Chapter 5

How can the living compete with a ghost?

When Daisy learned the truth, she didn't scream. She gnashed her teeth, her voice a low, trembling hiss, and branded me a murderer.

Then she aborted our child.

Her mind unraveled. In two weeks, she withered into someone I barely recognized—gaunt, hollow-eyed, a ghost wearing her skin.

Guilt consumed me. I tried to turn myself in to the police. Multiple times. They always sent me back. Everyone ruled it an accident.

But the fact remained.

James Delgado was dead because of me.

Sleep became impossible. Food tasted like ash. I wasted away to skin stretched over bone.

Daisy forced me to kneel before James's tombstone for an entire day. She broke down, screaming, demanding to know why I'd gone to see him.

Why. Why. *Why.*

I took her abuse in silence. I deserved it.

Six months later, Daisy finally went quiet.

Her voice was dry as dead leaves when she spoke. Thick with hatred.

"I want a divorce."

I refused.

She didn't argue. Just smiled—a cold, brittle thing—and walked away.

After that, she stopped hiding. She flirted openly with other men. Worse, she used every method imaginable to throw women at me, hoping to catch me cheating so she could sue for divorce.

I held the line. Clung to the delusion that we could go back to the way things were.

Reality slapped me hard.

Over three years, Daisy drugged me forty-nine times.

Forty-nine different women shoved into my bed.

On the fiftieth attempt, I finally signed the divorce papers.

I was tired.

I didn't want to fight anymore.

When I opened my eyes, fluorescent lights glared down at me from a hospital ceiling.

Daisy stood at my bedside. Her voice was stripped of everything—emotion, warmth, humanity. "The surgery was a success. Rest. Once the cooling-off period ends, we finalize the divorce."

She turned and walked out.

Didn't look back.

I touched the bandage on my abdomen and closed my eyes. The pain was distant, muffled, like it belonged to someone else.

I spent the next month recovering in silence.

On the day we received the official divorce certificate, Daisy let out a long breath. A bright smile—one I hadn't seen in years—broke across her face.

At the airport boarding gate, my younger sister sucked on her finger, confusion clouding her innocent eyes. "Brother, where is Sister-in-law?"

I smiled and patted her head. "Brother doesn't have a wife anymore, sweetie. And you don't have a sister-in-law."

Before boarding, I made one final call.

My voice was calm. Steady.

"Daisy. Thank you for pulling me out of the abyss all those years ago."

"Thank you for loving me once. I loved you deeply, too."

"But from today on, I don't owe you or James Delgado anything."

I hung up. Pulled the SIM card from my phone. Dropped it in the nearest trash can.

...

On the other end of the line, Daisy stared at the dead screen.

A strange melancholy settled in her chest. Heavy. Inexplicable.

The office door burst open. Her secretary stumbled in, breathless, face pale.

His words struck her like lightning.

"Ms. Gilbert... Mr. Delgado—he seems to be alive! He didn't die!"