Chapter 1The 28th Floor Drop: Notes on a Crematorium

I’ve read countless stories about cheating husbands eventually crawling back, begging for forgiveness. I never thought I’d end up starring in one.

Except, my story didn't have the part where he begs. Just the part where everything burns.

Because I actually died.

I became a ghost, watching the man who betrayed me. Seven days after I passed, it was like a delayed reaction finally crushed him. Inside the house I could never go back to, he howled and wept, utterly broken.

You ask me how that felt?

I just stood there, blankly, savoring every inch of agony on his face. I listened intently to his desperate desolation over my departure.

Beneath the grim satisfaction and the heartbreak, a massive wave of schadenfreude surged within me. Joyful, ecstatic vindication.

It was a sharp, liberating thrill. I covered my mouth to stifled a laugh.

* * *

After dying, I became entirely certain that Julian had never truly loved me.

When the police called him to identify my body at the morgue, he actually thought I was pulling a sick prank with my friends. He thought it was my desperate way of forcing him to talk.

Because just minutes before, our final conversation had ended in disaster. I had screamed, I had raged, I had begged on my knees, and I had used the foulest language I knew to curse him.

By the end, we were both drained. With bloodshot eyes, I sat on the balcony railing, my legs dangling over the edge.

"Are you really going through with this divorce?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

He looked at me calmly. The first time I used suicide to threaten him, he had panicked. Now, his face held nothing but exhaustion.

"Are you done with the drama?" he asked.

I said quietly, "If you walk out that door today, I’m jumping."

He gave me one long, deep look, turned, and walked away.

The front door slammed with a deafening thud, shaking the apartment. Then, I heard the chime of the elevator.

I had staged many suicides.

The first time was three months after he initially asked for a divorce. It was our third wedding anniversary, which also happened to be his mistress's birthday. He wouldn't answer my calls.

Finally, I sent him a photo of an empty bottle of sleeping pills and turned off my phone.

He rushed back, looking frantic and disheveled. When he pushed the door open, I was sitting at the dining table in the dark. A lavish feast was laid out, a huge bouquet of roses between two flickering candles.

I smiled at him across the table. "Happy anniversary, Julian."

He was livid. He screamed that I was insane. He grabbed my arm, dragged me into the bathroom, and pinned me down, brutally ramming a toothbrush down my throat to make me purge.

I huddled over the sink, retching, while he kept cursing at me. "Where are the pills? How many did you take?"

I was a mess, but I started laughing. My voice was raw and raspy.

"I lied," I told him, looking up through my hair. "I didn't take anything."

I grabbed his sleeve, gripping it tightly. "Happy anniversary. I bought you a gift. Don't you want to see what it is?"

He looked down at me, his expression unreadable. Finally, looking utterly depleted, he pinched the bridge of his nose.

"I don't love you anymore, Sarah. Can't we just let each other go?"

Why should it be that easy?

We met in college. Fell in love. A seven-year romantic marathon, followed by three years of marriage. All my youth, all my love, was invested in this man. Now he tells me to "let go"? Over my dead body.

I was going to waste his life. I wanted that woman on the outside to remain a mistress, illegitimate and shameful, for the rest of her life.

So I looked at him tenderly and said the cruelest thing I could think of.

"Let you go? In your dreams."

He stared at me, unblinking. After that night, I could never track him down again.