A Dead Lover's Lingering Shadow

A Dead Lover's Lingering Shadow

Fishin' Floozy

5.0
Comment(s)
2.5K
View
10
Chapters

I was strapped to a bomb, pregnant and terrified, using my last moments to call the man I loved. But Arthur didn't send help; he hung up on me because his foster sister, Ivy, was "scared of a noise" outside her apartment. Ten minutes later, the explosion erased me and our unborn child from existence. My spirit didn't cross over. I was cursed to remain as a ghost, tethered to Arthur. I watched him block my number, convinced my silence was just a "jealous stunt." I watched him ignore my missing person report until he stood over my charred remains in the morgue, clutching the locket he gave me. His grief was agonizing, but the truth was worse. A year later, during a staged kidnapping meant to win him back, Ivy slipped up. She admitted she had orchestrated my murder to keep him for herself. As Arthur looked at her with pure hatred, the bond holding me to him finally snapped. But I didn't leave. A dark, cold force pulled me toward Ivy instead. My pain is over, but her nightmare is just beginning.

A Dead Lover's Lingering Shadow Chapter 1

She died betrayed. He lived in lies. Now, her ghost is bound to the one who let her die-until the truth sets her free, and a new haunting begins.

Chapter 1

Erykah Phelps POV:

The rough jute sack scraped against my bare arms, each movement a fresh burn. It was stifling hot, the air thick with the smell of dust and something metallic-an abandoned textile factory, just like the news said. My head throbbed. I tasted blood. Garth Figueroa, a name I' d only heard in Arthur' s whispered nightmares, was finally real. He stood over me, his face a roadmap of scars, a chilling grin twisting his lips.

"Hello, Erykah," he slurred, his voice raspy, like gravel grinding. "Heard you were carrying Arthur's little secret."

My stomach clenched. Fear, cold and sharp, pierced through the dull ache in my belly. How did he know? I hadn' t even told Arthur yet.

"He put me away for too long," Garth continued, circling me like a hungry shark. "Five years. Five years I thought about this. Thought about him. And then I thought about you." His gaze lingered on my midsection. "His weakness. His biggest regret, waiting to happen."

He gestured to a hulking figure next to him, who stepped forward. My eyes widened. He was holding something-a vest, thick and heavy, covered in blinking lights and wires. A small, digital display glowed red, counting down.

"This is going to be swift, baby," Garth chuckled. "But the message? That's going to last forever."

He shoved the vest onto me. The cold metal pressed against my skin, sending shivers down my spine. I tried to scream, but a gag was roughly shoved into my mouth, choking off the sound. The vest clicked into place, snug against my chest. The red numbers on the display burned into my vision. 9:58. My heart hammered against my ribs.

Garth leaned in close, his breath foul. "You tell Arthur Holmes that Garth Figueroa sends his regards. Tell him this is just the beginning." He wrenched the gag out. "Now, make the call." He shoved a burner phone into my trembling hand. "Call your detective. Tell him you need him."

My fingers fumbled with the cold plastic. Arthur. My Arthur. Hope, thin as a spider silk, tried to unfurl in my chest. He would come. He had to. I dialed his number, my thumb clumsy on the buttons. It rang once, twice.

"What do you want, Erykah?" Arthur's voice, clipped and impatient, blasted through the speaker. It wasn't the voice of someone worried. It was the voice of someone annoyed.

My breath hitched. "Arthur," I gasped, my voice raw, "I'm in trouble. I'm at the old textile factory-"

Garth snatched the phone, his grin widening. "Too slow, baby."

Arthur's amplified voice echoed from the phone, which Garth held just out of my reach. "Erykah, seriously? You couldn't pick a worse time. Ivy just heard a scary noise outside her apartment, and she's really shaken up."

My stomach dropped, not from fear of the bomb, but from the familiar, crushing weight of his dismissal. Ivy. Always Ivy.

"You know, this is exactly what I mean," Arthur' s voice continued, oblivious. "Always with the drama. Every time I try to focus on something important, you find a way to make it about you. Can't you just grow up?"

The red numbers on the device were now 9:15. Grow up? My life was ticking away, and he thought I was playing games.

