Sweet Romance13 min read
My Funeral, Their Lies, and the One That Broke Them
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I woke to clauses being read like a bad joke.
"You admit you're the illegitimate daughter and hand over the title to Harper," someone said.
"One year after marriage, you will 'donate' your heart to Harper without question," another voice recited.
"You shall not appear publicly as the family's mistress, nor make the marriage a spectacle," a third voice added.
I blinked at the ceiling and saw Laurent Donovan's eyes boring into me—cold, contemptuous, like he'd been carved out of glass.
"What's going on?" I croaked. My throat felt raw. "Why am I here?"
"You signed, Ensley, and then you disappeared," Harper Torres wailed from somewhere by my bedside. "You left me everything. How could you not cooperate now?"
I was supposed to be dead. The car that exploded was supposed to have taken me—Ensley Adams, founder of Verity & Co.—out of the way. Laurent Donovan had every reason for that: we'd been bidding for the same contract, our companies locked in a knife fight. He had more than motive. He had power.
"Ensley, if you sign this, you're the Donovans' wife," Laurent said as if he were offering charity. "You get a title. That's all."
I stared at the contract in Harper's shaking hands. The clauses I had heard were not a nightmare—they were business law twisted into homicide.
"Why would I sign a contract that says I must give away my heart?" I asked. My voice tasted like metal.
Harper sniffed, eyes rimmed with theatrical tears. "Sister, you promised. I let you have the man you wanted. Just sign. It's only a paper."
"Where's the mirror?" I asked suddenly.
Harper blinked. "A mirror?"
"Do I have a mirror?" I said. The idea hit me like a cold wave. I had seen my own face for five years in photos, in press releases, but this—this face in the glass didn't belong to me. It looked like a cousin at best, like an echo at worst.
Laurent's hand went toward Harper as if to shield the show. "What are you doing?" he snapped.
I stepped closer, my hand reaching for Harper's shoulder. Something felt right and wrong all at once.
"You're Harper?" I said softly, because it made the most sense out loud. "You're not me."
Harper sobbed the way spoiled girls sob in private, a performance meant to bend wills. "I'm the one who needs the heart. You said if you couldn't be with Laurent you'd rather he had what keeps you alive. You said—"
"Stop."
I had an accordion of memories—my companies, the boardroom, my hands on contracts—but there was a new, foreign ache in my ribs and a stranger's childhood stitched to this life. I remembered the fumes of the crash and nothing after. Then, here. Alive in a body that belonged to the rightful heiress no one bothered to crown.
"You're mine to manipulate," Laurent sneered. "Sign, Ensley—Harper—whatever you call yourself. Make it clean."
"Make it clean?" I repeated, and laughter surprised me. "You tried to make my death clean."
Laurent's face paled—just for a fraction—then hardened. "Don't accuse me without proof."
I wasn't naive. I had been murdered. I had to act like I believed what I was saying, but smarter. "Is there a mirror?" I asked again.
Harper pointed. When I looked I saw the face that everyone had claimed was ugly, unimportant—yet similar enough to mine to be dangerous. I touched the jawline. Her skin was warm. My pulse in this borrowed body was beating for the first time for me and for another life, both debts and weaponry.
"Call the police," I said, and Harper's bravado crumpled.
Laurent lunged for the phone. I was faster. I kicked.
"Hey, you—" Laurent cursed as my foot connected with his shin. The sound of his pain leaked into the hallway and down a phone line to a dispatcher who thought they'd heard a domestic.
"Stop!" Harper cried, and then as if the whole world had gone quiet, the building's door banged open and uniforms flooded the room. I opened the door to let them in.
"She isn't dead, officer," I said, holding the contract like a dare. "This is evidence of attempted murder and coercion."
The officer took the paper. His eyes flickered from the typed clauses to Laurent's clench jaw to Harper's theatrical tears.
"This is... troubling," he murmured. "We'll need statements."
I handed him clips and notes I'd fished from a jittery memory: names, times, the panic in my chest as the car phone fizzled. The officer called for backup and took Laurent aside. The script had flipped for the first time.
"Don't touch me!" Laurent snapped when an officer reached to take him in for questioning.
"You can't just pull someone off the street," Laurent hissed, air full of entitlement.
"You're being brought to the station to clarify circumstances regarding threats and an explosion," the officer said firmly. "For now, we're taking a statement."
