Part 1The Heart She Stole

My wife and I were the world’s greatest liars.

She lied and told me we were going for a routine check-up. In reality, she was harvesting my heart to save the love of her life.

I lied and told her I was going to a private sanitarium to clear my head. In reality, I left signed divorce papers on the counter and vanished to die alone.

It wasn’t until three years later, at her lover’s birthday gala, that my wife of four years finally remembered we shared the same birthday.

Feeling a rare moment of mercy, she ordered the leftover cake to be sent to the facility where she thought I’d been rotting for three years.

The nurse on the other end of the line was shocked:

"Ms. Thorne, didn't you know? Mr. Vance’s body rejected the trauma. He died three years ago."

Serena Thorne sneered, convinced I was playing another game. She dialed my number:

"Ethan, you better get your ass back here right now. Liam wants to see you."

Beside me, my mother heard my name. Blood tears streamed from her blind eyes:

"Are you a friend of Ethan’s? My son has been dead for three years."

* * *

"Where is Ethan Vance? Tell him to get out here! Now!"

"If he hadn't agreed to the surgery back then, do you think I’d ever set foot in this godforsaken trailer park?"

Serena Thorne, fresh from a board meeting in the city, kicked open the rusted door of my childhood home.

My mother, who was carefully wiping dust off a framed photo, turned around.

Because we couldn't afford treatment back then, her eyes had healed into two terrifying, hollow pits.

She reached out, her hands trembling as she felt for her white cane.

"Is that... is that Serena? Are you back from work?"

Serena scanned the room, her gaze colder than the winter wind blowing through the cracks.

"Where is he? I don't have time for hide-and-seek."

Mom froze, her hand hovering over the cane.

"You're not Serena. Who are you? Are you Ethan's friend? Ethan... he passed away."

Mom’s voice cracked, wet with grief.

Serena let out a cruel, sharp laugh.

"Did Ethan tell you to say that? Three years of silence, and now he’s playing dead?"

"If he doesn't come out, tell him not to bother showing his face to me ever again!"

As you wish, Serena. I really won't appear again...

Mom gripped her cane until her knuckles turned white.

"Ethan is gone. He died three years ago..."

Serena looked around the room.

She spotted the photo Mom had been cleaning. It was a funeral portrait—me at twenty-five, smiling, full of life.

"He even photoshopped a funeral portrait to make me feel guilty? I don't find it sad; I find it disgusting!"

"Don't touch Ethan's picture! Give it back!"

Mom stumbled forward to grab it. Because she couldn't see, she tripped and fell hard onto the floorboards.

I instinctively reached out to break her fall.

But my hands passed right through her trembling body.

It hit me again. I was dead.

I had been dead for three years.

Serena kicked Mom's cane away.

She smashed the picture frame onto the floor.

My twenty-five-year-old smile shattered into a thousand pieces.

"Tell him to come out. Stop wasting my time!"

Mom crawled through the glass shards, frantically feeling for my photo.

Her hands were cut and bleeding.

My heart—or the phantom of it—was being crushed in a vice.

I tried to grab her hands, to stop her, but I was nothing but air.

After her bodyguards tore the small house apart and found nothing, Serena turned her rage back to my mother.