Introduction

The sterile beep of the heart monitor was counting down the final seconds of my life.

Then the door creaked open, and Scarlett Hayes, my husband' s manipulative childhood sweetheart, entered with a venomous smile.

She informed me, with cruel satisfaction, that my husband, Mark, had only married me for a free nurse and babysitter, and that our son, Tommy, wasn't truly mine – he was theirs. My own baby, she revealed, wasn't stillborn, but had been given away by Mark to prevent me from having a "real heir." As she casually unplugged my life support, my world went black.

The silence was deafening, the betrayal immense and crushing. I couldn't comprehend such calculated cruelty, and the pain left me paralyzed in my own body, unable to scream.

But then, a blinding light, a familiar voice, and I gasped, sucking in air that didn' t feel like it came from a machine. I was back in my parents' living room, staring at Mark Peterson, kneeling before me with a velvet box, proposing. It was the day my miserable past life began, and this time, I wouldn't let it.