His Wife's Replacement and Her Deadly Secret

My husband, Cleve, built a world-class research center for me. He was my knight in shining armor, the man who saved me after my family went bankrupt.

But when my brother died tragically under my care, my husband didn't comfort me. Instead, he began grooming a replacement-a young protégé named Ivanna, funding her transformation until she became a younger, softer version of me.

He gave her my jewelry and the keys to our private lake house. He publicly undermined my life's work at the center he built, calling my proven methods "old paradigms." He told our friends I was unstable, that my grief was making me "aggressive."

The final blow came when he stumbled into my room, drunk and desperate. He tried to kiss me, to reclaim me, but the name he whispered was hers.

"Ivanna."

When she appeared in the doorway, he didn't hesitate. He took her side, looked at me with cold disgust, and threw me out of my own home.

Lying in a hotel room, sick with a fever born from a long walk in the cold rain, I finally understood. My life had been a lie. He hadn't just replaced me; he had tried to erase me.

But my escape wasn't just about survival. It was about the evidence I found before I left-a receipt showing that the drug that killed my brother was paid for by Ivanna, using Cleve's corporate credit card. I didn't just run away. I left him to discover he'd been protecting a murderer.

Chapter 1

The first thing Cecil Farley did when she decided to die was wash her hands.

She stood at the surgical scrub sink in the empty operating room, the water hissing. She lathered the soap up to her elbows, the way she had thousands of times. The methodical, twenty-step process was muscle memory.

Her hands. They were her life, her talent, her entire worth. They had pieced together nerves finer than thread, removed tumors the size of a pinhead.

Now they were useless.

They hadn't been able to save her brother, Leo.

She turned off the water. The silence of the research center hummed around her. Her research center. A monument to a love she had believed was real.

Cleve had built it for her. Cleve Drake, her husband. He had proposed to her the day after her family's company went bankrupt, a knight in a bespoke suit. He'd told her, "I don't care if you have nothing. I have you."

For years, that memory was the foundation of her world.

A lie.

The burn of the antiseptic soap was a dull, distant feeling. Nothing could touch the coldness that had taken root inside her since Leo's funeral.

She remembered confronting Cleve in his study, the grief raw in her throat. "He was getting better. The new protocol was working."

Cleve hadn't looked up from his tablet. "He was sick, Cecil. It was bound to happen." His voice was calm, reasonable. The voice he used to close billion-dollar deals.

It was the same voice he used when he spoke to Ivanna.

Ivanna Mccarty. The orphan girl they sponsored, the one who worshipped Cecil, who wanted to be a doctor just like her. The girl who now looked so much like a younger, softer version of Cecil, after a series of "minor cosmetic procedures" Cleve had funded.

Last week, Cecil had watched from the window as Cleve handed Ivanna a key. The key to their lake house. A place he'd once said was their sanctuary.

"She's been studying so hard," Cleve had explained later, his eyes not quite meeting hers. "She needs a break."

Cecil looked at her reflection in the polished steel of the instrument cabinet. The woman looking back was a ghost. Dr. Farley, the brilliant surgeon. Mrs. Drake, the perfect, accomplished wife.

She still wore the wedding ring. A heavy, cold circle of platinum. It felt less like a symbol of love and more like a brand. A mark of ownership.

She walked out of the OR and into her office. The lights were off, the city glowing through the floor-to-ceiling windows. She sat at her desk and opened her laptop.

She didn't search for painless ways to end a life.

She opened the Massachusetts Board of Medicine website.

With steady fingers, she began filling out an application for medical license reciprocity. She used her maiden name. Farley.

Her assistant might ask why. Cecil would have a plausible lie ready: it was for contingencies, for speaking engagements.

It was the first step. Not toward death.

Toward disappearing.