Forty-eight hours later, Clara Jiang died.
At least, that was what the official record said.
Alexander Lu learned about it at 11:17 on a rainy Thursday morning.
He was in the middle of a board meeting when his assistant entered without knocking.
That alone made Alexander look up.
“Mr. Lu.”
“What is it?”
The assistant’s face was pale.
“It’s about Miss Jiang.”
Alexander’s pen stopped.
For three years, everyone around him had called me Mrs. Lu.
Now I had been gone for less than a week, and I was already Miss Jiang again.
“What happened?”
“There was an accident.”
The room became strangely quiet.
Alexander leaned back.
“What kind of accident?”
“Her taxi was struck on the airport expressway last night. The vehicle caught fire.”
His assistant swallowed.
“The police confirmed her identity from the documents recovered at the scene.”
Alexander stared at him.
No expression.
No movement.
Then he said, “That’s impossible.”
Nobody in the room spoke.
Alexander stood so abruptly that his chair struck the wall.
“Where is she?”
“Chaoyang Hospital.”
He left without another word.
At the hospital, there was no body he could identify.
Only a sealed report.
A burned handbag.
A damaged watch.
And the silver bracelet his grandmother had given me on our wedding day.
Alexander recognized it immediately.
He had fastened it around my wrist himself.
His grandmother had smiled from her hospital bed and said, “Alexander, if you make this girl cry, I’ll come back and haunt you.”
At the time, he had laughed.
Standing beneath the hospital’s white lights, Alexander did not laugh.
The officer explained something about the fire.
Something about identification.
Something about how badly the body had been damaged.
Alexander heard none of it.
He stared at the bracelet.
Three days earlier, I had been standing outside his house with two suitcases.
Alive.
Angry.
Looking directly at him.
Now all that remained was a piece of silver in a transparent evidence bag.
“No.”
It was the first word he said.
The officer looked at him.
Alexander repeated it.
“No.”
Then he took out his phone and called me.
Once.
Twice.
Five times.
Ten.
The same mechanical voice answered.
The number you have dialed is unavailable.
Alexander called until the officer quietly said, “Mr. Lu, I’m sorry.”
He lowered the phone.
For the first time in years, Alexander Lu looked like a man who had no idea what to do next.
Three days later, the Lu family held my funeral.
Serena came wearing black.
Alexander’s mother complained that reporters were gathering outside.
His father discussed how to keep the story away from the company.
Everyone behaved exactly as I had expected.
Except Alexander.
He stood in front of my photograph and said nothing.
He had not slept properly since the accident.
That night, after everyone left, he returned alone to the mansion.
My room had already been cleaned.
Too clean.
He opened the wardrobe.
Empty.
The dressing table.
Empty.
Then the bedside drawer.
Inside was a small notebook.
Alexander opened it.
The first pages were ordinary.
Shopping lists.
Reminders.
His grandmother’s medication schedule from years ago.
Then he found a page with dates.
March 12 — Alexander likes the lotus soup less salty.
April 7 — Meeting ended at 11. Leave the hallway light on.
June 19 — He has a headache when he skips lunch.
October 3 — He came home drunk. Said Serena’s name in his sleep.
Alexander’s fingers froze.
He turned the page.
December 14 — Mrs. Lu called me cheap again. Alexander was standing there. He said nothing.
January 26 — I think silence hurts more than insults.
The final entry was only one sentence.
I wonder how long it takes to stop loving someone who never noticed you were there.
Alexander closed the notebook.
For a long time, he sat on the edge of the bed.
Then his phone rang.
Serena.
He declined the call.
She called again.
This time he answered.
“Alexander, where are you?”
“At home.”
“I was worried. Your mother said you haven’t eaten.”
“I’m fine.”
A pause.
Then Serena spoke gently.
“You shouldn’t blame yourself. Clara made her own choices.”
Alexander looked at the notebook.
“What choices?”
“I only mean…the divorce. Leaving Beijing. You couldn’t have known she would—”
“How did you know she was leaving Beijing?”
Silence.
Alexander’s eyes changed.
“Serena.”
“I assumed.”
“No.”
He stood.
“I never told you.”
