The Grave They Dug For Her

I lay broken in a hospital bed after a brutal car crash, but my family never came. My father and brother were too busy preparing for my manipulative half-sister Ainsley's wedding.

The groom was my fiancé, Clayton.

While I fought for my life, his last words to me over the phone were a cold command.

"Go to hell for all I care."

They abandoned me, told the world I was dead, and even carved my name on a tombstone. They buried me under a mountain of lies so Ainsley could steal the life that was mine.

But I didn't die. I was reborn.

Five years later, I returned as Ivy Richardson-a bestselling author, married to a tech CEO, and backed by a family with unimaginable power.

I only came back to settle my mother's estate. But the first person I met was Clayton, standing in front of my grave, mourning the girl he helped kill.

Chapter 1

Ivy POV:

I saw my own grave today. Not in a dream, not in a metaphor, but a real, cold tombstone, standing innocently next to my mother' s beneath a weeping willow. It was the first thing that hit me as I drove my rental car through the rusty gates of the Dillard family cemetery, a place I swore I' d never willingly set foot in again. The name carved into the gray granite was undeniably mine: IVY DILLARD. Below it, the cruelest lies: "Beloved Daughter, Cherished Fiancée."

A shiver ran down my spine, but it wasn' t from the autumn chill. It was the shock of seeing my past self so neatly laid to rest, a painful echo of the life I had shed. The stone was new, newer than my mother' s, and unnervingly pristine. On its base, a faded bouquet of plastic lilies lay wilting beside a tarnished silver locket. It was the locket Clayton gave me in high school, the one I thought held his heart.

An old groundskeeper, his face a roadmap of wrinkles, shuffled past. He' d probably been tending these graves since before I was born. He squinted at me, then at the headstone.

"Well, I' ll be," he mumbled, his voice gravelly. "For a second there, I thought you were a ghost. Spitting image, you are, of poor Ivy Dillard. Same dark hair, same sad eyes." He chuckled, a dry, rattling sound. "Though she' s been gone five years now, bless her heart."

I felt a coldness spread through me, deeper than any grave. "Just a coincidence," I said, my voice flat. I didn't correct him on the "sad eyes" part. My eyes weren't sad anymore. They were sharp.