Chapter 1
The Previous Life
Adrian Moore came to see me, with Amelia Rowe by his side.
He wore a pained expression. “The doctor said Amelia doesn’t have much time left. We should do everything we can to fulfill her last wishes.”
I looked down at the diagnosis—late-stage breast cancer.
Amelia’s eyes were swollen from crying. She took my hand, her voice trembling. “Elena, I fell in love with Adrian the first time I met him. We’ve always cared for each other, but we knew it was wrong, so we held back all these years.”
I felt sick. How could she say that so shamelessly—so self-righteously—about their affair?
“But now I’m dying,” she went on. “The doctor says I’ve got at most six months. Please… let me marry Adrian before I die. Let me be buried as his wife.”
Seeing my silence, Amelia cried even harder. “I know how kind you are, Elena. You’d never betray decades of friendship. That’s why Adrian and I came to ask you in person. You wouldn’t want me to die disappointed in you, would you?”
Adrian, clearly moved, pulled her into his arms, using guilt as his weapon. “Elena, you and Amelia grew up together. You’re practically sisters. She’s sick, and this is her only request—why can’t you be a little generous?”
Amelia cried so hard in his arms she almost passed out.
Adrian looked back at me, softened his tone, and said tenderly, “It’s just a piece of paper. You know my heart belongs to you.”
I believed him—and signed the divorce papers.
After they married, Amelia miraculously “recovered.” The two of them bragged to everyone that their love had moved God, creating a miracle.
Meanwhile, I discovered that Adrian had secretly transferred all our assets before the divorce. Even the house I lived in was under Amelia’s name, and the money in my accounts was gone.
When I begged him to come back, he kicked me down the stairs. I lay on the cold floor, barely breathing, while he looked down at me with icy contempt.
“If it weren’t for your family’s fortune, do you really think I’d have married a useless woman like you?”
Amelia stood beside him, glaring. “If you hadn’t taken my spot in college, would you have had the life you have now? For years, I’ve wanted to tear you apart for stealing what was mine!”
I called my son, Ryan Moore, begging him to come save me.
But Ryan said coldly that someone like me deserved to die—that I should just hurry up and disappear.
When I finally died in that freezing stairwell, they threw away my belongings like trash. Then they donated my organs, earning praise and admiration, becoming the perfect “model citizens.” Fame, money—they got it all.
Even after death, my soul couldn’t rest.
I followed Adrian and saw everything—how Amelia had hidden his own terminal cancer diagnosis, and how Ryan later married her daughter, living under her control.
When Adrian was left to rot in the hospital, covered in festering bedsores, screaming in agony until he died, not a single one of them came.
Later, Amelia and her daughter tricked Ryan into transferring all his assets to them—then kicked him out into the cold. He froze to death that winter.
And once again, Amelia and her daughter donated his organs and basked in fame and fortune.