They cuffed Laurent's hands with practiced hands. He didn't go quietly; he shouted the way men do when they can no longer buy silence.
I sat on the edge of the bed and let the adrenaline go out of me like air from a bellows. "Good," I told myself. "This is the start."
*
Two days later, I stood in a hospital corridor, my arm bandaged where Harper had foolishly tried to stab me with a fruit knife. The sting didn't matter. My mind was tuned to a new frequency: proof.
"My sister would never do that," Harper had said when the officers detained her. "How could she? She's always been so kind."
"Kind enough to hand me a shelter?" I said only to the ceiling, not to her. "Kind enough to pretend she deserved what was mine?"
"You're crazy," Harper had whispered at one point. "You don't belong here."
"Maybe it's true," I thought, until the name Laurent Donovan kept resurfacing in files, in records of offshore meetings, in names whispered like a poison in my ear. Laurent had everything to lose if I lived—my company, my deals, his pride—and everything to gain if he wed an heiress and gained a spotless trophy wife who could be removed from public view as necessary.
"Why didn't you laugh?" Tristan Cameron asked the first time I met him in person.
Tristan—he came into Harper's life like a contradiction: clean-cut, neat, with a patience that resembled a gentler kind of cruelty. He was an executive in a company that rubbed against mine. He had been at my funeral and had sat upon my coffin as if remembering the night he'd wanted to get into an argument with death itself. Now he watched me with eyes that had seen me at my most damaged and yet had not closed.
"You sat on a grave," I told him bluntly. "That was audacious."
"I wanted you to come back and punch me," he said. "You did worse—you're alive, and you're in someone's body."
"You're not frightened by that?" I asked.
He lifted his shoulders. "I'm frightened by the fact you can make soup from nothing and then build a case against a company. I'm interested—very much."
"Interested and dangerous," I warned.
"Both." He smiled like a man who'd found a problem he could not refuse.
We formed a truce because both of us wanted the same thing: Laurent Donovan's pride to become rubble and a company that was mine to return. He offered a deal that smelled of smoke and comfort. "I can give you power," he said. "Not control, yet. But a piece. I will help you get Verity back—if you help me pry open his private life."
"Why would you help me?" I asked.
"Because he hurt someone I cared about," Tristan said simply. "And because you have a way of looking at things that doesn't excuse crimes."
I agreed. We shook hands in a way that felt like a contract with no paper.
"One condition," I said.
He raised an eyebrow. "Name it."
"Don't make me a puppet for revenge," I said. "I don't want blood for blood unless it proves something. I want exposure."
He nodded. "Public. Concrete. Unforgiving."
I laughed softly. "Good. I have a plan with stage directions."
*
We spent weeks digging. I went into Harper's house like I owned it—because in many ways I did. I found security footage, ledger entries, late-night messages. I found a recording of Laurent on the phone, impatient, ordering someone to "ensure the car fails." I found receipts for bribes, hospital notes, a trail that led like ants to the same picnic.
"You're not just going to hand this to the police?" Tristan asked the night I showed him the hard drive.
"No," I said. "This is for the public."
"Are you sure?" he asked again.
"Yes," I said. "We let the law do its work, but I want the world to see their faces when they realize what a bargain cost them."
"Public," he repeated.
"Public," I agreed.
We planned two reveals. The first was to make Laurent's professional world crumble. The second was to drag his family into the light. They had been comfortable in shadow; it was time for the lights.
The chance came faster than any of us expected.
A televised charity gala was scheduled to honor corporate philanthropy—an event Laurent could not resist. He brought Harper in tow, looking smug. He had no idea the screens in that hall were not only for ad campaigns. They were for us.
"Tonight is about opening hearts," Laurent said on the dais as if introducing a prayer. He basked, all teeth and safe light. Harper smiled at him like a puppet with a diamond on its forehead.
I walked in late, because late is dramatic. Tristan's hand found mine under the velvet rope. He squeezed, a question I answered with the file in my clutch.
"You're making a scene," Harper hissed, voice small enough to be ignored.
"Good. I will," I said, and stepped onto the stage when the host called for a "surprise guest."
I had rehearsed for humiliation. I had rehearsed for cigarettes thrown at my feet. I had rehearsed for being called a liar. None of those prepared me for the hush as I set the hard drive down on the podium.
"Tonight we celebrate generosity," I announced. "Let's also celebrate truth."
"Who is she?" Laurent demanded, too late to stop the projection.
