My husband killed himself on our wedding day.
He left two notes behind.
One named me as the person who murdered the entire Fox family.
The other was a love letter to Evelyn Fox.
In it, he laid out his account.
That years ago, to marry him,
I had staged a car accident and killed Evelyn's entire family.
Evelyn had barely survived, but the trauma left deep psychological scars.
She'd been receiving treatment overseas ever since.
Cedric Gilbert couldn't live with the ugly truth, so he chose death as atonement.
As compensation, he was donating his entire estate to charity.
His only wish was that I face the punishment I deserved.
The story exploded online.
But I wasn't panicking the way everyone expected.
Because a Cedric Gilbert from ten years in the future
had crossed through time and told me the whole truth.
……
When I walked into the bedroom, Cedric was already dead.
He was still wearing that crisp, immaculate groom's suit.
But the blood from his throat had sprayed all the way to the ceiling.
Within minutes, the wedding music was drowned out by police sirens.
Officers swept the scene, stringing crime-scene tape around the villa.
Every guest who'd come for the wedding was taken in for questioning.
I, the “murderer,” was locked in the study alone.
Every window had been sealed shut.
Anything I could use to hurt someone or escape had been removed.
Just me in that enormous room, alone with everything that had happened.
Through the haze, the door opened.
And the face that met my eyes was the one I'd never stopped thinking about.
“Cedric?”
“You……you're dead. How are you—”
I couldn't stop myself from stepping forward, my face full of confusion.
“What is going on!”
Everything that had happened today was beyond comprehension.
Cedric—the man who loved me and whom I loved back—had accused me of murdering Evelyn's entire family.
He'd chosen to die on our wedding night rather than keep any tie to me.
I hadn't even begun to recover from the grief
when the dead man walked back in alive.
I pinched my thigh hard, making sure I wasn't dreaming.
But Cedric's expression only grew more urgent.
He glanced around the room, and his eyes went red.
“Still a step too late……”
“Hailey, I don't have much time.”
“Everything I'm about to tell you—burn it into your memory.”
“I come from ten years in the future. The wedding today, all of it—it was a setup. Every part of it was aimed at you.”
“I'm not dead. I've been having an affair with Evelyn, but I didn't have the guts to break our engagement.”
“So I staged everything. Faked my own death so I could get out of the country and disappear with her.”
“The donation—that was just a way to legally strip our marital assets so the two of us could live it up overseas.”
I stood frozen, unable to speak.
Years ago, my father died saving Cedric's life.
After that, I was taken in by the Gilbert family.
Ralph Gilbert saw the bond between Cedric and me and arranged our engagement himself.
To give me real security, he even wrote it into his will:
Cedric could only inherit the Gilbert family's full estate if he married me.
So that was why Cedric had staged this elaborate death on our wedding day.
I frowned and stumbled back a few steps, unable to believe what I was hearing.
The man standing in front of me.
He had Cedric's exact face.
I could feel that familiar presence radiating from him with every breath.
But everything he'd just told me—I still couldn't bring myself to believe it.
