I Cleared His Ashes Then Found His Pulse

I am a Professional Estate Clearer, specializing in tidying up the lives the recently deceased left behind. I had just finished my most intimate and difficult assignment: sorting the belongings of my own deceased husband.
Thats when I found it. His phone gallery. Hundreds of photos of his perfect mythologythe woman he idealizedVivian. And not a single one of me.
Tears streaming, I went to delete the only photo we had togethera forced, blurry shot from a charity gala where I was looking at him with desperate adoration and he was looking everywhere else. Just as my thumb hovered over the confirm delete prompt, a notification flashed.
A VIP alert for Devon Stonebrooks StreamPulse channel. He was live.
He tilted his head toward the camera, a ghost of a smile playing on his lips. What are you crying for?
The live chat exploded: DEVON IS BACK!
But all I could see was the familiar, chilling background behind him: His own wake.
He blinked slowly. I hear you deleted that awful photo of me from my phone?
My hand trembling, I slammed the Send Gift button, spending a thousand dollars on a Titan Drop virtual gift. His spectral image seemed to solidify.
Send ten more, he whispered, the sound crackling through the cheap phone speaker. And Ill tell you who killed me.
But just as the killers name was finally spoken, his stream suddenly cut to black.
A cold hand seized my throat from behind.
Who told you to be a busybody?
1
I, Sloane Stonebrook, Professional Estate Clearer, stood paralyzed in the empty, echoey center of Devons Austin apartment. Around me were several open cardboard boxes, labeled with clinical precision: Wardrobe, Media, Electronics.
Three days ago, my husband-by-contract, Devon Stonebrook, had died in what the police officially categorized as a bizarre, high-speed accident.
But I knew the car. It was a custom-modified Aston Martin, a monster of engineering built to handle any curve, any sudden shock.
Would it really lose control?
I picked up the black phone from the coffee table.
The lock screen demanded a passcode.
His birthday? No.
His favorite number sequence? Incorrect.
My breath hitched. My heart hammered a sudden, frantic rhythm against my ribs.
Could it be?
I closed my eyes, took a shallow gulp of air, and keyed in my birthday.
Click. The screen unlocked.
I felt like a thief breaking into a vault that belonged to my own life. Driven by an impulse I couldnt control, I tapped the Photos icon.
My finger slid across the screen, and the images began to stream past like a cruel, cinematic reel.
It was all her. Vivian Alistair. The Vivian, the unreachable standard, Devons perfect mythology.
She was laughing into the sun, her long hair catching the light; she was pouting artfully, a soft crease of calculated petulance between her brows; she was leaning languidly in a caf in Florence, the baroque architecture a blurred backdrop to her flawless poise.
Every angle, every light, every precious momentcollected, curated, and cherished.
Then the gallery hit the end. The final photo.
The gala. Me, staring at him with undisguised need. Him, looking impatient, annoyed by my proximity.
I was the footnote. The pathetic punchline to a seven-year joke.
I squeezed my eyes shut, but the warm, stinging liquid found its way down my cheeks anyway.
Seven years. Over two thousand days of cautious proximity, tentative steps, and silent hopesall of it reduced to this single, miserable photo, eclipsed by the hundreds of dazzling portraits of the woman he truly wanted.
I took a shuddering breath, my finger hovering over our picture. Long press. Delete.
A cold confirmation box popped up: DELETE PHOTO?
Just as my thumb descended, a sharp, metallic Ding-dong! cut through the silence.
My eyes flew open. The notification bar at the top of the screen screamed:
VIP ALERT: Devon Stonebrook is LIVE! Tap to view!
Devon Stonebrook?
Live?
A virus? A sick hacker?
Or was the grief finally making me hallucinate?
My fingers moved on their own, driven by a panicked, out-of-control momentum. I hammered the push notification.
The screen switched instantly, and the image that filled it brought the air to a screeching halt in my lungs.
The background
It was his wake.
The official photoDevons handsome face with that familiar, slightly detached smilestared out from the mantelpiece. And right beneath it, in the center of the somber, flower-laden room, sat Devon.
He was wearing the same black dress shirt from the night of the crash, legs casually crossed, an air of complete, unnerving ease about him.
Then, he slowly turned his head.
The camera focused on his face. I could see the slight shadow cast by his eyelashes.
Devon Stonebrook.
He tilted his head just slightly, his eyes, across the screen, across the veil of death, piercing directly into mine.
He spoke, his voice transmitted through the phones speaker, strangely flat.
What are you crying for?
WWHHRR!
The tight, strained cord of my sanity snapped.
The comments section below the stream, previously dormant, exploded into a torrential flood of text:
NO WAY!
Devon's ghost?!
IM CALLING A PRIEST
Is this Deepfake AI? The quality is insane!
Look at the background! It's the f***ing FUNERAL HOME!
Devon, thats YOUR PICTURE behind you! WTF is this?
HACKER! Has to be a hacker with a sick sense of humor!
Nah, thats him. The smirk, the *vibe*...
Live Viewer Count: One million... two million... three million... it's going parabolic!
WHERE IS HE LOOKING?