Tristan stepped forward and thumbed the playback. The screen bloomed into motion: Laurent's voice on a secret call, the exchange of texts that promised a "clean accident," the photos of the tampered brake line.
Laurent's face shifted from surprise to rage to a shade of panic I had never seen on him. For an instant he looked very small.
"That's impossible," he spat.
"It is," I said. "But it's true. You plotted to make me not survive the auction. You thought it would be tidy—no witnesses, no complications. You involved others. You've been safe because you had money buy silence. Tonight, this ends."
Harper's hand flew to her mouth. "This is defamation," she cried.
"Prove it," Tristan said mildly. He had the legal counsel's folder open on the podium. "Or stop lying."
The room filled with murmurs. Phones raised. People filmed. Laurent's empire relied on image. Image is money loosely bound to loyalty. I unplugged his tightrope.
"It was me you wanted to erase," I continued, "but you forgot something: people leave traces."
The first reaction came from the audience—loud, fractured. Gasps. A journalist's voice: "Is that verified?"
"Law enforcement has been informed," Tristan said into the microphone as well, and my legal team stepped up, a motion that made Laurent's jaw work like a trapped animal. "But we are not asking you to wait. We think transparency is required."
Then the punishment began—not the private punishment but the kind that builds like a storm. The event organizers froze Laurent's speech. Sponsors left their seats. Cameras panned, and the live feed multiplied like wildfire. Laurent's phone slipped from his hand, and when he bent to retrieve it, several feeds caught his hesitance.
"You're making a terrible mistake," he hissed at me, lunging toward the podium.
"You're surrounded," Tristan said softly. "Hands where we can see them."
Laurent turned toward his PR director with the wounded look of a king whose crown had been replaced by a tin badge. "Get them out of here."
"Get them out of here?" I echoed. "You're the one who ought to go."
He paced; his breath came ragged. "This is slander," he repeated as if one word were a shield. "I'll sue."
Sues are castles built of paper and time. They didn't stop the cameras now. They didn't stop the text messages. They didn't stop the murmurs that turned to shouted questions.
Then came the police—the same department that had once come to "clarify circumstances." Officers moved through the gala like sharp knives. "Laurent Donovan, you are under investigation," one of them said with calm intensity that made the room lean.
"You can't—" Laurent tried to be loud.
"You tried," I said. "You did. The evidence is here."
Harper wept in public with the practiced style of someone who had been trained to act when the cameras were on. Journalists asked questions. Wealthy patrons whispered. Sponsors slid off their seats as if the scent of scandal would cling.
"Will you tell the whole thing?" a reporter demanded, waving a mic like a flag.
"Everything," I said.
The first of Laurent's business partners left where they stood. The boardroom phone lines began to ring. Within an hour, major investors had sent curt messages about "reputational risk." The live feed recorded every retreat.
The humiliation was a full-bellied thing. Laurent went from confident magnate to public spectacle. Harper's school of tears disintegrated into frantic pleas that no one believed. They were not only being legally exposed; they were being socially devoured.
When the first arrest warrant was served the following week, it wasn't a quiet arrest. It was televised: Laurent escorted out with cameras following, his bodyguards holding a crude dignity as it collapsed. Fans who had once cheered him now took selfies outside the station, their faces a blank mosaic of feigned concern and pry-hungry curiosity.
Harper's breakdown was the worst—that brittle voice of entitlement, cracking. She went from stage-whine to shock to denial.
"I didn't know!" she screamed at a press scrum that had gathered like vultures. "I had no idea what he planned. He told me it was for love, that it was... necessary for the family."
"Love doesn't buy silence," one reporter shot back. "How long did you know?"
Harper's face fell, a porcelain mask cracking in front of eight camera lenses. Those who had once fed her adoration now spat words like accusations.
Her mother—Larissa Thomas—had her own reversal. Known as the charming socialite who smoothed every wound with a donation and a smile, she was hauled into a separate interview where shareholders demanded explanations. Her position on the board was suspended within days. Her name, once printed beside philanthropic efforts, became a question mark.
The worst part of the public punishment—the delicious part as far as revenge goes—wasn't just watching them unravel. It was watching the ripple: old friends retracting their endorsements, ex-lovers turning cold on camera, neighbors pretending not to recognize them. Harper's phone filled with messages; Laurent's inbox with angry subpoenas.