"Arthur, please," I pleaded, tears stinging my eyes. "It's not a game. I'm-"

"No, you know what?" He cut me off again, his voice rising. "I'm done with this. Ivy needs me right now. She's my family. You need to understand that."

Then I heard it-a whimper, small and fragile, coming from Arthur's end. Ivy. Her weaponized incompetence, perfectly deployed.

"Arthur, who is that?" Ivy's voice, thin and reedy, floated through the phone. "Is it Erykah again? Is she still calling you even when I'm scared?"

"She's just being ridiculous, Ivy. Don't worry about it," Arthur said, his tone softening instantly when he spoke to her. "I'll handle it. You know I'd never choose anyone over you."

My heart shattered, pieces scattering like glass across the dusty floor. He hung up.

The line went dead, replaced by the eerie silence of the factory and the relentless countdown. 8:59.

Garth let out a low whistle. "Damn, Holmes. That's cold. Even for you." He looked at me, a strange flicker of pity in his eyes. "He really doesn't care, does he?"

He didn't. He never really did. That was the crushing truth. Garth and his cronies turned and walked away, their footsteps echoing into the gloom. I was left alone, strapped to a bomb, my world crumbling around me.

Tears streamed down my face, blurring the red numbers. It hurt worse than any rope burn, any blow. Arthur. My love for him had been a wildfire, consuming everything, leaving me hollowed out and charred. I had believed in us, in him. I had convinced myself that his strange loyalty to Ivy was just a leftover from a traumatic childhood, a brotherly bond. He' d spun tales of Ivy, his foster sister, his only family, a delicate flower who needed his protection. He called her fragile, susceptible to anxiety, prone to imaginary terrors. I bought it, all of it. I told myself it was empathy, not enabling.

But Ivy wasn't fragile. She was a master manipulator, pulling Arthur's strings with effortless ease. She was the "scary noise" outside her apartment, the "bad dream" that required Arthur to sleep on her couch, the "urgent plumbing leak" that canceled our anniversary dinner. Every manufactured crisis, every tearful phone call, chipped away at us, at me.

"She needs me more than you do, Erykah," he'd say, his eyes distant. "She's been through so much. You're strong. You get it."

I hated that. I hated being strong. It meant I was always the one left to pick up the pieces, while Arthur ran to Ivy' s side. Once, he missed our engagement party. Our engagement party. He was with Ivy, comforting her after she claimed to have seen a "shadow" in her apartment. He' d shrugged off my hurt. "It's just one party, Erykah. Ivy was genuinely terrified."

When I tried to set boundaries, to ask for just a sliver of the attention he lavished on Ivy, he'd snap. "You're jealous, Erykah. That's not a good look. Ivy is family. You're my girlfriend. There's a difference."

The difference was, she was his priority. I was an afterthought. The realization hit me now, with the force of a physical blow, stripping away years of self-deception. Arthur Holmes never loved me, not in the way I loved him. He loved the idea of me, perhaps. The comfort, the stability. But his heart, his attention, his unwavering loyalty-they belonged to Ivy.

The digital timer on the bomb flashed 8:03. I swallowed, the taste of blood in my mouth suddenly bitter, not from a physical wound, but from a deeper, more profound hurt. I pulled out my own phone, the one Garth hadn't taken. My thumbs, still trembling, typed out a message. One last message. To Arthur.

"I regret every second I wasted loving you. We are over. Don't look for me. Ever."

The screen glowed, then went dark. The silence was deafening, punctuated only by the relentless ticking. I closed my eyes, a single tear tracing a path through the grime on my face. The timer hit 0:00.

