By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

For two years, I endured agonizing chemo for my leukemia, believing my struggling family was sacrificing everything to save me.

But right before my surgery, I overheard my brother and mother whispering outside the door.

I didn't have cancer.

My family, who were actually billionaires in the Syndicate, had been secretly poisoning me.

They needed me weak and dying so my betrothal to the supreme Don could be transferred to their newly found biological daughter.

"Once the betrothal is transferred, I will find the best specialists to cure Clara," my brother said coldly.

But they didn't know I had already made my choice.

Thinking my treatments were starving them, I had just swallowed a vial of lethal, untraceable poison in the bathroom.

I died in excruciating agony on the operating table before they even made the first cut.

When the surgeon announced I had committed suicide, my family's world completely shattered.

My brother found my blood-stained suicide note and the meager cash I had saved to buy them gifts.

"We murdered our own daughter," my father sobbed.

My mother went completely insane, clutching my rotting corpse, while my brother slit his own wrists in a desperate attempt to feel my pain.

They kneeled before my grave, weeping and begging the heavens to let them protect me in the next life.

Floating above them as a ghost, I watched their absolute despair with a numb heart.

I harbored no hatred, but I knew one thing for certain.

In the next life, we will be nothing but strangers.