The Final Return

For four years, I was a ghost in my own home, trapped in a loveless marriage to a man who despised me. The entire house smelled of lilies-the favorite flower of Hettie, his childhood sweetheart.

The day she came back into his life, he tossed divorce papers at me. He demanded my family's company as his compensation and announced that Hettie was carrying his child.

In a last, desperate attempt to hold on, I lied and told him I was pregnant, too.

He just laughed and called me a pathetic liar.

That night, he brought her to our home for dinner. He asked me not to wear my late mother's perfume because Hettie was allergic. He was asking me to erase the last piece of my mother for her.

Then I saw it. Around Hettie's neck was the diamond necklace Brady had given me for our first anniversary.

The doctors had already warned me that with my terminal illness, I didn't have much time left. That single, cruel act was the final blow. The last bit of love I had for the boy who once promised to protect me died completely.

I walked over to the table and calmly signed the divorce papers. Then, I picked up my phone.

Darcy, I said to my lawyer, my voice steady. "I'm transferring all of my shares to Brady Kennedy. Make it effective immediately."

Chapter 1

The scent of lilies filled the house.

It was a smell Karissa Simon had grown to hate. It clung to the curtains, the furniture, her clothes. It was the smell of Hettie Lindsey.

Brady Kennedy walked into the living room, his phone pressed to his ear. He didn't look at Karissa. He never did, not really.

"Yes, of course, they're your favorite," he was saying, his voice low and soft, a tone he never used with her. "The whole house will be full of them."

Karissa felt her throat tighten. It wasn't an allergy, but the familiar ache of a heart that had been ignored for four long years.

Our marriage wasn't born from love, but I had prayed it would grow into it. Four years ago, when my family's legacy, the Simon Group, was on the verge of ruin, the Kennedys didn't offer a bailout; they offered a wedding. I became the price of our survival.

I knew for Brady, this was a cage.

He looked at me not as his wife, but as the living embodiment of the deal that had shackled him. But I held on, fueled by the ghost of the boy I once knew-my brother's best friend, the one who promised to always protect me.

For four years, I've been trying to love the man he is now, hoping to find a flicker of the boy I fell in love with. I told myself this gilded cage was a home, and that my love would be enough to set us both free.

He hung up the phone. The silence that followed was colder than his voice had been.

"I need you to sign these," Brady said. He tossed a manila folder onto the marble coffee table. It slid across the polished surface and stopped just at the edge.

Divorce Papers.

The words were printed in stark, black ink at the top of the page.

Karissa stared at them. She'd known this was coming. Ever since Hettie, his childhood sweetheart, had resurfaced two months ago, this moment had been hanging over them, a guillotine waiting to fall.

"You got what you wanted, Karissa," he said, his voice flat and dripping with resentment. "Your family used this marriage to chain me down. Now the debt is paid. I'm taking what I'm owed. The Simon Group will be my compensation."

His words erased every sacrifice, every quiet effort she had made to be a good wife, to help him behind the scenes, hoping he would one day see her.

"I won't sign," she said, her voice barely a whisper. It was a reflex, the last plea of a dying hope.