Chapter 1

For the third year of our secret relationship, and the twenty-seventh year of knowing each other, Sterling moved out in the middle of the night.

It was simply because he discovered that I was a man.

Sterling hated that I had posed as a woman to date him. He locked me away and tortured me, forcing me to watch him be intimate with other women, night after night.

Later, I died. And he went absolutely insane looking for me.

1

I died on the night of Sterling’s wedding.

Looking at my own transparent body, I felt a dazed sense of confusion. So, human souls really do exist after death?

The room was filled with such a jarring, piercing red that my eyes stung.

Sterling and Gemma were clinking their glasses together. Their smiles were blindingly bright, and a sudden, sharp pain tore through my chest, as if a thousand needles had pierced me at once.

“Happy wedding, Sterling.”

“I love you, Gemma.”

I clutched my aching heart, standing in the hidden room separated from their bridal suite by only a glass wall. I watched them roll around under the covers, bile rising in my throat, burning like acid.

My cold, lifeless body lay on the floor nearby. My left hand, unshackled, was still clutching a phone. On the screen was Sterling’s chat interface: “If I were a woman, would you marry me?”

I gave a self-deprecating smile. How could a man currently enjoying such pleasure ever know how much effort it took for me to push past the agony of my body just to type that message?

I had etched the expression on his face when he first saw that message into my mind.

Even though they were in the middle of their intimate act, Sterling had managed to free one hand, a cold, mocking smirk on his lips. “You make me sick, Silas.”

“And it has nothing to do with your gender.”

A metallic taste flooded my mouth. A mouthful of blood erupted, splattering against the glass, appearing as though it had landed right on Sterling’s face.

Those handsome eyes were filled with nothing but disgust and desire.

My wounds throbbed with renewed intensity. He must have worn that same look when he punished me.

He hated that I had deceived his heart by dressing as a woman. But Sterling...

I never told you I was a woman.

I had a soft voice, a slender build, and I loved wearing feminine clothes―does that make me a woman?

The voices outside rose and fell, as clear as if they were right beside me.

I slumped against the wall, my strength completely drained.

Seeing myself from a third-person perspective was a surreal experience. No wonder Sterling hadn’t suspected anything at first. My features leaned toward the feminine, and since I wore those clothes every day and my Adam’s apple wasn’t prominent, it was hard to tell without close inspection.

For an entire week, the two of them were inseparable, like Siamese twins. They looked exactly like Sterling and I had back when we were in the heat of our own romance.

I had been dead for a week, and aside from those two messages, it was as if Sterling had never thought of me once.

My name only came up again when Gemma brought it up.

“Sterling, where did Silas go? Didn’t he say he had a big gift for us?”