Chapter 1

The air in the grand hall was thick and heavy, smelling of old money and lilies. It felt like a funeral. In a way, it was.

My father stood before the fireplace, a titan of the tech world in a suit that cost more than a car. He looked at me and my twin sister, Emily, with an unreadable expression. He was always unreadable to me.

"The time has come," he announced, his voice echoing slightly in the cavernous room. "To secure the family' s legacy."

This was his bizarre obsession. Legacy. Not happiness, not love, but a name etched into the future. And this was his grand plan: the heir selection ceremony.

He gestured to two men standing on opposite sides of the room.

One was Alex. He was the "live" husband. A startup founder, bright-eyed and charismatic, but his company was struggling. He wore a rented suit that was just a little too tight in the shoulders. He looked nervous but kind.

The other was Liam. He was the "dead" husband. A tech prodigy, a genius who had burned out in a spectacular, public disgrace. Now he was in a coma, a beautiful, still figure in a state-of-the-art medical bed, kept alive by machines that hummed a quiet, constant rhythm.

The rules were simple and insane. One of us would marry the living, struggling startup founder. The other would be bound to the comatose prodigy. The choice, my father declared, belonged to Emily. It always did.

I watched her, my perfect, ambitious twin. She didn' t hesitate.

This was all a painful echo. I had lived this before.

In my first life, Emily' s ambition was a sharp, clear thing. She saw Alex, the startup founder, and saw potential for glory. She would mold him, use his charisma, and their union would be the talk of the town. She snatched him up without a second thought, leaving me with the silent man in the bed.

"I' ll take Alex," she had said, a triumphant smile on her face. "Sarah can have the sleeping beauty. She' s quiet enough for him."

Her life with Alex became a public performance. Endless, lavish parties designed to attract investors. Constant pressure from our father to produce an heir, a new link in the legacy chain. The pressure hollowed her out. The endless smiling, the networking, the desperate attempts to conceive drained the life from her eyes, leaving behind a brittle, glamorous shell. She had the glorious life she wanted, and it destroyed her.

My life was a secret. I discovered that Liam, my comatose husband, was faking. He was awake, his mind a razor-sharp weapon, hiding from the world and the consequences of his past. He made me a deal. My silence and assistance in his secret projects in exchange for wealth and power beyond my imagination.

I became a ghost, a behind-the-scenes powerhouse. I ran his shadow empire, moving billions of dollars, building and dismantling companies from a quiet room. The world saw Sarah Sterling, the reclusive philanthropist, the successful tech mogul who had miraculously turned her comatose husband' s remaining assets into a fortune. They didn't see the emotional scars, the constant fear, the trauma of living as a puppet for a ruthless, manipulative man. I had success, but I had no life.

Emily couldn' t stand it. Her own life was a gilded cage of misery, while mine, the one she had discarded, looked like a triumph. Her envy festered, growing into a poison that consumed her. She saw my success as a personal insult, a theft of the glory that should have been hers.

Consumed by jealousy, she orchestrated a hostile takeover of my company. She used our father' s resources and every dirty trick she could think of to ruin me, to take back what she felt was rightfully hers.

The corporate battle was brutal. It ended in tragedy. In her final, desperate move, she made a mistake that cost her everything. A car crash on a rain-slicked road. An ending as public and dramatic as the life she had lived.

I remember standing in the cold, sterile hospital room, looking at her broken body, and then...

I woke up.

I was back here, in the grand hall, with the scent of lilies and the hum of Liam' s life support machine filling the air. It was the day of the heir selection. The day it all began.

I looked at Emily. She was glowing, confident, the favored daughter about to make her claim. My heart pounded in my chest. This time would be different. This time, I knew the truth.

My father cleared his throat, pulling me back to the present. "Emily, the choice is yours."

Emily looked from Alex to Liam, a strange, knowing light in her eyes that I recognized with a sickening lurch. She knew. She remembered too.

She smiled at me, a slow, predatory smile that was nothing like the one from our first life. It was filled with a terrible, misplaced certainty.

"Sister," she said, her voice sweet as honey. "It' s my turn to enjoy the good life now."

She turned to our father, her chin held high. "I choose Liam."

A stunned silence fell over the room.

I looked at her, at her triumphant face, and a slow smile spread across my own lips. She thought she had found the secret. She thought Liam was the path to the immense wealth and power I' d possessed.

She had no idea.

She had just chosen the monster. And in doing so, she had handed me the true prize. The quiet, kind man in the ill-fitting suit. The man who was the real source of luck.

She had just set me free.