandmother walked. The one my mother was on.

Aggressive. No cure.

I saw my future in my mother' s fading eyes, her trembling hands.

I couldn' t do that to Ethan.

I couldn' t let him watch me disappear, piece by piece.

So, I broke his heart.

It was raining that day. A cliché, but true.

"I can't do this anymore, Ethan," I said, my voice cold, practiced.

"What are you talking about, Sarah?" His face, confused, hurt.

"I want more. More than you can give me. I'm tired of struggling."

The words tasted like ash in my mouth.

"Money? Is that what this is about?" He looked devastated.

"Yes," I lied. "I deserve better."

He begged. He pleaded. He didn't understand.

"I love you, Sarah. We can face anything together."

"I don't love you anymore," I forced out.

That broke him. I saw it in his eyes. The light went out.

I walked away, leaving him standing in the downpour.

Every step was agony. My sacrifice. My secret.

I thought he' d move on. Find someone else. Be happy.

Instead, he changed.

The hurt festered, turned into a relentless drive.

He poured all that broken energy into work.

Tech. Finance. He soared.

Within a few years, Ethan Hayes was a name. Powerful. Rich.

And then he came back for me.

Not with love. With vengeance.

My mother' s condition had worsened. The medical bills were crushing us.

He knew. He offered help.

His price? Marriage.

"You wanted money, Sarah," he' d said, his eyes cold, empty of the boy I loved. "Now you'll have it. And you'll have me."

It wasn't a proposal. It was a sentence.

I agreed. For my mother. What else could I do?

So now, I lived in this grand, empty house.

He brought women here. Often.

He wanted to provoke me. To see me break.

But I was already broken in a way he couldn' t comprehend.

My illness was my shield. My secret armor.

His taunts, his affairs, they were surface wounds.

The real decay was happening inside me, silent, relentless.

I just had to make him hate me enough.

So when I was gone, he wouldn' t grieve. He' d feel relief.

Leo was my only comfort.

He was old now, but he still remembered me.

He' d curl up on my lap, his purr a gentle vibration against my pain.

He was a link to the past, to the Ethan who loved me.

Ethan ignored Leo. The cat was a reminder he didn' t want.

A sharp pain shot through my head, then down my spine.

I pressed my hand to my temple, breathing through it.

It was happening more frequently now.

I remembered my mother, Carol, in the hospice.

Her gentle smile, even as her body failed her.

"It's okay, my love," she' d whispered, her hand trembling in mine.

"Don't let this define you. Live."

The doctors had been clear with me after Mom passed.

"It's hereditary, Sarah. Aggressive. You have it too."

The neurologist showed me the scans. The dark spots on my brain.

"A few years, maybe less. We can manage the symptoms, for a while."

Manage. Not cure.

I looked at Ethan, still with the blonde.

He was laughing, but it didn't reach his eyes.

He was a ghost, haunted by a love he thought betrayed him.

And I, I was a ghost in waiting.

My role was clear. Be the villain. Be the mercenary wife.

Let him despise me.

It was the only kindness I had left to offer.

Soon, it would all be over.