She Swapped His Heir to Steal a Billion-Dollar Fortune
The smell hit her first.
Antiseptic and something colder, the sterile bite of refrigerated air.
Meredith Calloway stood in the morgue of St. Augustine Medical Center, the silence a heavy blanket broken only by the low hum of ventilation.
Her husband, Garrett Ramsey, lay on a stainless-steel gurney, his body covered by a stark white sheet.
Gone.
The word was a flat, dull thud in her mind.
A doctor had pronounced it just an hour ago, the culmination of a year-long battle that had hollowed out their lives.
But grief was a luxury she couldn't afford right now.
Not yet.
She peeled back the sheet, exposing his face.
Even in death, he was handsome, his features settled into a serene mask that belied the calculating mind beneath.
Her eyes fell to his hand, resting pale and still at his side.
Meredith took a deep, shuddering breath, the refrigerated air burning her lungs.
She knelt, ignoring the searing pain from her knee.
The fabric of her slacks was torn, the skin beneath raw and bleeding from a fall on the hospital steps just moments ago.
An accident born of haste.
Of desperation.
Carefully, she took Garrett’s hand.
It was cold, terrifyingly so, with the first hints of rigidity setting in.
She lifted his index finger.
Then, she did something that would have shattered the woman she was yesterday.
She pressed his cold, dead finger against the bloody wound on her own knee.
The crimson smear was obscene against his pale skin.
Her own blood, serving as a makeshift ink pad.
From her purse, she pulled a single folded document.
A Share Transfer Agreement.
Her hands didn't shake.
They were preternaturally steady as she unfolded the paper and located the signature line at the bottom.
Meredith guided his finger, stained with her blood, onto the paper.
She pressed down.
Hard.
A perfect, crimson fingerprint bloomed next to a signature she had practiced a thousand times.
A perfect forgery.
A perfect lie.
She refolded the document, tucked it back into her purse, and gently placed Garrett’s hand back at his side.
She pulled the sheet back over his face, hiding the evidence of her sacrilege.
Only then did she allow a single tear to trace a hot path down her cold cheek.
It wasn't a tear of sorrow.
It was a tear of absolution.
"This is for us," she whispered to the silence.
"For the woman you tried to bury."
§01
An hour earlier, the world had been a blur of fluorescent lights and the rhythmic, agonizing beep of a heart monitor.
Meredith had stood outside the ICU, her hands pressed against the cold glass of the observation window.
Inside, Garrett was dying.
His parents, Clarence and Beatrice Ramsey, emerged from the room, their faces etched with a grief that felt both profound and performative.
Bryce, Garrett’s ever-present executive assistant, quietly closed the door behind them.
"Mrs. Ramsey," Bryce began, his voice low and carefully neutral. "Mr. Ramsey said… he couldn't bear for you to see him like this. At the end. He asked that you not go in."
Beatrice dabbed at her eyes with a silk handkerchief.
"Meredith, dear," she said, her voice trembling with manufactured sympathy. "I know how much you love each other. Garrett is just trying to spare you the pain. You should listen to him."
Clarence Ramsey, a man whose posture never bent, crossed his arms.
His tone was like granite.
"It's his final wish, Meredith. Don't make a scene."
The closed door seemed to mock her.
A cold dread, sharp and familiar, snaked its way up her spine.
She knew, with the chilling certainty of a woman reborn, that it was all a lie.
He wasn't sparing her.
He was waiting for someone else.
Corinne Taggart.
His idealized first love, the "one that got away," who had conveniently returned to the country just last month.
He was waiting to give his final instructions to her.
In her previous life, Meredith had believed them.
She had collapsed right here, on this polished linoleum floor, and begged for five minutes.
She had knelt for five agonizing hours, her pleas dissolving into hoarse sobs, until the flatline tone echoed from inside the room.
The door had never opened.
This time, she wouldn't kneel.
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