A cold smirk tugged at the corner of Liam's mouth. "I knew it."

He thought I was playing tricks on him again.

"No," Grandma shook her head, her red eyes welling with tears as she desperately tried to explain. "Chloe... she's already..."

Watching her choke on her words, unable to speak, I knew she had briefly regained her lucidity. The agonizing truth had resurfaced: her beloved granddaughter was dead.

"Whatever manipulative tricks Chloe picked up from Sebastian, they won't work on me," Liam interrupted, his tone dripping with malice.

Liam had always believed I abandoned him out of greed, chasing after a life of luxury.

Because three years ago, I married Sebastian Cole, the sole heir to the wealthiest family in San Francisco.

Liam and I had met entirely by chance.

Our story began in college, when things were simple. Liam came from a humble background and attended on a scholarship. He was incredibly brilliant, yet socially awkward. He poured all his energy into coding, his mind overflowing with innovative ideas.

He was shy and often stumbled over his words, especially when presenting his projects. Even back then, Sebastian Cole looked at him with a hint of mockery. In Sebastian's eyes, Liam was nothing but a comical, inferior outcast.

During a college pitch competition, Sebastian publicly ridiculed Liam's stutter and unpolished presentation. He intentionally made things difficult for Liam, trying to break him.

I stepped in to help. I didn't know Liam well at the time, but I saw his raw talent and the pure heart hidden beneath his timid exterior.

I helped him refine his pitch, and he won.

That was the beginning of our story. I became his sounding board, his confidante, the only person he truly trusted.

At the same time, Sebastian developed a simmering resentment toward Liam—and a strange, highly possessive interest in me.

We spent countless nights in tiny dorm rooms, mapping out our future. In our world, our ideas, my designs, and his code were going to change everything. He would talk for hours, his eyes practically glowing with passion. I would listen, sketching out user interfaces and branding logos.

Sometimes, he'd get so absorbed in his work that he'd forget about me, forget about the world. Then, suddenly realizing it, he would look up, and his expression would soften. "Sorry, Chloe," he'd say, wearing a rare smile. "I got carried away. But it's all because of you. You make our future look so clear to me."

He remembered everything. My favorite coffee—extra sugar, no milk. The way I hummed when I was deep in thought. He would bring me that coffee and quietly set it on my desk.

We built our startup from scratch, fueled by nothing but passion and an unwavering belief in each other. "We're going to be billionaires, Chloe," he whispered, tracing patterns into the palm of my hand. "I'm going to buy you the world. You'll never have to worry about a thing ever again."

I remember my birthday during the early days of the company, when we were practically penniless. He bought me a delicate little silver necklace. He had saved up for months.

"Chloe, you deserve the best," he said, his eyes utterly sincere. "One day, I'll give it to you."

He protected me like a fiercely loyal lion. He would never let anyone hurt or insult me. His love for me was steadfast, seemingly boundless. It was a love that defied logic, and I had thought it would last forever.

The memories flooded in, sharp yet hazy. My numb mind desperately tried to cling to them, trying to reconcile them with the man standing before me.

But my heart grew colder and colder. Now, all I could feel was his hatred.

Grandma struggled to stand up. She was completely exhausted, her frail frame a heartbreaking sight. She stared at Liam, but ultimately swallowed her words.

Some truths just lodge themselves deep in the throat, too difficult to speak. Like the fact that I had been dead for two years.

It was a memory Nana's mind fiercely suppressed, a coping mechanism to survive the grief.

She would often sit at my old desk at home, staring at my laptop, whispering, "My sweet Chloe, why won't you come home to see Grandma?"

If I could, I would rather she live in a fantasy forever than have to face this kind of pain.

"That's enough, Nana," I practically begged. "Stop remembering the pain. Just remember the good times."

Losing patience with her silence, Liam turned and walked toward a car parked by the curb.

Nana gave his retreating back a sorrowful look. Limping forward, she muttered to herself, "I'm sorry, Chloe. I shouldn't have come. You'd be so heartbroken if you heard what Liam just said."

My phantom tears poured down like rain.

Just as Liam reached to open the car door, Nana suddenly swayed and collapsed onto the sidewalk.

I screamed in terror. "Please! Someone help her! Save my grandma!"

But my cries dissolved into the wind. No one moved.

Then, Liam turned and started walking back.

In that split second, I thought the remnants of his humanity had returned. I thought he was going to help her.

For the first time, a flicker of emotion other than contempt crossed his eyes. But then he took a step back, maintaining a studied, deliberate apathy on his face.

He'll come back to save her, the foolish part of me hoped. He couldn't be that cruel. He knew her. He knew Grandma.

I even pictured him kneeling beside her, checking her pulse, calling for help.

"Is this another one of Chloe's tricks?" he said, his tone flat and rigid. "She's using you to get to me, to win my sympathy? Could she be any more despicable?"

