The Billionaire's Second Wife

Three Days

The perfume bottle was glass, dark amber, with a gold cap. It sat on my kitchen counter like a snake that hadn't decided whether to strike.

I didn't touch it.

I'd learned, in my other life — my first life, my dead life — that you don't touch things you can't identify. It was the first rule of appraisal. You look. You weigh. You test. You never pick up a piece with your bare hands before you know what it is, because a fingerprint, a scratch, a smudge can change the value of a thing forever.

The perfume was a fake.

I knew it the way I knew a paste diamond from a real one: by the weight, by the cut, by the way the light moved through it. Chloe said it was her grandmother's recipe, a family secret, hand-pressed, priceless.

It wasn't.

The bottle was new. The label was printed, not hand-drawn. The gold cap was cheap plated metal, already wearing at the edge. And the liquid inside was the color of strong tea, not jasmine water.

I picked it up by the base, careful, and unscrewed the cap.

Jasmine. And underneath — the smell I'd died on. Sweet and bitter, like crushed almonds.

Cyanide, I thought. Or something that tastes like it.

I didn't have a lab. I had three days, a dead memory, and an ex-best friend who'd pressed poison into my hands with a smile.

I screwed the cap back on and put the bottle in a drawer, under the dishtowels, where Chloe wouldn't see it if she came by.

Then I stood in the kitchen and took stock of the miracle I'd been given.

I'd died. I was sure of it. The cold floor, the gray ceiling, Chloe's heels walking away — those weren't a dream. And yet here I was, alive, with the wedding three days away and a memory of my own death in my head.

The question I didn't want to ask, because I didn't want to hear the answer:

Why me? And what does it cost?

Nothing comes back from the dead for free. That was the first rule of every story, and I'd spent my life around people who understood value — everything has a price, and the things that look like gifts usually have the highest ones.

I checked myself the way I'd check a piece I was thinking of buying. Hands — fine, steady. Heart — pounding, but mine. Reflection — mine, twenty-six, the scar on my chin where I'd fallen off a bike at ten.

Then I found the first hole.

I remembered my death. I remembered the funeral — I remembered it in fragments, from above, like watching someone else's life through a window. I remembered Adrian Blackwood standing at the back in a black coat.

But I didn't remember what happened after.

The memory didn't stop so much as cut off, the way a recording ends when someone unplugs it. Adrian Blackwood had destroyed Marcus — I knew that, knew it cold, knew it the way you know a fact someone told you twice. But I couldn't have told you how I knew. There was no scene behind it. No face, no voice, no moment.

Just the knowledge, and a hole where the memory should be.

That's the price, I thought. Something's missing. And I don't know what I gave up to come back.

Then I got dressed.

The morning went by in a blur I forced myself to keep steady.

I called my mother. She was alive in this timeline — alive, sharp-tongued, and already exhausted by wedding talk. I heard her voice and almost started crying, and I had to hold the phone away from my face until I could breathe.

"Lila? Are you there?"

"I'm here," I said. "Just — tired."

"You're always tired. It's the stress. Mark my words, after the wedding you'll sleep like a baby."

I didn't tell her that in my other life, I'd slept like a corpse.

I called my lawyer next, and asked, in my most casual voice, about the prenup Marcus had insisted I sign.

"Of course," the lawyer said. "Standard document. You keep what's yours, he keeps what's his, the marriage is sealed tighter than a vault. Is there a problem?"

"No problem," I said. "I just wanted to double-check one thing. The date."

"The date?"

"The date the document was drafted. Could you send me the original PDF? I'd like to see the metadata."

The lawyer paused. "The metadata?"

"I'm a detail person," I said. "Humor me."

He humored me. The PDF arrived in my inbox forty minutes later, and I opened it in the appraisal software I used for work, the one that showed me the file's history — when it was created, when it was edited, who had touched it.

The prenup had been created six months ago.

Six months before Marcus proposed.

I stared at the screen, and I thought about the way Marcus had told the story: I knew from the first moment I saw you, Lila. I knew you were the one.

He'd known, all right. He'd known exactly how much I was worth.

I spent the rest of the morning going through my phone.

In my dead life, I'd never looked back. I'd trusted, and trusted, and trusted, and it had cost me everything. Now I went through the messages, the photos, the calendar entries, the little breadcrumbs I'd left myself without knowing it.

There were a lot of breadcrumbs.

Chloe: You're so lucky to have Marcus. He's one in a million. (Sent: the night he proposed)

Chloe: He deserves someone who appreciates him. Not someone who's always working. (Sent: three months ago)

Chloe: You should drink more water. Stay healthy for the wedding! 💧 (Sent: two weeks ago)

I'd read them all as concern. I'd read them all as a friend looking out for me.

Now I saw them for what they were: a woman keeping score, waiting for her turn.

I checked the calendar. Chloe had a lunch with "a client" tomorrow at the Grand Hotel.

The Grand Hotel. Where Marcus held his monthly "business lunches."

I closed the phone.

In the kitchen, the drawer with the perfume sat closed, patient, waiting.

I had a plan forming. It was ugly, and it was risky, and it required me to walk into a room with the man who'd murdered me and smile like I didn't know.

But first — I needed to see the other man.

The one who'd come to my funeral.

I didn't know how to reach him. That was the problem. Adrian Blackwood moved through the city like a rumor — everyone knew the name, nobody knew the number.

But I had something better than a number.

I had memory.

In my dead life, I knew two things about Adrian Blackwood.

He'd come to my funeral. He'd stood at the back, in a black coat, and he'd watched them lower me into the ground like he was memorizing the spot.

He'd destroyed Marcus. Slowly, completely, without mercy — stripped him of the company, the money, the reputation, everything. It had taken him a year, and he'd done it from the shadows, so that when Marcus finally realized who was behind it, it was too late.

And then — I didn't know why. The memory went dark after that. I'd been dead. I didn't know what had happened to Adrian Blackwood after he'd avenged a woman he'd never spoken to.

But I knew his office. I'd appraised a piece for Blackwood Group once, two years ago — a cursed emerald pendant that turned out to be worth a fortune. I remembered the building, the marble lobby, the elevator bank on the left.

That was all I had. No number. No appointment. No name I could drop.

I dressed carefully. No perfume. Dark suit, flat shoes, my hair in the practical knot I used for work.

Then I took a cab across town, and I walked into the Blackwood Group tower on memory and nerve.

"Lila Hart," I told the receptionist. "To see Mr. Blackwood."

She blinked. "Do you have an appointment?"

"No," I said. "But I have something he's going to want."

"What is it?"

I leaned in. "His funeral," I said quietly. "I know who's going to kill him."