Haunted By The Wife He Lost

My husband, Jacob, swore to be my shield after my family's empire collapsed and I survived a fifteen-day kidnapping hell. I saw him as my savior, loving him with a desperation born from trauma.

Then his intern, Ema, entered our lives. When I became pregnant, he used her lies to call me "tainted" from my past and demanded I abort our child, the shock causing me to miscarry.

The final blow came during an explosion at our training grounds. He shoved me aside to shield Ema with his body.

"She's carrying my child," he said, his voice like ice. "You're expendable."

He left me to burn, promising a rescue team he never intended to send.

But he didn't know about the secret escape route, or my brother's plan. I faked my death, letting him find my "body" in the morgue.

He thought he had created a ghost. Now, he's about to find out you can't catch one when she's already free.

Chapter 1

Eloise Stephenson POV:

The world thought I was dead. They grieved, they speculated, they moved on. But I wasn't just dead; I was reborn, leaving a trail of ash and a legacy of vengeance.

My funeral was a spectacle. Jacob made sure of it. A lavish, heartbreaking affair that painted him as the grieving widower, a man broken by loss. They said he looked so lost, so utterly devastated, standing there in his bespoke suit, eyes shadowed by a grief that wasn't real. My brother, Hal, was there too, his face a mask of stone, knowing the truth. He watched Jacob, a quiet fury burning behind his eyes.

Later, in the quiet of his mansion, Jacob would hold the ornate urn I was supposedly in. He' d trace the cold metal with a finger, whispering my name into the empty air, then slide into bed with it beside him. The media called it devotion. I called it perversion. A twisted tribute to a ghost he thought he' d created. How ironic.

A year later, the scent of salt and freedom was in my hair. I swayed to the rhythm of a live band in a bustling European beach club, the kind of place where neon lights kissed ancient stone. My dress, barely there, caught the breeze, and a laugh bubbled up from deep inside me, light and genuine. A laugh I hadn' t known I still possessed.

A man, tanned and handsome, with eyes the color of the Aegean Sea, took my hand. His touch was warm, innocent. He pulled me closer, his lips brushing my ear as he whispered something in Italian I didn't quite catch but understood anyway. I leaned into him, my body fluid, unbound. This was my life now. Free. Alive.

Across the crowded dance floor, through the haze of colored lights and pulsating music, a pair of eyes locked onto me. They were Jacob' s eyes, even from this distance. Wide, disbelieving, sober. The music seemed to mute, the laughter around me