Chapter 1

A year ago, my husband’s first love was kidnapped.

I was her bodyguard. When I went to rescue her, she trapped and tortured me instead.

To cover her tracks, she disfigured me with sulfuric acid and sank me in a lake.

Then she claimed I had plotted with her kidnapper to hurt her before running away with him.

My husband called me a depraved, vicious whore.

Afterward, she offered a huge reward for finding me, using it as an excuse to air every filthy lie about me.

Looking wounded, she said, “Claire, I forgive you. Haven’t you played with people’s feelings long enough? It’s time to come home.”

My husband held her close, aching over how kind she was.

After that, everyone knew me as a whore.

But a year later, when my husband—a man with severely impaired sperm motility—discovered that the pregnant corpse on his autopsy table was mine, he completely fell apart.

A new body arrived in the autopsy room.

Ryan, the intern, fought the stench filling the room and kept sighing over the remains.

“Her face is completely gone! Her flesh is peeling away, her eyes have been eaten away, and her tongue’s been severed. What kind of psychopath did this woman run into? How could anyone do this to her?”

I looked at my rotting body. My stomach twisted, and the pain of my final moments seemed to swallow me all over again.

Ethan Hayes calmly pulled on his gloves. As he began the autopsy, he explained his findings to Ryan.

“There’s extensive tissue destruction and multiple fractures. Adipocere has formed on the remains. Preliminary estimate puts her death at about a year ago.”

I floated in the air, staring at him.

We hadn’t seen each other in a year. I had never imagined that death would stand between us when we met again.

Ethan cut away the few scraps of clothing left on me and examined them.

“Based on the fabric fragments and skeletal structure, the victim appears to be female.”

Ryan gently brushed a gloved hand over my battered body, his expression full of pity. “A woman… There’s extensive blackening across her face and body. Someone probably poured sulfuric acid on her while she was alive. I can’t imagine how much pain she was in—how hopeless she must have felt when they threw her into the water after torturing her.”

“Where was she recovered?” Ethan asked quietly.

Ryan answered without thinking. “Westhaven Lake. The same place where that incident with Claire happened.”

Everything that had happened before my death flashed through my mind.

I didn’t understand why Ethan had never looked for me. Not once.

Maybe my need for an answer was what had kept me from fading away.

Once my body was recovered, I finally broke free of whatever had held me there. All I wanted was the truth!

Ryan immediately fell silent. Startled, he pressed a hand against the body and hurried to apologize. “Ethan, I didn’t mean to bring up something painful. I promise I won’t mention Claire again—”

Ethan frowned and pushed him aside.

He had just noticed an unusual swelling in the corpse’s abdomen.

Carefully, he made a horizontal incision with his scalpel. Two slick, dark-red fetuses appeared.

An even fouler wave of decay filled the room.

Ryan finally lost his composure. “Holy shit! She was pregnant! What kind of monster did this? What could possibly make someone kill a mother and both her babies? Ethan, we have to get justice for them!”

Suppressing a strange uneasiness, Ethan nodded. “If no one comes forward to claim them, I’ll pay for a proper burial. All three of them.”

Ryan looked deeply moved.

I stared at Ethan for a long moment. He had never been the type to get involved in anything that didn’t concern him.

Had he sensed something?

If he knew these were his two children, would he have been the most loving father in the world?

As though remembering something happy, Ethan spoke gently. “Vanessa and I have a daughter. She’s over four now. Once you’re a parent, you understand that these little ones were lives, too. I just want every child to be treated with kindness.”