"You only blocked my path because you want money, right?" Liam took a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills from his assistant and threw them over Nana's body.

The bills fluttered down like a rain of green insults, landing on her chest and face.

"Liam!" Rage flared up inside me like a blazing inferno.

I lunged at him, wanting to tear him to shreds, but I only phased right through his tailored suit.

Tears of sheer fury blurred my vision.

Liam, she's as pale as a ghost! Can't you see she's passed out?!

Seeing that Nana didn't react, Liam frowned, his face twisting with disgust.

"Drop the act. Tell Chloe that if she wants to see me, if she wants my money, she can crawl here herself."

The cash scattered around Nana's collapsed body pierced my brain like needles.

Even in death, some memories are branded deep into the soul.

When Liam's startup finally began to take off, I gave everything I had to support him. I even cashed out part of the life insurance my parents left me just to keep the company afloat.

Things seemed to be looking up. A major tech conglomerate offered to buy his core algorithm for a lucrative price. Liam was tempted.

Then, the world caved in. Lawsuits. Patent infringement. Allegations of stolen tech. It was a meticulously orchestrated attack, corporate sabotage designed to cripple us.

Up against a corporate behemoth, Liam was like a minnow. He had neither the legal funds nor the ironclad evidence needed to win. The lawsuit eventually drained the company dry.

Legal notices piled up like death warrants. We were walking on thin ice, every day feeling like a year. At our lowest point, we squeezed into a damp basement apartment in Oakland, surviving on instant noodles and stale bread.

Under the stress, my hair fell out in clumps.

He held me tightly, his voice hoarse from exhaustion. "Don't worry. We'll get through this. We'll bounce back. I promise. I'll give you the life you've always dreamed of."

He'd talk about our future, painting vivid pictures: a cozy house, a dog named Pixel, two kids with my eyes and his stubborn jawline. "Chloe, you won't ever have to work again. I'll take care of everything."

Whenever he thought I was asleep, he'd slip out of bed and code until dawn.

I watched helplessly as he wasted away day by day.

The stress was going to destroy him. Our love, our future—it had all turned into a crushing weight on his shoulders.

He was working himself into an early grave.

He was going to die because of his sense of responsibility, because he loved me.

I couldn't bear to watch him destroy himself. I knocked on the doors of every venture capitalist I could find, but no one wanted to touch a startup mired in litigation.

Just when we were pushed to the absolute brink, Sebastian Cole stepped in.

He said he could solve all of Liam's problems. He could make the lawsuits disappear and inject the necessary capital.

But he had one condition: I had to marry him.

On a muggy, suffocating summer night, I broke up with Liam. He stood outside his dilapidated office building, drenched in sweat, begging me not to go.

"Chloe, please don't give up on us," his voice cracked. "I'm figuring it out, I swear I'll turn things around. Just give me a little more time, please."

I pulled my hand from his grasp, forcing my voice to sound icy. "Let go of me, Liam. I'm dead tired."

"What kind of future will I have with you? Can you give me stability? Can you even make rent?"

"I'm sick of struggling. I'm sick of being poor. Sebastian can give me what you can't."

I let Sebastian pull me into his arms, intentionally avoiding Liam's shattered eyes.

I knew that if I looked, my resolve would crumble, and Liam would end up in jail for debts he could never repay.

I thought my harsh words would make him leave in anger. Instead, he stumbled forward, grabbed my hand, and pressed it against his wet cheek.

"Chloe," he pleaded, his voice so low it was barely a whisper. "Please don't abandon me."

I bit the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted copper, fighting back tears. My hand trembled against his face.

Sebastian sneered. He swatted Liam's hand away, then intertwined his fingers with mine.

Sebastian had despised Liam since college, infuriated that Liam had beaten him to winning my heart.

"Kiss me, Chloe," Sebastian demanded. I knew he was doing this purely to humiliate Liam. He had waited years for this very moment.

"No," Liam shook his head, his eyes wide with horror. "Don't do this, Chloe. Please."

But I moved anyway. I wrapped my arms around Sebastian's neck and kissed him, forcing myself to look passionate.

It was a kiss born of pure self-loathing.

Sebastian gripped my waist so tightly it knocked the wind out of me.

When I finally pulled away, the light in Liam's eyes had vanished completely. It was dead.

"Do you see now, Liam? I don't love you anymore."

"I love money. I love power. Sebastian can give me those things, and you can't."

Sebastian smiled triumphantly. As he led me away, Liam remained frozen on the sidewalk, completely motionless. The sweltering heat of the night seemed to swallow him whole.

Liam stood there for a long time, like a statue of despair, even long after we had gone.

I sat in the backseat of Sebastian's car, watching him until the building disappeared from sight.

After that, he vanished—from our city, from our lives.

Later, I heard he had gone overseas to start over.

Three years. It had been three years since I last saw him. It had been three years since I was last truly alive.