Continue Reading

Other books by Fishin' Floozy

More
The Secret Heiress Returns: Ruining My Cheating Husband

The Secret Heiress Returns: Ruining My Cheating Husband

Modern

5.0

I stood in the middle of the gala I had spent months curating, waiting for the perfect moment to tell my husband, Gabe, that he was going to be a father. Instead, I watched him place a possessive hand on the stomach of my best friend, Harper. A reporter nearby whispered the truth that stopped my heart: Harper was pregnant with Gabe’s child, and they were announcing it after the IPO. When I confronted him, Gabe didn't apologize. He looked at me with cold calculation and told me a scandal would ruin the company. Then came the ultimatum that shattered my soul. He wanted me to hide in the countryside, give birth in secret, and hand my baby over to his mistress to raise. "Don't be selfish," he said. "She needs this baby more than you do." When I refused, his mother had me dragged away and locked in my bedroom. My windows were sealed, and my own parents sold me out, releasing a statement that I had suffered a mental breakdown. I was trapped, starving, and waiting for them to induce labor so they could steal my child. But they made one fatal mistake. To keep me "calm," Gabe handed me my phone for five minutes. I didn't call the police; the Sullivans owned them. I dialed a number I had found in my adoption papers years ago. A number belonging to Anthony Dean, the most dangerous man on the East Coast. "They are going to kill my baby," I whispered into the receiver. The voice on the other end was low, terrifying, and promised absolute violence. "I'm coming."

He Sacrifice Me To Save His Stepsister

He Sacrifice Me To Save His Stepsister

Romance

5.0

The pain shot up from my tailbone. I lay at the bottom of the grand staircase, a warm, sticky wetness spreading beneath me. My baby. My unborn child. Footsteps thundered down the stairs. Jake, my husband, rushed past me without a glance. He went straight to my stepsister, Brooke, who was slumped against the wall, her face a mask of fake terror. "Brooke! Are you okay? Did she hurt you?" he asked, his voice filled with panic. He cradled her in his arms, then turned to me, his eyes cold and full of hate. "Ava Riley," he spat, "If I hadn' t lost my memory, there' s no way I would have ever married you." The words hit me harder than the fall. Brooke, nestled in his arms, looked at me with a triumphant smirk. She whispered to Jake about finding property for an art gallery to "heal." He immediately pulled out his phone, without even looking at me, lying in a pool of my own blood. The next day, Jake used his immense power to condemn my family' s historic art studio. My loving parents, trying to stop the demolition, were crushed and killed by falling debris. The news came to me in the sterile white of a hospital room, after I had already lost my child. It was all gone. Replaced by a cold, hollow emptiness. When I finally left the Miller mansion, carrying my parents' ashes, Jake' s friends snickered, thinking I' d crawl back. Jake sneered, "It' s just a pity play. She schemed her way into wealth. She' d never leave." They didn't see the black car waiting for me. They also didn't know my private jet was ready on the skyscraper rooftop. They thought I was a broken, penniless artist. They had no idea who I really was. And they had no idea what I was about to do.

His Greed, Her Triumph

His Greed, Her Triumph

Modern

5.0

My world shattered on a Tuesday afternoon while I was scrolling through a local city forum. An anonymous post popped up, short and alarming. "Warning to anyone dating a guy who hangs out at the 'Gilded Bean' café downtown. Overheard a man and a woman, 'Liam' and 'Chloe' , plotting something vile. They were talking about drugging his rich girlfriend, staging an 'accident' , and getting her money. He mentioned she' s a tech exec." Liam. My Liam. My breath caught. We went to the Gilded Bean all the time. The post described him: "He was wearing a very distinctive watch, a silver one with a dark blue face. Looked expensive." I bought him that watch for our one-year anniversary. A limited edition Zenith Chronomaster. There wasn' t another one like it in the city. Then the name Chloe sealed it. Chloe Davies. A girl from his past he always claimed to dislike, someone he called "trashy" and "desperate." My phone slipped from my numb fingers, clattering onto the hardwood floor of the apartment Liam and I shared. The shock was a physical blow. It couldn' t be real. Not Liam. Every sweet word, every tender touch, the way he looked at me with what I thought was love – it was all a lie. A carefully crafted performance. He wasn' t just planning to steal from me; he was planning to kill me. The thought of him using my trust to isolate me, making me feel secure while he sharpened the knife, made me sick. The man I loved didn' t exist. He was a monster, and I had invited him into every corner of my life. I wouldn' t be his victim. Liam Parker thought he was hunting a sheep; he was about to find out he had targeted a lioness. He wasn' t getting away with this. None of them were.

