Our Rencontre

I was dying of cancer when my destructive ex, Brooks Ferguson, returned to Seattle. The first thing he did was demolish my late father's record store.

But his new fiancée, Grace, delivered the final blow. With a vicious smile, she cornered me and poured my mother's ashes onto the filthy street.

I snapped. I rammed my vintage Mustang into her convertible-twice. I woke up in the hospital, coughing up blood, just in time to see Brooks on the news.

"When I find her," he snarled to the cameras, "I' m going to enjoy breaking every single bone in her body."

He had no idea the cancer, accelerated by his cruelty, was already killing me.

He wanted my body? Fine. I refused all treatment and arranged for the hospital to call him. My final revenge wasn't to fight him. It was to die and make him claim the corpse of the woman he destroyed.

Chapter 1

Dahlia POV:

Brooks Ferguson and I had a ten-year history of mutual destruction, a storm of passion that left us both scarred. We were each other' s greatest love and greatest source of pain. We' d finally called a truce three years ago, a fragile peace I clung to as my world quietly fell apart. Then, he came back to Seattle.

And the first thing he did was set my world on fire.

Figuratively, at first. A notice from the city, cold and official, declaring my record store, "The Groove," a historical hazard slated for demolition. My store. The last gift from my father.

The second thing he did was far more literal. He sent his goons. They didn't just smash the windows; they shattered the display cases, snapped vintage vinyls in half, and kicked over the espresso machine until it hissed its last breath.

I found the man who led the demolition crew, a brute with a smug grin, and I broke his nose with a rusted tire iron I kept behind the counter.

He spat blood on the floor. "He said you'd do something like this."

Brooks arrived minutes later, stepping out of a gleaming Porsche, looking impeccable in a suit that cost more than my entire inventory. He tossed a check at my feet. "For the damages," he said, his voice a low, bored drawl. "And for your trouble."

I didn' t pick it up.

"It's not enough, is it?" he mused, a cruel smile playing on his lips. "You always want more, Dahlia."

I wanted to tell him that what I wanted was peace. A quiet end. But the fire in me, the one he always loved to stoke, wouldn't let me be a passive victim. Not even now.

Not when the doctors had already told me there was no more time.

The fluorescent lights of the hospital hallway flickered, casting a sickly yellow glow on everything. I leaned against the cool wall, the paper cup of water trembling in my hand. Two nurses walked past, their voices low whispers.

"The one in 302. Dahlia Jarvis. Poor thing."

"So young. The aggressive kind, you know. The scans are just... covered. It' s a miracle she's even walking."

Their voices faded, but one last sentence snagged in the air, sharp and clear. "No family listed. Who's going to claim her body?"

Who's going to claim my body?

The question echoed in the sterile silence. It was a practical problem, a final, grim piece of paperwork in a life about to be stamped 'closed'. I looked down at my phone, my thumb hovering over a number I hadn't dialed in three years. A number I knew by heart.

I pressed call.

He answered on the second ring, his voice impatient. "What?"

A bleak, ironic smile touched my lips. "Brooks," I said, my own voice sounding distant and hollow. "I have a request."

"I'm listening."

"When I die," I said, the words tasting like ash, "I need you to claim my body."

The rain fell in relentless sheets, blurring the city lights outside the new, temporary space I' d rented for The Groove. It was smaller, cleaner, and had none of the soul of the old place. I wiped down the counter, the smell of fresh paint and cheap coffee a poor substitute for worn wood and vinyl dust.