Chapter 1

The sudden earthquake tore my wife's grave wide open.

I brought a team to relocate her remains, but when the casket was pried open, I found two bodies inside.

Their cold, skeletal hands were intertwined, each wearing a matching couple's ring.

It was only then that I realized my wife, who had been gone for ten years, had been buried with her secret lover all along.

Fuming with rage, I confronted my daughter, who had organized the funeral.

She didn't look guilty. Instead, she yelled back at me.

"This was Mom's dying wish!"

"She never loved you. She suffered every second she was with you. Why can't she be with the man she actually loved now that she's dead?"

I had raised her for decades. I paid for her Ivy League education and funded her startup.

Everything she had was because of me, yet she and her mother had played me for a fool for ten years.

1.

I stared at the two corpses huddled together in the casket. Those matching rings felt like a slap in the face.

The anger in my chest burned hotter than any fire.

My daughter, Yvonne, stood by the side, her voice cold and indifferent.

"Dad, Mom has been gone for so long. Is it really necessary to make a scene over this?"

I threw the bouquet of sunflowers in my hand into the mud.

I had brought them for Sienna. They were her favorite.

Ever since she died in that tragic accident, I could never let her go. I filled our garden with sunflowers just for her.

I even kept a daily journal, pouring out my grief and how much I missed her.

If it weren't for this earthquake, I would have gone to my own grave never knowing she was buried with her high school sweetheart, Arlo.

Yvonne had handled everything back then.

She told me I was too heartbroken to deal with the arrangements. She said she wanted to protect me from the stress.

I gave her half a million dollars to give her mother the most grand, beautiful send-off possible.

She kept me away from the planning process entirely.

Even on the day of the burial, she didn't let me see the casket lowered into the ground.

She claimed she was afraid I would collapse from the sorrow.

I thought she was being a devoted daughter. I thought she was looking out for me.

Now I know she and Sienna had teamed up to lie to me for a decade.

"Yvonne, you knew how much I loved your mother. I never even looked at another woman after she passed."

"How could you conspire with her to do this to me?"

"Did you ever think about my feelings? This is the ultimate betrayal!"

I glared at Yvonne. Her face was a carbon copy of Sienna's.

I had told her years ago that I wanted to be buried next to Sienna when my time came.

She had been vague back then, mumbling something about how burial plots were tight.

"Why would you want to be buried together? Don't you want to find someone new in the next life?" she had asked.

I thought she was just being immature. I didn't think twice about it.

Now it was clear. Arlo was already in my spot. There was no room for me.

Yvonne looked at me with pure annoyance.

"Dad, you're getting old. You're losing your mind."

"Betrayal is a physical thing. Mom didn't cheat while she was alive; she just chose to spend eternity with her first love."

"Not being with Arlo was her biggest regret. She was so miserable. Can't she have this one thing in death?"

My teeth chattered from pure rage.

The woman I loved for thirty years and the daughter I pampered for twenty had done this to me.

Suddenly, the sky opened up. A heavy rain started pouring down, soaking the bones in the open casket.

Yvonne panicked and started shouting at the workers to move the remains immediately.