Eight Years, A Cruel Joke

Eight Years, A Cruel Joke

Romance

5.0

For eight years, I clung to Liam' s drunken promise, a joke he' d made at 14 that felt like a sacred vow. I transformed myself, chasing perfection for him, believing our 22nd birthday was finally our moment. But then, I overheard him plotting: our "promise" was a cruel lie, a scheme to get rid of me. He was in love with Sienna, planning a fake engagement and a rented baby to finally drive me away. My world shattered, reduced to nothing but the echoing laughter of his friends. Why was I always just an obstacle, a joke in his meticulously crafted life? I accepted an overseas scholarship, packed my bags, and burned every memory of him, ready to disappear. He publicly humiliated me, flaunting his engagement to Sienna at a charity gala. Then, when a planter fell, he shielded her, completely ignoring me as I lay bleeding on the floor. At my farewell party, he shoved me into a lake, leaving me to drown, just to protect Sienna. He chose her. Over his best friend. Over my life. My brother, Mark, came to my rescue, raging at Liam, but it was clear Liam felt no remorse. He claimed I was "unstable" and "obsessed," twisting every truth to fit his narrative. I left for New York, cutting all ties, determined to erase him from my life forever. Years later, Liam, broken and ruined by Sienna and her lover, Julian, desperately sought me out. He found me, happy and successful, with Alex-a man who truly valued me. I finally had the strength to tell him his apology meant nothing, that he was no longer my problem. The man who once dominated my every thought was now a pathetic stranger, utterly unimportant. I threw away his final, belated confession, a paper airplane of wasted love, into the New York sky. My journey from a broken girl to a celebrated architect, from chasing a false star to finding my own wings, was complete. I was finally free, soaring into a future he could never touch.

You'll also like

While I Was Bleeding Out, He Lit Lanterns For Her

While I Was Bleeding Out, He Lit Lanterns For Her

Katie Oettgen

As I lay on the floor of our manor, bleeding out from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, I used my last ounce of strength to call my husband, Cole. I begged him for help, my vision blurring. But the only thing I heard was the clinking of champagne glasses and his mistress's giggle in the background. "Stop the drama, June," Cole snapped, his voice cold. "We're about to go on stage. Don't call again." He hung up, leaving me to die alone on the Persian rug while he accepted an award with another woman on his arm. I woke up in the hospital days later. My baby was gone. They had removed my fallopian tube. Cole finally arrived, smelling of expensive scotch and his mistress's perfume. He didn't hug me. He didn't cry. Instead, he leaned over my hospital bed, pressing his knee into the mattress until my fresh stitches tore open and bled. "You embarrassed me by calling an ambulance," he hissed. "My mistress, Alycia, says you're faking it. Clean yourself up." He left me bleeding again to go announce a $10 million donation to Alycia's "groundbreaking" medical research. I stared at the TV screen, numb. The research Alycia was taking credit for? It was mine. I wrote that patent years ago under a pseudonym. They thought I was just a poor, orphan housewife who needed Cole's money to survive. They had no idea I was actually a billionaire scientist hiding my identity. I pulled the IV needle out of my arm. A drop of blood fell onto the divorce papers I had been hiding. I didn't wipe it off. I signed my name right over it. Then I walked into the bank, reactivated my dormant account with $128 million, and bought the penthouse directly overlooking Cole's house. The mourning widow is dead. The avenger is born.