Another silence.
Longer this time.
Alexander’s voice became cold.
“Where did you meet Clara before she died?”
“I didn’t.”
“Think carefully before you lie to me again.”
Serena breathed in sharply.
Finally, she said, “Kerry Center.”
Alexander said nothing.
“She came to see me,” Serena continued. “She gave me the five million you offered her.”
His expression hardened.
“She what?”
“She said she didn’t need it.”
Alexander slowly lowered the phone.
Five million.
The money had never mattered to me.
Then why ask for a favor?
His eyes suddenly sharpened.
He remembered our final conversation at the divorce table.
I want you, Alexander Lu, to owe me a favor.
At the time, he had thought it was pride.
Now it felt like a door he had failed to notice.
Alexander hung up.
That night, he ordered his private security team to investigate everything about Clara Jiang.
Not the last three years.
Everything.
Childhood.
University.
Employment.
Family.
Travel.
Bank records.
He expected to discover debts.
Maybe another man.
Maybe some secret reason I had wanted to leave China.
Instead, twenty-four hours later, his security director entered his office carrying a thin folder.
Too thin.
Alexander looked at it.
“That’s all?”
The man hesitated.
“That’s the problem.”
“What problem?”
“Clara Jiang barely exists before age eighteen.”
Alexander’s gaze lifted.
“Explain.”
“Her school records were inserted into the system years after the dates listed. Her family registration is valid, but the original paper trail is missing. Her supposed parents died when she was young, yet we can’t find consistent records connecting them to her.”
Alexander stood slowly.
“And university?”
“That part is real. But something else happened there.”
The director placed a photograph on the desk.
It showed me at twenty years old beside Nora Zhou and three foreign students.
Alexander picked it up.
“Who are they?”
“We’re still identifying them.”
Then the director placed another document beside it.
“Three months before you met Miss Jiang, she rejected an offer from Helix Capital.”
Alexander frowned.
Helix Capital was not a company people casually rejected.
It was one of the most secretive investment groups in Europe.
“Why would they recruit her?”
“We don’t know.”
Alexander looked again at my photograph.
For three years, he had believed he married a quiet woman from an ordinary background.
A woman with no connections.
No power.
No world beyond his.
For the first time, he wondered whether that entire picture had been deliberately constructed.
“Keep digging.”
“Mr. Lu, there’s something else.”
The director hesitated.
“The accident.”
Alexander looked up.
“We obtained traffic-camera footage from two kilometers before the crash.”
He opened a tablet.
The video showed a taxi moving toward the airport.
Timestamp: 14:08.
The director moved to another recording.
Airport entrance.
Timestamp: 14:21.
Alexander watched.
Then his breathing stopped.
A woman crossed the frame.
Baseball cap.
Black coat.
Small suitcase.
Her face appeared for less than two seconds.
But Alexander knew that walk.
He knew the way she tucked her hair behind her ear.
He knew the small scar near her jaw.
He knew her.
“Pause.”
The image froze.
Alexander stepped closer.
The woman was me.
Alive.
Thirteen minutes after the taxi supposedly carrying me had already been heading toward the place where I “died.”
Alexander stared at the screen.
Then, very slowly, something changed in his face.
Not grief.
Not relief.
Understanding.
“You’re alive.”
Eight thousand kilometers away, I stood before a window overlooking the Mediterranean.
My old phone lay dismantled on the table.
My passport said Clara Jiang no longer existed.
Nora handed me a new one.
I opened it.
A different name looked back at me.
“Any regrets?” she asked.
I thought about Beijing.
The mansion.
The divorce certificate.
Alexander standing beside Serena while I slowly disappeared inside my own marriage.
Then I closed the passport.
“No.”
Nora smiled.
“Good. Because someone started investigating you.”
I turned.
“Who?”
She placed her phone on the table.
Alexander Lu’s photograph filled the screen.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Then I laughed softly.
Three years married to me, and Alexander had never truly tried to discover who I was.
It took my death to make him curious.
Unfortunately for him, curiosity had come too late.
Because Clara Jiang was dead.
And the woman Alexander Lu had just begun searching for was someone he had never met.
