Choosing The Imposter Over His Dying Wife

My fiancée sacrificed five years of her life to save my family, falling into a deep coma.

But when she finally woke up, I didn't greet her with love. I greeted her with pure hatred.

Convinced by my mistress, Hailie, that Ericka was a traitor faking her illness for sympathy, I became her tormentor.

When she told me she had stage four cancer, I laughed and accused her of manipulation.

I locked her in a freezing safe house.

I forced her into a sauna until her skin blistered, then doused her failing lungs with ice water.

I dragged her out of the hospital to kneel in the rain until she collapsed.

Even when she fell from a balcony, broken and bleeding, I let my men beat her.

I watched her waste away, believing every one of Hailie's lies over Ericka's desperate truths.

It wasn't until I saw her cold, blue body on the rocks below the cliffs that the truth finally shattered me.

The autopsy confirmed the cancer I mocked was real.

A hidden recording revealed Hailie had framed her all along, admitting she treated me like a dog on a leash.

I realized I had tortured the woman who saved my life until she bought her own grave just to escape me.

I burned Hailie alive at Ericka's funeral, but death was too easy a punishment.

I lived in agony, a scarred monster praying for the end.

But when I finally closed my eyes in the fire, I didn't die.

I heard a beep.

I opened my eyes, and the date on my phone was three years ago.

The day Ericka woke up.

Chapter 1

Ericka POV

I sacrificed five years of my life to the void to save the heir of the Chicago Outfit. But when I finally clawed my way back to the surface, I wasn't greeted as a savior.

I was looked at like a mistake that had the audacity to survive.

The hospital room smelled of antiseptic and expensive lilies—the scent of a funeral, not a recovery.

My body felt heavy, anchored by lead instead of blood.

I tried to speak, but my throat was lined with sandpaper.

"She's awake," a voice said.

It wasn't my mother.

It wasn't my fiancé, Caleb.

It was a woman I didn't recognize.

My vision blurred, then sharpened into cruel focus.

Standing at the foot of my bed was a petite brunette with doe eyes and a trembling lip, clutching my mother’s hand.

My mother, Beverley Reid, the Matriarch of the Outfit, looked at me.

There were no tears of joy.

There was only a tight, inconvenienced line where her smile should have been.

"Ericka," my father, Franklin, said from the corner. His voice was the same gravelly baritone that commanded armies of soldiers, but it was stripped of all warmth.

"You're back."

It sounded like an accusation.

I looked around the room, desperate for a familiar anchor.

Then I saw him.

Caleb Skinner.

The Underboss. The man who