Secrets we buried

Chapter 2-- Revenge.

The sound of the beeping machine was the first thing I remember hearing.

“Oh my God, she’s awake!”

A man’s voice pierced through the fog in my head. My heart thumped. Awake? Was I supposed to be dead? Why did that word sound like both a blessing and a curse? I tried to open my eyes, but they felt sewn shut, a weight pressing them closed.

“Don’t struggle,” the voice said again, calmer this time.

“The bandages and facelift are still in place.”

Facelift? My chest tightened. Where was I?

In my head, I asked the question, but before I could even form words with my lips, he answered, as if plucking thoughts straight out of my mind.

“You’re in Virginia.”

Virginia? My mind screamed. That was miles away from my home in Baltimore, Maryland. What was I doing here? Why did everything feel so far, so foreign? Memories flickered—sharp, burning fragments. The car. The thick smoke. The fight to breathe. The ashes clawing at my throat. I gasped. My lungs betrayed me, pulling in air that tasted like fear.

Then it was as if the world caved in. Voices blurred.

“Martha! Martha! Martha!” Someone called the name again and again. My heart hammered, but I felt myself slipping.

A shiver of loneliness wrapped around me. The hot tears I didn’t know were waiting to happen, fell and then—silence.

When I woke again, it wasn’t the beeping machine that greeted me. It was the scent of coffee mixed with something earthy, something herbal I couldn’t quite name. This time, my eyelids didn’t fight me. They parted slowly, letting light slice into my vision.

“Martha, you are awake,” the doctor’s familiar voice said.

“Again. It took six weeks, but thank God, you are awake.”

Six weeks? My mind staggered. How much time had been stolen from me?

“Sit up. We’re preparing something for you.”

I obeyed slowly, but as I rose, waves of memory crashed into me. The fire. The choking smoke. The burning on my skin. The pain and fear twisting into one.

My body trembled as I tried to steady myself. A hand touched my arm—gentle, coaxing. I turned and saw a woman by my side.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, a mirror caught my reflection. My breath froze.

The scream tore out of me before I could stop it.

The face staring back was not mine. It was a stranger’s face!

Oh. My.God!!! Who's this!?

“Why… why are you calling me Martha?” My voice cracked.

A soothing tone answered,

“My darling Martha, I know you are confused, but relax.”

That voice. My mind reached, clawed at memories. And then it clicked.

“Aunty Roseline…” The name fell off my lips slowly but she didn't hear.

Jackson's aunt.

Memories of breakfast in her kitchen after the funeral of her daughter—gone too soon in that fiery crash—stabbed at me. I remembered their grief, their sorrow. And yet, here she was, looking at me like a stranger.

Couldn’t she recognize me?

She spoke, voice trembling with something between pity and joy.

“We were leaving town when we came across a burning vehicle. We could hear screams. We called fire services and pulled you out. They tried their best, but you were badly burnt.”

I swallowed. “Do you… do you know me?”

“Oh, of course not, my child.” Her words came soothingly.

“We were waiting for you to wake, so you could tell us where you are from… who could have done this to you.”

My lips parted. It was my chance. My chance to confess, to cry, to scream, to rage against the betrayal that had landed me here. But the words died. Silence swallowed me whole.

“Child, what is your name?” Roseline asked softly. “Your clothes were badly burned. Nothing survived.

We could only identify one thing.” She paused.

“A name. Martha.”

My stomach dropped. Martha. That was my middle name.

“I… I don’t remember anything,” I lied, the words spilling before I could stop them.

Gasps rippled through the room. The doctor’s brows furrowed.

“We weren’t expecting this.”

I pressed my fingers against the bandages on my face. “Why do I feel… different?”

The doctor exchanged a look with Roseline before answering.

“You were terribly burnt, my dear child. We had to fly you to India for reconstruction… cosmetic surgery.”

A new face. A new identity.

My heart thrashed against my ribs. Rage surged like wildfire through me as the memories sharpened. Anne. Jackson. Their affair. Their lies.

The stolen College question papers. And worst of all—the baby they wanted gone. My baby. They had silenced me in the flames, left me to die, to erase the evidence of their betrayal.

But I hadn’t died. And now, I wore a stranger’s face.

Roseline’s eyes softened with a grief I couldn’t touch.

“We lost our baby girl two years ago. In a fire outbreak. She would be your age if she were alive. Her middle name was also Martha. Can you see? God is giving us another chance.” Her voice cracked.

“And giving us you.”

Fate. Coincidence. Curse. My mind spun.

Roseline was rich. Powerful. A single mother with influence and comfort. She thought she had gained a daughter. What she didn’t know was that she had given me a gift—a second chance at life. A chance to rebuild. To rise. To seek revenge.

With a new face, no one would recognize me. With a new identity, I could torment those who thought they had destroyed me. Anne and Jackson had rewritten my story in smoke and ashes. But now, I had the pen.

All I had to do was keep up the lie. Be the Martha they wanted. Live in the skin of a dead girl and wait for the perfect moment to strike.

But the lie twisted in my chest like a blade. Could I carry it? Could I live as someone else while pieces of the old me still screamed in the dark?

I forced myself to look in the mirror again.

The face that stared back was smooth, unburned, a stranger’s beauty etched into skin that was no longer mine. But in my eyes, I saw it all—the grief, the rejection, the pain. And buried under it, like embers under ash, a rage that would never die.

They thought they had killed me. They thought they had buried me in silence. But I was alive. Alive, and watching.

I traced my fingers along the edge of the mirror. A chill ran down my spine, but I smiled—a bitter, dangerous smile.

Because if Martha had been reborn, then Anna—the girl they betrayed—was now a ghost.

A ghost who would haunt them.

And ghosts don’t rest.

I lifted my gaze, whispering to the reflection.

“They won’t see me coming.”

Behind me, Roseline’s voice called, gentle and unknowing.

“Come, child. Lets get you cleaned up. It's a day of Joy .”

I turned from the mirror, heart pounding, my decision already made. My new face was my weapon. My silence was my shield. And my revenge… would be my resurrection.

But as I stepped forward, the door creaked open—and I froze. Standing there, in the shadowed doorway, was a figure I never expected to see again.

My blood ran cold.