And now, I was a ghost, a silent spectator trapped in this cruel farce of a life.

A sharp gasp snapped me out of my memories.

Someone finally realized Nana wasn't faking. A frantic passerby dialed 911.

Yet, Liam remained unmoved. His gaze turned even colder, and after a moment, he let out a dark scoff.

"She's acting, right? I can't believe Chloe is using her own grandmother to get my attention."

His voice dripped with venomous hatred.

His assistant looked confused and asked tentatively, "Mr. Hayes, is this the same Chloe you call out for in your sleep?"

Liam's body tensed, and a heavy silence fell over him.

I looked up at him, my ghostly heart racing.

He called my name in his sleep?

Against my better judgment, a sliver of hope sparked deep within me. But Liam didn't answer her. Instead, he turned and walked toward the tech executives who had come to greet him.

"I heard you haven't been back to the States in three years, Liam. A lot has changed around here," one of them said.

Liam replied absentmindedly, "I was back briefly, two years ago."

Two years ago.

Right around the time I accidentally drowned.

I remembered.

I had mustered all my courage to call Liam back then. I wanted to tell him that I had finally divorced Sebastian. I foolishly believed that maybe, just maybe, he still loved me as deeply as I loved him.

My marriage to Sebastian had utterly destroyed me.

The agonizing torment of being separated from Liam, combined with Sebastian's suffocating control, had broken me mentally.

I developed chronic insomnia, couldn't eat, and wasted away until I was practically a walking corpse.

Sebastian dragged me to countless doctors, but I was just merely existing, clinging to life by a thread.

All I wanted was to see Liam one more time.

One night, Sebastian tried to be intimate with me. But as he buried his face in my neck, he suddenly pulled away, looking bored.

"Your heart still belongs to someone else. Chloe, I'm tired of you. Let's get a divorce."

The man who had been so obsessively possessive of me had grown bored of his broken toy in less than a year.

That day, I remembered the promise Liam had once made: that we would be together forever, building our future.

As I signed the papers, Sebastian mocked me, "You're free, Chloe."

Driven by an almost desperate yearning, I dialed Liam's number. It rang for what felt like an eternity. My palms were sweating. When he finally picked up, my heart hammered in my chest.

But before a smile could even form on my face, his icy voice shattered my heart.

"Chloe, are you calling to congratulate me? I'm getting married next month."

I don't remember how I hung up the phone.

Death has a way of blurring the details.

I was standing on a desolate beach, the waves lapping at my ankles.

The tide rose, freezing cold, until it swallowed me whole.

Sebastian might have called me around that time, or maybe he didn't. I can't clearly recall.

After that, there was nothing but darkness.

The piercing wail of ambulance sirens yanked me back to the present.

Watching the paramedics load Nana into the ambulance, I hovered anxiously beside them, following them all the way to the ER. Throughout her resuscitation, I prayed to every god listening to keep her safe.

Two hours later, Nana finally opened her eyes.

A wave of immense relief washed over me.

"I want to go home," she mumbled weakly. "Ella is waiting for me." She tried to sit up, tugging at her IV lines.

"Nana, no, please," I sobbed, my voice as soft as a whisper. "You need to rest. You're safe here."

But she couldn't hear. My pleas went unheard, unheeded.

She insisted on being discharged. The nurses tried to talk her out of it, but her dementia had taken hold, and she was stubbornly adamant. Eventually, the nurses relented and let her go.

She didn't return to her own apartment; instead, she went straight to my old house, the one she had meticulously maintained since my death.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Chloe... I'm so useless." She sat on the edge of the bed, looking as lost as a child.

"Are you mad at me? Is that why you never visit me in my dreams?"

No! No! Nana, I'm right here!

I threw my arms out to hug her, but grasped nothing but air.

Her eyes were completely bloodshot. She had cried so hard she could barely stand. Yet, leaning against the wall for support, she began to obsessively tidy up my room.

It was her way of comforting herself.

She told herself I was just on a business trip, traveling far away, and that I'd be back any minute. She would set an extra plate for me at dinner, along with my favorite cup.

She folded my clothes, ironed them, and placed them neatly in my drawers.

Once she was done, she changed her clothes and left the house.

I followed her all the way to Half Moon Bay. My ashes had been scattered in the Pacific Ocean here.

Grandma came to this cliffside often, bringing my favorite boba tea and pastries. She would sit there for hours, talking to the wind.

"Chloe," she whispered, her voice carrying on the breeze. "I saw Liam today. He's all grown up now, a big shot in high society. He doesn't remember me, sweetheart. Or you." She wiped a tear from her cheek.

"Go home, Nana," I pleaded. "It's getting cold, and you need to rest." But she couldn't hear my words.

Late that night, under the moonlight, Nana collapsed once again. I stood by her side, screaming in terror. Thank god, a late-night jogger found her and dialed 911.

She was rushed back to the hospital.