Part 2She Laughed At My Real Corpse

My soul followed Chloe into the house.

I stood in the corners of my own home, watching her and Brady live as husband and wife.

They shared coffee in the mornings. They tangled their limbs together at night.

Once, I watched Brady carry a heavily intoxicated Chloe through the front door. A visceral, territorial jealousy flared up inside me, and I glared at him, wishing I could tear him apart.

But then I remembered Chloe's sharp slap to my face years ago, her voice ringing in my ears:

"Brady and I are just childhood friends! Only someone with a filthy mind would see something dirty in that!"

But... do friends sleep in the same bed? Do friends kiss each other with that kind of desperate hunger when no one else is looking?

Under the warm glow of the living room lamps, Chloe meticulously ironed Brady’s suit for the next day, folding it neatly over the back of the sofa.

She looked like the perfect, devoted wife.

That used to be my job.

Before every gala, every board meeting, I would lay out her dresses. I would curate her jewelry, making sure every diamond and pearl perfectly complemented her mood.

Chloe had always dismissed my efforts with a scoff.

"You can take the boy out of the trailer park, but he still acts like the help," she used to mock me to her friends. "He calls himself a Montgomery, but he has the soul of a butler."

Yet here she was, doing the exact same 'servant's work' for Brady, and looking at him like he hung the moon.

I guess that was the difference between being tolerated and being loved.

Brady took her hands, bringing her knuckles to his lips for a soft kiss.

Chloe closed her eyes, letting out a contented sigh.

"Brady, I'm coming with you to the Montgomery estate tomorrow," she whispered fiercely. "You are the true son of that family. No one is going to take that from you anymore. I'll stand by you while you take back everything that belongs to you."

Watching her declare her absolute loyalty, I caught a fleeting, calculating shadow cross Brady’s face.

I suddenly remembered how it all started.

For twenty-something years, Brady was the pampered, adored heir to the Montgomery fortune.

Until the day I was found in a dusty Appalachian town and brought back to the sprawling Boston estate.

I remembered the look of profound disappointment in my biological parents' eyes when they saw me in my faded flannel and scuffed boots. They couldn't believe this rough, quiet mechanic was their actual flesh and blood.

That afternoon, Brady had dramatically packed his bags, standing in the foyer with tears in his eyes.

"I know we don't share the same blood," he had told my parents, his voice breaking perfectly. "But I've been a Montgomery my whole life. Even if you cast me out, I will always pray for your health and happiness."

We had been switched at birth.

The rundown farmhouse I grew up in—the one with the leaky roof and the endless chores—was where Brady truly belonged. Tom and Mary O’Connor were his parents.

But when the Montgomerys looked at me, their eyes begging me to be the bigger person, I caved.

"If you want him to stay, let him stay," I had said, shifting uncomfortably in my cheap sneakers. "Having two sons to take care of you isn't a bad thing."

I meant it back then.

But I regretted it almost immediately.

Because Brady became a ghost that haunted my life, a shadow I could never escape, especially when it came to Chloe.

At every high-society event, every charity gala, the moment Brady walked into the room, Chloe's eyes would lock onto him like a magnet. Standing beside her, I—the actual heir to the Montgomery dynasty—faded into a pathetic, invisible joke.

Chloe opened her eyes, her gaze practically overflowing with adoration.

"It was always supposed to be you," she told Brady, her voice thick with emotion. "We grew up together. You were the one I was supposed to marry. If that redneck hadn't shown up and ruined everything, we would be married by now. We would have kids."

Her face hardened. "He stole my future. But it's not too late. I'm going to divorce him, Brady. I'll drag him out of hiding and force him to sign the papers, and then we can finally be together."

They stared into each other's eyes, the air between them growing thick and heavy.

Soon, the quiet whispers turned into heavy breathing.

Watching them tear at each other's clothes on the rug of my living room, I closed my eyes and let out a bitter, silent laugh.

I always knew she didn't love me.

Her marriage contract was forged with the Montgomery heir. When my identity was revealed, she was legally bound to me.

She was Boston royalty—cold, brilliant, and breathtakingly beautiful. I was a grease monkey who didn't know which fork to use at dinner. How could I ever expect her to love me?

I was so naive. I used to tell myself that if I just loved her hard enough, if I was patient and kind, year after year, maybe, just maybe, she would eventually look at me and smile.

I was so incredibly wrong.

When Chloe was assaulted, her parents had come to me. The aristocratic, untouchable Lynn family had fallen to their knees on my hardwood floor, weeping.

"Please, Holden," her father had begged. "Chloe is too proud. Her mind is shattered. If she knows she was taken by random thugs, she'll kill herself. She has completely blocked out the real attackers!"

"If you just confess," her mother sobbed, clutching my pant leg. "If you let her believe it was you... her anger will keep her alive. She'll have someone to hate. Please... it's the only way she survives this."

Human nature is inherently selfish.

If I confessed to a crime I didn't commit, my life was over. I would be a pariah, a monster in the eyes of the world.

I told them no.

But I underestimated the depths of my own family's betrayal.

When I went to the Montgomery estate for help, my father locked himself in his study and refused to look at me. My mother threw herself on the floor, weeping hysterically, before swallowing a handful of sleeping pills right in front of me.

As she was being pumped full of charcoal in the ER, she confessed the sickening truth.

The attack on the yacht hadn't been random.

Brady had gambling debts. He had made a deal with the mercenaries, giving them the security codes to the yacht. It was his fault the pirates boarded.

"I raised Brady," my mother wept, clutching my hands with a desperate, bruising grip. "I love him more than my own life. If he goes to federal prison for this, Holden... I will kill myself. I swear to God, I will die."

Cornered by the people who brought me into the world, suffocated by the tears of the family I had married into, I broke.

I took the plea deal. I "confessed."

And I died for it. I paid for their sins with my blood, dying alone in a country where I didn't even speak the language.

If my body hadn't been deported by a bureaucratic technicality, my soul would have been lost in the dark forever.

I tried to find comfort in the finality of it.

I'm dead, I told myself. The truth is buried with me. Chloe will never know, and so she will never have to bear the pain of reality.

But the phantom knife in my chest kept twisting.

After the "incident," Chloe had developed a severe psychological block. Her doctors called it trauma-induced delusion. Her subconscious had actively rewritten the narrative, turning me into the ultimate villain so she didn't have to face the chaotic, senseless horror of what actually happened.

Her parents enabled the delusion.

My parents endorsed it.

I did nothing wrong. I loved her perfectly.

But the world decided that sacrificing Holden O’Connor was the easiest way to keep everyone else's lives immaculate.

During the private hearings, Chloe hired a ruthless legal team to crucify me.

But the American judges weren't blind. The evidence was circumstantial, the forensics didn't match, and her case was thrown out repeatedly.

Frustrated by the law, the two families pooled their vast resources. They used offshore connections, pulled political strings, and had me illegally extradited and thrown into that South American hellhole.

My parents personally flew down to see me handed over to the guards.

On that final day, my mother touched my face, her eyes brimming with sorrow. "Just hold on, sweet boy. Three years. We'll bring you home, and you'll go back to being a Montgomery."

My father patted my shoulder awkwardly. "Adversity builds character, son. I took my lumps building the empire. A few years roughing it won't kill you."

As the heavy iron gates slammed shut, I saw Brady standing by the black SUV, waiting for them.

He turned his head and looked at me.

It was just one look.

But it was entirely composed of arrogant, sneering triumph.

He had stolen my parents. He had stolen my wife.

And he left me to be devoured by the monsters in the dark.

And everyone lived happily ever after. Because the right person had been sacrificed.