A week before my wedding to Alistair Sterling, I was at the Seattle waterfront community center I’d designed when I was crushed in an accident—one deliberately orchestrated by his late wife's sister, Bianca Thorne.
She used a plasma cutter to slice through a critical support on the scaffolding. The falling steel rebar pierced my abdomen.
When Alistair and the paramedics arrived, I was trapped under the twisted metal, bleeding out.
But he ran straight past me to Bianca, who was perfectly fine, merely putting on a show of trembling.
He held her tightly as she shivered in his arms, safe and sound.
A paramedic shouted anxiously, "Mr. Sterling, your fiancée is in critical condition! We have to get her into surgery immediately!"
But Alistair blocked the stretcher, his gaze sweeping over me, frigid and dismissive. "It was just an accident. Bianca is terrified—she's the priority. Get her a psych evaluation first."
As they prepared to leave me behind, I used my last ounce of strength to grab his pant leg.
He frowned, prying my weakening fingers away. "Bianca didn't mean it; she just panicked. Scarlett, you're the professional here. You should know where the priority lies."
Then, using my blood-soaked fingerprint, he forcefully unlocked my work tablet.
He used it to delete the final safety log, erasing all evidence of Bianca's unauthorized entry onto the site.
"The next team of paramedics will be here soon. Hang in there."
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1
I didn't make it to the next team of paramedics.
When I opened my eyes again, I was floating in mid-air.
The cold rain poured over the body lying below me, and I wanted to hug myself for warmth.
But my arms passed right through me.
A bitter smile touched my lips.
So, I was dead.
Alistair was right. I was a professional. I knew exactly what it meant to be crushed by tons of falling rebar, to have my abdomen pierced.
Bianca never intended for me to live.
And Alistair—a man revered as Seattle’s top investment tycoon—had dismissed my fatal injury as a simple “accident” with a single glance.
I should have given up on him long ago.
When it came to Bianca, nothing else mattered.
Not even my life.
In the distance, the sirens of another ambulance grew closer.
Firefighters and paramedics leaped out, rushing toward my body in the downpour.
I watched as my own limp, broken form was cut free from the rebar.
Amid the paramedics' shouts, they kept injecting adrenaline, and the defibrillator thudded against my chest again and again.
But nothing could stop the ECG from flatlining.
A paramedic bellowed into his radio, "Shut down the roads! Now! Tell the hospital to prep its best trauma team—the patient is crashing!"
But all three of his calls to the hospital were rejected.
He was furious. "Why? Miss O'Connell is Sterling's fiancée! How the hell does he get to monopolize our best trauma team for a 'psych eval' on a woman without a single scratch on her?"
He choked up, his voice cracking. "Miss O'Connell... she's dying..."
A dead silence fell over the ambulance.
They all knew Bianca Thorne was Alistair's late wife's sister.
The story was that she'd developed severe PTSD after her sister, Sierra, fell to her death while supposedly "saving" her on a stormy mountain climb.
Whenever it was a gloomy, rainy day, she would have an emotional breakdown, and only Alistair's presence could calm her.
And I, his fiancée, had finally reached my limit after he postponed our project's groundbreaking ceremony three times for Bianca's recurring "anxiety." "An episode when it drizzles? Another one when it thunders? Do you really think she sees you as just a brother-in-law?"
Alistair's eyes had turned icy in an instant, and he seemed surprised by his own protective reaction.
He looked away, his tone stiff. "Scarlett, if you can't tolerate Bianca, then maybe you're not the kind of woman I thought you were."
