My body sank into the crushing dark of the ocean floor, the bone-chilling cold gnawing at my marrow. The light above grew dim, flickering out like a dying candle. Was this really how it ended? My father framed and rotting in a cell, my mother left alone to face the vultures, and the Montgomery legacy shattered?

The rage burned brighter than the abyss. I had invited the wolf into our home and paid the price with everything. I was not ready to go. I refused to let it end like this!

Perhaps it was the sheer force of my resentment that tethered my soul to this world. Without anyone to guide me to the beyond, I drifted, a silent specter haunting the wreckage of my life.

I returned to the Montgomery estate. In the living room, Cassidy was sobbing into my mother’s arms. "Mom... it was pouring rain that night. Evangeline’s car just... it spun out. It went straight into the harbor."

"What? No! You’re lying!" My mother gasped, her breath hitching. Her hands clawed at Cassidy’s shoulders, her voice trembling with a frantic, animal terror.

"It’s true, Mom," Cassidy wept, every tear as calculated as a diamond. "The GPS tracker on her car showed it heading straight for the pier. The traffic cameras—there’s footage of her driving in, but nothing ever came out."

My mother crumbled like a marionette with its strings cut. Her eyes glazed over, sliding into a catatonic state. It was too much; the scandal that had landed my father in prison, the sudden loss of her daughter—was fate so cruel that it couldn’t stand to see us happy? She collapsed into Cassidy’s arms, unconscious.

"Mom! Someone call an ambulance! Now!"

As the house descended into chaos, I watched from the shadows. A slow, triumphant smirk curled on Cassidy’s lips when she thought no one was looking. My heart, or what was left of it, constricted with agony. For twenty years, my mother had been treated like a porcelain doll, sheltered from every harsh wind by my father. She had been the envy of every socialite in New York, the gold standard of a perfect family. To see her reduced to this was a torture worse than drowning.

My physical body remained lost in the deep, but I was bound to this misery. I watched helplessly as Cassidy seized control of the Montgomery Group and committed my broken mother to a psychiatric ward. My hatred only deepened, turning into something cold and hard.

"Well, who’s this?" I muttered, floating above my own gravestone.

The man kneeling before it radiated a freezing, lethal aura. His eyes were bloodshot, rimmed with a madness that made even the spirits shudder.

"The Madman..."

Marcellus Alexander. To the rest of New York, he was the untouchable, temperamental tyrant who had choked his own stepmother to death just to secure his throne. Years ago, when our grandfathers were still business cronies, I had visited the Alexander estate. I used to run the other way whenever I saw him, terrified by the dark, suffocating energy that clung to him.

A few months ago, he’d lost his mind. He’d dragged me to his private sanctuary, the Elysian Estate, demanding I marry him, threatening to ruin anyone who got near me—especially Jonah Harrison. Back then, I’d been a spoiled brat; I saw a gentle, sweet-talking fiancé in Jonah and a deranged monster in Marcellus. It was an easy choice. I’d played the victim, threatened suicide, and finally goaded him into letting me go. I still remembered the shattered, hollow look in his eyes the day I walked out of the Elysian Estate.

"Evangeline... if you must go, at least live a good life," he had rasped, his voice rough with suppressed agony.

I felt a sting of guilt, though it was far too late for that. If I had known my life would end in a watery grave, I would have chosen the monster. At least his arms were strong enough to keep the wolves away.

Marcellus’s trembling hand traced the inscription on the granite: *Beloved Wife, Evangeline Montgomery.*

"Tch. Always the obsessive freak, aren't you? Even in death, you won't let me go."

I used to be too terrified to look him in the eye, but as a ghost, I felt a strange, morbid curiosity. I leaned in, studying the sharp, aristocratic line of his jaw, his high nose, and the thin, quivering lips. He looked like a masterpiece of tragedy—a beautiful, broken soul.

Suddenly, the scenery shifted. I was in the basement of the Elysian Estate. The air reeked of iron and rotting decay—it was nauseating. Two figures lay on the floor, shredded and blood-soaked.

I winced. I was about to turn away when I heard the low, guttural voice of the man himself.

"Is that all? I’m going to play with you both until you beg for the sweet release of death."

Marcellus looked feral. His expensive suit was crumpled, his hair a chaotic mess, his face gaunt and unshaven. He hadn’t slept in days; the dark circles under his eyes looked like bruises.

"Marcellus! Please! It wasn't me! It was Cassidy! She was the one who drove the car!" Jonah Harrison scrambled toward him, clawing at the concrete, groveling like a stray dog.

*Crack.*

The sound was sickening. Marcellus sent Jonah flying with a single, brutal kick. Jonah went limp, sliding into a heap of unconscious meat.

Marcellus didn't even blink. He looked down at them, his expression utterly blank. "Go down there and explain it all to Evangeline personally." He rose, his coat sweeping the floor, and glanced at his head of security. "When they stop breathing, drag them out to the kennels. Feed them to the dogs."

I looked down at the two miserable wrecks on the floor. A dark, twisted sense of satisfaction blossomed in my chest.

"Well, Marcellus," I whispered, my ghostly smile sharp enough to cut, "thank you for the vengeance."