Chapter 2The Dead Husband's Secret: A Widow's Vengeance

"Ms. Sterling, there's some psycho stalking the property, trying to record you on her phone."

The world spun dizzily as three men in black suits pinned me face-down into the muddy grass.

I fought to open my eyes, blinking through the blood dripping down my forehead, and watched Marcus and the young woman walk toward me under the umbrella.

I stared dead into Marcus's eyes, desperately looking for a single flicker of panic or guilt.

But there was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

"Honey, what's going on?"

"She looks terrifying. Why was she staring at us?"

The third wife, the young Ms. Sterling, shrank timidly into his chest.

Marcus's voice drifted down from above, his tone completely flat, devoid of a single ripple of emotion.

"Probably just some escaped lunatic from the psych ward down the street looking for a handout."

"Don't be scared, baby. Don't let her ruin your view."

He turned to his guards. "Break her leg and throw her in the city dump."

The bodyguard didn't hesitate. He swung a solid steel baton directly down onto my calf.

My bloodcurdling scream tore through the rain, and I passed out from the excruciating pain.

When I woke up, it was the dead of night.

I was surrounded by the nauseating, suffocating stench of rotting garbage and sewage.

My phone screen had been stomped into a shattered spiderweb.

My lower leg was swollen and twisted, the agonizing pain making every breath taste like copper.

I couldn't die.

I absolutely refused to die quietly in a pile of garbage.

Gritting my teeth, I fell and dragged myself back up, over and over again.

Dragging my broken leg, I crawled and limped through the torrential rain for two grueling hours.

It wasn't until my shattered phone finally caught a sliver of cellular signal that I managed to call a ride back to the small apartment my parents had left me before I got married.

But when I pulled out my keys and shoved them into the lock, they wouldn't turn.

The locks had been changed.

I stumbled backward in shock.

As the motion-sensor lights in the hallway flickered on, I noticed a pile of cardboard boxes and junk dumped in the corner near the stairs.

Sitting at the very top of the trash pile, discarded like garbage, were the framed memorial portraits of my deceased parents.

"Look who finally showed up."

The sharp click of high heels echoed as the front door swung open. Vanessa and my mother-in-law, Martha, stepped out of my apartment.

Martha was holding a legal document stamped with a bright red thumbprint.

"Vanessa! What the hell are you doing in my house?! My parents left this place to me!"

Vanessa took a step back in dramatic disgust and shot Martha a look.

Martha immediately shoved the document—a Voluntary Property Transfer Agreement—right into my face.

"Open your blind, pathetic eyes!"

"Hahaha! When you signed that asset forfeiture at the funeral yesterday, you signed this apartment over to Vanessa entirely free of charge!"

Looking at the document, my blood ran cold.

They had slipped that page into the stack of joint-asset waivers.

They had exploited the moment when my mind was completely shattered and broken with grief at the funeral to trick me into signing away my home!

"This is fraud! I'm calling the cops!" I screamed, my voice hoarse and raw.

"Call them! Go ahead and call them!"

Vanessa stepped forward and intentionally planted her designer heel directly onto the glass frame of my mother's portrait. The glass shattered instantly.

She leaned in, mocking me in a whisper only the two of us could hear.

"Go tell them you were 'tricked' into signing it."

"Let's see if my uncle, the District Attorney, believes a legally binding document with your signature on it, or a mentally unstable, raving widow?"

The commotion in the hallway had woken up the neighbors.

Doors cracked open as older tenants peeked their heads out.

Martha immediately threw herself onto the floor, slapping her thighs and wailing theatrically.

"Look at this, everyone! Look at this vicious, rotten woman!"

"She was out sleeping with other men, racked up millions in loan shark debt, and drove my poor son so crazy he got into a fatal car crash!"

"And now she has the nerve to come back begging for money! My poor, poor boy! He can't even rest in peace!"

"Oh, so that's what happened..."

"She looked so quiet and polite, too. Cheating on her husband... how shameless."

"People like her don't deserve to breathe. She should just go drop dead."

The disgusted glares and vile whispers from the neighbors felt like needles piercing my back.

Right then, Vanessa's six-year-old son ran out of the apartment.

He pulled a massive water gun out of his backpack and started blasting me with water.

I didn't dodge.

Instead, amidst the chaotic shoving, I faked a collapse, falling weakly at the boy's feet.

Using the distraction, I slipped a micro-listening device—which I had originally bought to plant in the mansion—directly into the side pocket of his backpack.

I decided to retreat for now and head to the ER to get my leg treated.

The real war was just about to begin.