No Longer Mrs. Cooley: The Architect's Return

No Longer Mrs. Cooley: The Architect's Return

Xiao Xiaosu

I went to the City Clerk’s office for a routine copy of my marriage license to finalize a trust fund audit. I expected a simple piece of paper, but the clerk’s pitying look told me my entire life was a lie. "The license was never finalized, Ms. Oliver. In the eyes of the state, you are single." The three-hundred-guest wedding at the Plaza and the Vogue features meant nothing. My husband, Gray Cooley, had intentionally filed the documents with a "procedural defect" so he could discard me without a legal divorce. Moments later, an iCloud invite titled "Our Little Secret" popped up on my screen. It was a photo of my best friend, Brylee, holding a positive pregnancy test at our Hamptons estate. Gray’s text to her was the final blow: "Happy anniversary, babe. This baby is the best gift. Once the trust unlocks today, we’re done with the charade." I soon discovered they were even stealing my career, reassigning my architectural masterpiece to Brylee while preparing my eviction notice. Gray's mother called me a "barren mule" in a leaked recording, mocking the infertility I suffered after saving Gray’s life in a construction accident. I wasn't a wife; I was a three-year placeholder used to secure his inheritance. How could the man I bled for treat me like a disposable prop? How could my best friend carry his child while pretending to comfort me through my darkest moments? The betrayal burned until it turned into a cold, hard stone of fury. I didn't cry. Instead, I walked into the penthouse of the Barretts, the Cooleys' most powerful rivals. I signed a marriage contract with Kane Barrett, the man the tabloids called the "Beast of Wall Street." "I want a wedding," I told his father, my voice steady and lethal. "Bigger than the one I had with Gray." If they wanted me gone, they would have to watch me become the woman who owns their world.

Too Late For Regret: My Billionaire Husband

Too Late For Regret: My Billionaire Husband

Chang An

I was twenty-five weeks pregnant, sitting on a cracked plastic chair at the hospital, when my billionaire husband looked me right in the eye and called me "it." Ellsworth didn't recognize his own wife in my tight coat and swollen ankles; he was too busy shielding his mistress, Jolie, from the "messy cleaning lady" in the hallway. "Just ignore it," he told his assistant as I struggled to stand. "Close the doors. We’re running late for the gala." He left me there with a high-risk pregnancy diagnosis and a prescription I couldn't afford, while he drove off in a Maybach with a woman who had meticulously stolen my entire identity. When I returned to our cold mansion, the nightmare continued. His grandmother treated me like a breeding animal, and the housekeeper tried to starve me because Ellsworth said my weight gain was "embarrassing" to the family name. I soon realized the sick truth: Jolie wasn't just his lover; she was a mimic, wearing my old clothes and using my old hair tutorials to play the role of the woman I was before the Banks family broke me. How could a man who once promised to love me now treat me like a stain on his perfect life? Why was he keeping me trapped in a guest room while parading a fake version of me around the city? They thought I was a broken, penniless ghost with nowhere to go, but they forgot I was once the sharpest financial mind of my generation. While Ellsworth was busy playing house with a replica, I was secretly accepting a fully funded PhD and auditing his illegal shell companies from the shadows of his own home. He thinks he can keep me trapped in this marriage just to secure his trust fund. He has no idea that I’m not just leaving—I’m going to burn his empire to the ground before the baby is even born.

Chapters
Read Now
Download Book
A Dead Lover's Lingering Shadow A Dead Lover's Lingering Shadow Fishin' Floozy Modern
“I was strapped to a bomb, pregnant and terrified, using my last moments to call the man I loved. But Arthur didn't send help; he hung up on me because his foster sister, Ivy, was "scared of a noise" outside her apartment. Ten minutes later, the explosion erased me and our unborn child from existence. My spirit didn't cross over. I was cursed to remain as a ghost, tethered to Arthur. I watched him block my number, convinced my silence was just a "jealous stunt." I watched him ignore my missing person report until he stood over my charred remains in the morgue, clutching the locket he gave me. His grief was agonizing, but the truth was worse. A year later, during a staged kidnapping meant to win him back, Ivy slipped up. She admitted she had orchestrated my murder to keep him for herself. As Arthur looked at her with pure hatred, the bond holding me to him finally snapped. But I didn't leave. A dark, cold force pulled me toward Ivy instead. My pain is over, but her nightmare is just beginning.”
1

Chapter 1

05/12/2025

2

Chapter 2

05/12/2025

3

Chapter 3

05/12/2025

4

Chapter 4

05/12/2025

5

Chapter 5

05/12/2025

6

Chapter 6

05/12/2025

7

Chapter 7

05/12/2025

8

Chapter 8

05/12/2025

9

Chapter 9

05/12/2025

10

Chapter 10

05/12/2025