My mother-in-law pressed a pillow over my face while I lay helpless in a body cast, whispering that I should have died when I went over the balcony. She thought she was finishing what she'd started—but detectives were already listening, and what they uncovered afterward revealed I wasn't the first wife Ethan Morgan had nearly lost.

The sterile smell of rubbing alcohol and bleached cotton hit my nose before I even opened my eyes. Every breath I took felt like breathing in crushed glass, my chest compressed under pounds of cold fiberglass and plaster.

I was trapped inside a complete body cast. My legs were anchored down, my spine locked straight, and moving even a single finger sent blinding jolts of white-hot agony straight up my neck.

"Three days ago, you went over the second-floor balcony, Claire," Detective Mason had said gently when I first woke up. "Your husband, Ethan, said it was a tragic accident. He said you lost your footing in the dark."

I couldn't speak then, but my mind screamed the truth.

I didn't lose my footing. I remembered the heavy, cold hands pressing firmly against the center of my back, pushing me into the empty night air.

Ethan played the role of the grieving, heartbroken husband with terrifying perfection. He sat in the vinyl visitor chair for hours, holding a pristine glass vase of white lilies, dabbing his eyes whenever a nurse walked into the room.

His mother, Margaret, didn't bother pretending.

Margaret had despised me from the day Ethan brought me home to the Morgan estate eighteen months ago. To her, I was an ambitious nobody who had trapped her brilliant, wealthy son into marriage.

On the night of the fall, I had finally confronted Ethan in his study. I showed him the explicit text messages on his phone from an unknown number. He hadn't panicked or apologized; he had simply stood there, smiling a dark, hollow smile.

Five minutes later, I was falling.

Now, Margaret sat beside my hospital bed while Ethan went down to the cafeteria. The moment the room's heavy wooden door clicked shut, her phony smile dissolved into an icy snarl.

"You're remarkably durable, Claire," Margaret whispered, leaning her face so close to mine I could smell the stale coffee on her breath. "A two-story drop onto cobblestone should have broken your neck. You're harder to get rid of than I expected."