Chapter 1

The first time I saw them, they were standing in the grand foyer of our home, holding my wife Sarah' s hands. A boy and a girl, identical sets of wide, blue eyes staring up at me from beneath matching blonde bangs. They looked about three years old.

"Liam, darling," Sarah said, her voice bright and cheerful. "Say hello to Luke and Annie."

I stood frozen in the doorway, my briefcase still in my hand. We had been married for five years, and for five years, the one constant, the one unbreakable rule, was that we would be child-free.

It was her rule, one I had reluctantly accepted because I loved her more than my own desire for a family. I was an orphan, and the longing for children was a deep, constant ache, but I had buried it for her.

"What's going on, Sarah?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

"They're ours now," she announced, beaming as if she'd just brought home a new puppy. "Aren't they precious? They'll inherit everything. We'll be a real family."

Her words sent a jolt through me, a confusing mix of shock and a sudden, overwhelming hope. She had changed her mind. All this time, she had seen my quiet sadness, and she had changed her mind for me.

The thought was so powerful it brought tears to my eyes. For her, I had agreed to a vasectomy two years ago, a final, sterile punctuation mark on our decision. Now, it seemed, we could erase it.

The next day, my heart hammered against my ribs as I sat in Dr. Evans's office. The air smelled of antiseptic and stale coffee. I explained the situation, the sudden arrival of the twins, my wife's change of heart, my hope to reverse the procedure.

Dr. Evans pulled up my file, his brow furrowed in concentration. He was silent for a long time, tapping his pen on the desk. "Liam," he began, his voice low and serious, "a vasectomy reversal is one thing. But your file says something different." He turned the monitor toward me. "According to the surgical report from five years ago, you didn't just have a vasectomy. Your seminal vesicles were completely removed."

The words didn't make sense. "Removed? Why?"

"I don't know. It's a highly unusual procedure, typically only done in cases of severe cancer or disease, which you did not have," he said, looking at me with pity. "Liam, the removal of the seminal vesicles is irreversible. It leaves a man permanently infertile. You can never have biological children."

I drove home in a fog, the doctor's words echoing in the sterile silence of my car. Permanent. Irreversible. A lie. Sarah had told me it was a simple vasectomy. Why would she lie about something like that? The hope that had bloomed in my chest just yesterday now felt like a cold, heavy stone.

I walked into the house, the silence amplifying the ringing in my ears. I was heading for the stairs when I heard voices coming from the study. It was Sarah and her brother, David. Their words were sharp, angry. I stopped, pressing myself against the wall, my breath caught in my throat.

"You're insane, Sarah! You can't just bring them here," David hissed. "What about Liam? Does he know about Mark?"

"Liam will do what I say," Sarah's voice was cold, confident. "He loves me. He'll raise them as his own."

"Raise them? They're Mark' s kids! You secretly married him, for God's sake! Then you tricked your actual husband into getting his seminal vesicles removed so you could have them transplanted into your dying lover? That's monstrous!"

Each word was a physical blow. Transplanted. My seminal vesicles. In Mark. The pieces clicked into place with horrifying clarity. The lie about the surgery. The sudden arrival of the twins. The insistence they inherit our fortune. It wasn't for me. It was never for me.

Sarah confessed then, her voice breaking with a twisted sense of martyrdom. "Mark is dying! I owed him a life debt. He wanted children, and this was the only way. Liam's body was the means to an end."

I stumbled back from the door, my hand over my mouth to stifle a sob. I felt a wave of nausea so intense I thought I would be sick right there in the hallway. I retreated to my home office, my sanctuary, and locked the door. My hands shook as I looked around the room, at the pictures of Sarah and me on the wall. Our wedding, our vacations, our smiling faces. All of it a lie.

I saw the silver picture frame on my desk, a photo of us on our honeymoon, laughing on a beach in Hawaii. I picked it up, my thumb tracing her smiling face.

The woman I loved didn't exist. She was a phantom, a carefully constructed role played by this monster. With a sudden, violent surge of rage and grief, I grabbed a metal letter opener from my desk and smashed the glass. Shards flew across the polished wood. It wasn't enough. I took the photo out, carried it to the fireplace, and lit a match.

I watched her face blacken and curl into ash, the fire consuming the last remnants of the man I used to be. The loving, trusting husband was gone, burned away with the photograph.

Later that evening, Sarah knocked on the office door. "Liam? Are you okay? You missed dinner." Her voice was laced with that familiar, feigned concern. I didn't answer. The smell of ash still hung in the air, a bitter perfume.

She didn't knock again. She probably assumed I was sulking, that I'd get over it like I always did. But this time was different. The love I felt for her hadn't just died, it had been murdered. It lay in a heap of ashes in the fireplace, and I knew, with a certainty that chilled me to the bone, that our marriage was over. I wouldn't just divorce her. I would make her pay for what she had done to me.