My Husband's Mistress Picked the Wrong Woman

The day my husband gave me a five-carat diamond ring, his mistress spotted it on my hand. Wearing the exact same ring, she accused me of stealing her man. Before I could explain, she and her bridesmaids beat me to death.

My husband shielded her from the law and married her before I was even buried. My mother-in-law embraced her simply for being pregnant.

Then I opened my eyes on the day I received that ring.

This time, I slipped it onto my mother-in-law's finger.

Chapter 1

"A million and a half dollars, and you still haven't given him a son."

My mother-in-law, Diane, Hale stood beside our living room couch, watching her son slide the diamond onto my finger.

My husband, Marcus, bent to kiss my hand, but I pulled it back before his lips could touch my skin.

All five fingers moved. There was no blood under my nails, no split skin, no heel grinding through the back of my hand. I turned it over twice before I could look at Marcus.

"Too loose?" he asked.

Behind him, the television showed the New Year's Day parade. The jewelry box lay open on his knee. Diane was wearing the cream sweater.

I'd lived through this already. I'd died before the day was over.

"Evelyn?" Marcus reached for my wrist. "What's wrong?"

I kept my hand out of his reach. "Nothing. Let me look at it."

He smiled. "Custom-made. There's only one in the world."

Hearing this, Diane made a disgusted noise.

"You'd think she earned it herself."

In fact, I had helped build the company that paid for our life. Marcus was its CEO; I was its president. When we started, we'd shared one desk and taken turns answering the phone. Now he bought his mother jewelry, cars, vacations, whatever she asked for. One expensive gift to his wife wasn't going to bankrupt him.

But that hadn't stopped Diane from acting like I was a gold digger bleeding her son dry.

I remembered sitting on this couch, embarrassed by her contempt and trying to explain a decision her son and I had made together.

"We do want children. But we said we'd wait until the company was more stable," I'd told her. "We're both working all the time."

"Then you make the time. Millions of women work full-time and still have children," she said.

I replied, "It's something Marcus and I agreed on."

She'd turned to Marcus, waiting for him to deny it. But he hadn't.

That silence had left me to answer for both of us.

Diane had spent years treating the absence of a grandson as a defect in me. A late meeting meant I neglected her son. A day at home meant I was lazy. If I mentioned how much work I did, I was boasting; if I said nothing, she'd take that as agreement.

I'd asked Marcus why he never said a word.

"She doesn't mean it like that," he said.

"Then how does she mean it?" I pressed.

"Evelyn. It's New Year's. Can we have one day without this?"

I stared at my ring, hoping the gift meant he finally understood my sacrifices. But he just sighed. "Go buy her something. You know how she gets when she feels left out."

He'd given me a careless kiss and sent me to the mall to make his mother happy.

That was what happened in my first life. On the mall's designer floor, I passed a bridal boutique just as a woman in a wedding dress stepped out. Her friends crowded around her, hauling garment bags and laughing.

I'd glanced at the dress. That was all.

"Wait." She caught my wrist. "Where did you get that?"

Her diamond ring flashed beside mine. Same stone, same twisted setting, same tiny stones along the band.

"My husband—"

She slapped me before I finished.

"You've been sleeping with him?"

I tried to pull away. One of her friends blocked my path. Another took my shopping bag and dumped it onto the floor.

"What husband?" I asked. "Please, you've made a mistake."

She held her hand in front of my face.

"My husband designed this for me. One of a kind." Her fingers tightened around my wrist. "So how did you get one?"

I didn't have an answer. I was still trying to understand why another woman was wearing my New Year's present.

They tore my blouse when I tried to get past them. Someone shoved me down. My phone was in my coat pocket; I dragged it out and pressed Marcus's name. The call had barely started when the bride kicked it away and stamped on it.

I shouted that I was married. I asked them to look in my bag, to let me call my husband.

But a shoe struck my face. After that, it hurt just to speak, and any word I tried to say only made them angrier.

People stopped at the ends of the aisle. A few held up their phones. Someone said security was coming. I tried to crawl toward that voice.

Yet, the bride put her heel on my hand.

I remembered the hard point of it, the pressure, my other hand scrabbling uselessly at her ankle. I remembered asking her to stop long after she had made it clear she wouldn't.

She cut my face and called it a warning to other women. Then they stripped away what was left of my clothes and dragged me outside by my hair.

I couldn't stand. I couldn't cover myself. Cold pavement scraped against my back while she told the men near the entrance what kind of woman I was and laughed when one of them reached for me.

I died on that sidewalk, still trying to say Marcus's name.

Death hadn't ended what I could see. I didn't know why. I had no body to move, no voice anyone heard, but I watched my husband arrive.

He looked at what was left of me once.

Then the bride ran to him, crying, and he put his arms around her.

That was how I learned her name: Serena Vale. His old girlfriend. The woman he'd never really left.

When he was asked for a statement, he signed a plea for leniency. He said Serena had been confused, frightened, provoked. Later, I watched him make calls on her behalf. Whatever happened out of my sight, she and the women who had helped her went home. No one was punished for killing me.

My funeral hadn't happened when he married her.

And Diane held Serena's hands. Serena was pregnant. That was enough.

"At least you'll give him a child," Diane said. "We can finally get on with our lives."

I had watched her touch the belly of the woman who'd crushed my hands.

Now, those hands were whole. Marcus was still beside me on the couch, waiting to hear how much I loved his present. Diane was watching the diamond with the same resentment I'd tried to soothe before.

I wanted to tell Diane exactly what her precious son's girlfriend would do to a woman wearing this ring.

Instead, I eased the band over my knuckle.

"You're right, Mom," I said, taking Diane's hand. I'd called my mother-in-law that for years. =

I slid the diamond onto her finger.

"It would look much better on you."