Chapter 1

Three years after my supposed death, my CEO ex-husband, Ethan Hayes, served me with a legal notice.

I floated beside him as he signed the papers, his jaw tight with anger. The lawsuit claimed the kidney I had donated to his new fiancée, Olivia Reed, was defective. It was absurd. It was impossible. But Ethan believed it.

"Find her," he ordered his assistant. "I don' t care what it takes."

To force me out of hiding, he did something public, something loud. He called a press conference and announced he was transferring twenty percent of his company shares to Olivia. The news was everywhere. He thought the money, the sheer spectacle of it, would be enough to make me reappear.

I didn' t. Because I couldn' t.

When weeks passed with no response, his frustration grew into a cold fury. He drove to my childhood home, the one place he knew held my deepest memories.

He pounded on the door, the sound echoing in the quiet neighborhood.

My younger sister, Chloe, opened it. Her face, once bright and full of life, was now etched with a permanent sadness. She looked at Ethan with pure hatred.

"What do you want?" she asked, her voice flat.

"Where is she?" Ethan demanded, pushing past her into the small living room. "Tell Ava to stop playing games. This has gone on long enough."

Chloe looked at him as if he were insane. "Ava is dead. She died two years ago."

Ethan let out a short, harsh laugh. "A trick. That' s all this is. Another one of her desperate plays for attention."

He looked around the familiar room, his eyes cold and dismissive. He remembered the last time he' d seen me, the day I' d apparently tried to assault his precious Olivia. He remembered freezing my credit cards, cutting me off completely as punishment.

"Tell her Olivia' s kidney is failing," he said, his voice dripping with false magnanimity. "Tell her I' m willing to forgive her, but she needs to come out and take responsibility."

Chloe' s hands clenched into fists. "She is dead, you monster! How can you not understand that?"

Just then, a flash of brown fur caught Ethan' s eye. Buster, my old dog, limped out from the kitchen. His tail gave a weak thump against the floor.

"See?" Ethan said, a triumphant sneer on his face. "There' s the dog. She must be hiding in the back."

But Buster wasn' t the same. He was old and frail. His back leg dragged, a permanent limp from an injury Ethan himself had inflicted years ago. As he got closer to Ethan, the dog started to tremble, a low whine escaping his throat. He looked past Ethan, directly at me, and his whine grew more desperate.

I drifted towards him, my spectral hands reaching out to comfort him. I wanted to soothe his shaking, to tell him I was here. But my fingers passed right through his fur. He couldn' t feel me. He could only sense my presence, a distressing ghost in a house full of grief. I was nothing more than a painful memory.

The realization hit me again, as it did every day. I was dead. I was gone.

Ethan, still completely oblivious, scoffed at the dog. "Pathetic animal." He turned his glare back to Chloe. "I heard she was cheating on me. Is that why she ran away? Couldn' t face the shame?"

A pain, sharp and deep, tore through my soul. It wasn' t a physical pain, but an agony of the spirit. After everything, this is what he thought of me. This was the man I had loved, the man I had died for.

My older brother, Liam, suddenly appeared in the doorway, his face dark with fury. Chloe rushed to his side.

"He won' t listen," she sobbed. "He thinks she' s hiding."

Liam stared at Ethan, his eyes burning. "The money you gave our family... that wasn' t charity. That was part of the price Ava paid. Every cent was her sacrifice."

My spirit twisted in anguish. I wanted to scream the truth at him. I wanted him to know that I only ever had one kidney. It was a secret I had kept my whole life, a vulnerability Olivia had discovered and used against me. She had convinced him I was the perfect donor, knowing a single kidney transplant was a death sentence for me.

I relived the horror of it. The cold operating table. The doctors, their faces hidden by masks, their words a low murmur. I had been awake. They hadn' t given me enough anesthesia. I felt the scalpel, a searing line of fire across my skin. I felt them remove my only kidney, a brutal, hollow emptiness left in its place. I died a week later from the infection, alone in a sterile room, while Ethan was celebrating with Olivia.

"Just go to the hospital!" Chloe pleaded, her voice cracking. "Look for her death certificate! You' ll see!"

Ethan' s lips curled into a cruel smile. "I already called the hospital. They said she was discharged a week after the surgery. She walked out on her own two feet."

My spirit recoiled in horror. He had believed them. He had believed the lies Olivia paid them to tell. He never once questioned it. He never once came to see me.

Liam took a menacing step forward. "Get out of my house."