"I don't want to go to jail," Laurent said at the hearing when the cameras pushed in, his voice an animal note of true terror. "You saw the board—"
"You saw the audio," I said simply.
He looked at me, and I saw every shade of his earlier certainty wash clear into a new color: fear.
When the judge read the charges in public—tampering with a vehicle, conspiracy to murder, coercion—the hall made a sound like a collective breath held too long. People photographed the pages. The law moved slowly, but the court of public opinion had already found its verdict: contempt.
They became cautionary tales. Corporate partners put out statements about "values." Harper's contracts evaporated like breath on glass. Larissa's social calendar turned white with cancellations. Laurent lost clients, board seats, even his carefully constructed image.
They reacted in predictable human stages: defiance, anger, bargaining, collapse. Laurent shouted and then tried to bribe people. Larissa composed an apology letter that read like a dissolving rope. Harper tried to get her publicists to spin a narrative of ignorance, but the spin snapped under the weight of footage.
"Please," Harper begged once outside a courthouse in front of live cameras, voice raw. "I loved him."
"Love doesn't include design and wire and tampering with danger," I said. "You don't get to weep for his crimes like they're fainting spells."
Harper's face crumpled. People around filmed her crumble as if it were a performance. Some clapped. I don't deny the pleasure. The law took its time. But the public punishment was immediate, loud, and merciless.
By the time Laurent was led to the back of a squad car, his assault on my life had been turned into a spectacle of exposure. The bank accounts froze. The board replaced him. The headlines read, retries of the night's projection circling the globe. He could still hire lawyers and try to survive, but the world had narrowed around him like a closing fist.
I watched it all and felt something other than triumph. The past had been removed with a boldness that made me dizzy. The future opened like a road I had not yet traveled. Tristan took my hand in the hospital after the arrests.
"You did exactly what you promised," he said.
"I did," I admitted. "But I didn't do it alone."
"Nor should you."
We were quiet for a moment, then he smiled like it was the first small mercy. "Now," he said, "we get Verity back."
"And then?" I asked.
"And then," he said, "we make sure nothing like that ever happens to anyone who can't afford to be seen."
I thumbed at the scar on my arm where Harper's knife had changed the course of my wrist. The wound had healed; my soul had not. Public punishment had a taste like salted caramel—sweet and stinging—and it had rearranged lives. But it had also given me a map.
"We'll need more proof for the final push," Tristan said.
"Already on it," I said.
The second act was quieter, surgical. We cleaned the rot that had spread into Verity's boardrooms. We replaced sleeping executives with people who cared about building rather than buying. We brought back clients with transparent audits and open letters. The world watched the slow return with curiosity and then, finally, trust.
And somewhere in the middle of all this, Tristan stopped sitting on my coffin and started sitting next to me with dinner. He fed me soup when I couldn't climb out of sleep. He saved the best files for me to read. He kissed me once in the hallway of the Verity offices, and when he did, the map smoothed. I kissed him back, and the world fell into a rare quiet.
We had justice and a new beginning, but it wasn't only about revenge. It was about restoration, about teaching that the kind of cruelty that lets a man sign off on another's death would never be rewarded again.
At the end of it all, in a small ceremony where the press were invited because secrets thrive on sunlight, I walked up to the podium. Harper's face had been replaced by a look I have seen in smaller things: fear, then recognition, then a kind of acceptance.
"Before we close," I said into the microphone, "some people thought they could erase me. They tried to make my death a tidy ledger entry."
"Who tried?" someone shouted.
"The person who thought a contract could write away our debts," I said. "The person who thought he could own a heart."
Laurent's head snapped up. He was there, handcuffed to a chair because the court allowed a public presence for the trial's conclusion. He looked hollow. Harper watched too, guarded by lawyers who were paid in the last of the family's remaining credit.
"You wanted to make my death clean," I said. "You forgot that when you try to make things clean, you leave fingerprints."
They watched the footage again—the arrests, the transfers, the call recordings. People around us applauded. Not a knee-jerk clap; a careful, deliberate sound like permission being given. The world had judged. The law would finish the sentence. I had no interest in blood beyond exposure. They got the rest.
When the final gavel fell, I felt a weariness and a swell of something else: a life not stolen back but reborn anew. Tristan offered me his hand and nobody laughed.
"Let's go home," he said.
"Which home?" I asked.
"Yours—with fewer ghost clauses."
I laughed, and this time the sound felt like a promise.
The End
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