The torrent of text swallowed the screen, a chaotic mix of disbelief and panic that fractured Devons face into a mosaic of shocked typefaces.
His own wake.
His own coffin perhaps just off-camera.
And him, sitting there, tilting his head, asking me what are you crying for?
A crushing, icy terror, heavy with the scent of death, clamped around my windpipe.
My entire body began to tremble uncontrollably. A cold sweat instantly soaked the back of my dress, clinging to my skin.
Ding-dong!
Another notification!
System Alert: Devon Stonebrook has sent you a Private Message!
He he was messaging me?
My heart slammed against my ribs. With a spasm of morbid curiosity, I tapped the alert. The chat box popped up.
Devon Stonebrook: I hear you deleted that awful photo of me from my phone?
Ah!
I flung the phone across the room.
It hit the cold hardwood floor with a sharp thwack.
But the figure in the black shirt, framed by the rigid backdrop of his own death, stayed frozen on the shattered screen, tilting his head, waiting for my answer.
The comments continued to scroll.
The fear was a tide, washing over my already battered nerves.
Delete the photo?
How could he possibly know?
How could he know what I did just now, alone, in this room?
The realization was a spike of ice driven into my skull: It wasnt a hacker. It wasnt a sick joke.
It was him.
Devon Stonebrook was back. In a way that defied every law of physics, every piece of human understanding.
And he knew exactly what I had done. He was watching me.
Even in death, even as a ghost, he had to torment me.
An overwhelming nausea mixed with a white-hot resentment surged up my throat.
Seven years of quiet devotion, and my reward was a phone full of Vivian Alistair. Now, even my last shred of pathetic dignity was to be trampled by his specter?
Why?
A desperate, reckless rage, the kind that only comes when you have nothing left to lose, finally smashed through the dam of my fear.
I lunged for the phone.
Devons spectral smile, viewed through the hairline crack in the screen, seemed to deepen.
I bit down hard on my lower lip, tasting blood. With a final, desperate resolve, I stabbed the Gift icon.
The list popped up. My eyes locked onto the most expensive, most ridiculous iconthe virtual rocket, a digital bonfire of golden flames, the Titan Drop, priced at ten thousand dollars.
To hell with the money.
To hell with sanity. To hell with life and death.
With all the force of my shattered world, my finger came down hard.
User Sloane S. sends a Titan Drop to Devon Stonebrook!
The manic scroll of the live chat seemed to pause for a fraction of a second.
Then, the explosion was a million times louder:
HOLY SHIT!
Who is Sloane S? Is that his wife/assistant?
A Titan Drop on a GHOST STREAM?! This is peak internet!
Sloane, tell us whats going on!
In the center of the frame, the man in the black shirt, Devon, slowly straightened. The playful arc of his mouth grew sharper, colder.
Then he spoke. The sound was low, commanding, impossible to ignore.
Sloane.
He used my name, the one he rarely spoke even in life.
Send ten more.
He tilted his head again, his eyes locking onto my terrified face beyond the lens.
Ten more Titan Drops, he dictated, his voice dropping to a seductive, chilling whisper. And Ill tell you
He paused, letting the silence stretch, letting the panic build.
who killed me.
Boom! The room tilted.
The chat went completely insane.
TEN? Thats 0-000K!
Murder? Devons death wasnt an accident?!
SLOANE, DO IT! We need the truth!
A ghost promising to solve his own murder... I'm buying popcorn!
Ten drops? One hundred thousand dollars. My entire, carefully hoarded savings.
He was using me. Using the sad, desperate remnants of my attachment to him.
The absurdity, the blinding rage of being played, mixed with the sickening lure of those four words: Who killed me?
Logic screamed: Hes a ghost! A trick! Get out!
But a deeper, more primal obsession: Seven years of waiting for him to notice me, and this is the only answer I get? For the price of my entire life savings?
I stared into the screen. I saw the calculation, the exploitation, the mockery of my quiet devotion.
Then my phone vibrated, a sharp, physical jolt. A new message alert.
Devon Stonebrook: NOW. Hurry.
Hurry. He was rushing me.
There was no time to think. Blood rushed to my head, burning away the last of my hesitation.
To hell with logic. To hell with my savings. To hell with a hundred thousand dollars. I needed to know.
With a kind of suicidal desperation, my finger slammed the golden rocket icon again and again.
Two!
Three!
Four!
...
The stream count soared past five million viewers. The chat was a blur of my name, the gift icon, and accusations against Devon.
Five!
Six!
Seven!
My finger was numb.
Devons eyes remained fixed on my face, cold but now holding a flicker of something else...
Focused attention?
Waiting?
Eight!
Nine!
One left. My finger hovered, confirming the zeros in my bank account. The final drop. Id be starting over from scratch.
I closed my eyes and slammed down with all my strength.
User Sloane S. sends a Titan Drop to Devon Stonebrook! x10!!!
A million people seemed to hold their breath.
Devon slowly rose to his feet. He took a step forward, his image growing larger on the screen, as if he were trying to escape the frame.
He leaned in, his lips parted. His voice, low and clear, filled the room:
It was

First, search for and download the MotoNovel app from Google. Then, open the app and use the code "309938" to read the entire book.