The Husband I Became Chapter 1

When Damian Cole forced me to sign the bankruptcy papers that would liquidate my family’s company, my heart gave out.

The crushing pain in my chest arrived like a fist closing around glass. I collapsed against the hardwood floor of his penthouse study, gasping, my fingers clawing toward the prescription bottle of nitroglycerin that had rolled from my purse.

Damian didn’t even look down. He stood there with his arm wrapped around Sadie Ward, his long-time obsession, who was dabbing at a barely visible scratch on her wrist with a silk handkerchief.

With the casual precision of someone putting out a cigarette, Damian brought the heavy heel of his Italian leather boot down on my medication. The amber plastic cracked. The tiny white pills were ground into chalky dust against the parquet.

"Faking another episode, Nora?" he sneered, his voice smooth, indifferent, and devoid of warmth. "Sign the transfer today, or you can go rot in hell alongside your deadbeat father."

He got what he wanted. He snatched the signed pages from the desk, triumphant.

Then the heavy crystal chandelier above us shuddered, snapped from its ceiling mount, and came crashing down.

When I opened my eyes again, the world was blindingly sharp.

I was standing upright. My lungs expanded fully, pulling in a deep, painless draft of air that filled my chest without that familiar, terrifying hitch. I felt tall, solid, and entirely whole.

At my feet, curled on the floor in a pathetic ball, was my own frail body.

Damian was inside it.

He was clutching his left chest, drenched in cold sweat, his face the color of wet parchment. The agony of a failing heart twisted his features into a mask of pure terror. He looked up at me with my own eyes, trembling, begging for help.

Sadie rushed over, her diamond earrings catching the light, and without a second thought, swung her hand and slapped him hard across the face.

"You pathetic bitch!" Sadie spat, her voice shrill with venom. "Damian just crushed your pills, and you’re still trying to play the dying victim for attention? Look in the mirror. Look at your miserable, short-lived face. You think you deserve good medicine?"

Sadie didn’t see the wild, disoriented shock in those pale eyes.

Damian was spasming from the ischemic pain, desperately reaching out to grab the hem of my trousers, silently pleading with me to tell her the truth—to tell her who he really was.

I looked down at him through his own dark, handsome eyes. I felt the steady, thunderous beat of a healthy heart inside my ribs, and I smiled.

I reached out, pulling Sadie effortlessly against my side.

"Sadie is right," I said, Damian’s deep, resonant baritone rolling effortlessly from my throat. "Throw this miserable piece of trash into the basement utility closet. Lock her in for three days and three nights."