/0/86551/coverbig.jpg?v=bb79ab6c6e2edd0a99400b693ac8c813)
The phone rang, shattering the silence of my bridal suite, just three days before my perfect wedding. It was the police, delivering news that cleaved my world in two: my parents, David and Eleanor Miller, gone in a car accident. My fiancé, Mark, couldn't have been quicker to cut ties, citing "bad luck" and the "business image." I was shattered, left alone with the wreckage of my life, the ghost of my wedding dress, and a grief so profound it stole my breath. Then Liam Reed, my childhood friend, appeared like an angel, holding me, comforting me, promising to never leave. He was my rock, my savior, and when he proposed, I said yes, desperate for an anchor in my storm. But that night, I overheard him on the phone, his voice cold and triumphant, confessing their "accident" was a meticulously planned murder, a twisted revenge orchestrated with his mistress, Chloe. He planned to swap my parents' ashes at the funeral, then smear their remains on me as a "beauty treatment." My world didn't just tilt; it imploded. The naive, broken Ava Miller died that night, and from her ashes, something cold, hard, and utterly ruthless was born. He thought I was his victim, his pawn. He was wrong. The game wasn't over; it had just begun, and this time, I was changing the rules.