Chapter 1: The Consent Form She Signed Alone
"Miss, if we don't operate now, you could die in less than an hour...
and your husband isn't answering."
That was the last thing I heard before they rushed me into the operating room at Saint Thomas General in downtown Atlanta.
I was Samantha Prescott, twenty-nine years old, and an artery near my heart had just ruptured.
My bl00d pressure was dangerously low, I could barely breathe, and yet I was still conscious.
While one nurse tried to reach my emergency contact, another glanced at her phone.
"Did you see this?
Damian Carlisle, the director of Carlisle Enterprises, is getting married today.
The wedding is being broadcast from a hotel in Buckhead."
I felt something inside me break for the second time.
Damian was my husband.
Legally, we were still married.
And the woman in the white dress was Chloe Danvers, a designer I had personally hired three years earlier.
The nurse called again.
Nothing.
"We need authorization for the surgery," the doctor said.
"The risk is extremely high."
I couldn't speak.
I could barely move my fingers.
"Samantha, if you understand me, blink."
I blinked.
They placed the consent form in front of me.
My chances of surviving were less than fifty percent.
I took the pen with a trembling hand and signed it myself.
When I woke up, it was already nighttime.
My chest was heavily bandaged, a tube was down my throat, and I felt like there was a fire burning behind my sternum.
"The surgery went well," a nurse told me.
"It was very close, but you made it."
I asked for a phone.
I called Damian three times.
He didn't answer.
Then I called Paige, my assistant.
"Sam...
thank God," she sobbed.
"I've been trying to reach you.
I called Damian too.
No one answered."
"Is the wedding over?"
There was a long silence.
"Yes."
She sent me a video.
Damian was smiling in front of hundreds of guests.
Chloe, dressed as a bride, was crying with happiness.
A reporter asked him about his previous marriage.
Damian answered with a calmness that left me frozen.
"Some relationships exist only out of habit.
Today, I'm with the woman I truly want to build a life with."
I didn't cry.
I carefully touched the bandages covering my chest and told Paige:
"Tomorrow, call Attorney Harold Vance.
I want the prenuptial agreements activated, any irregular transactions frozen, and everything that belongs to me recovered."
"Samantha, you just came out of surgery."
"That's exactly why.
Today I realized that staying alive can also be a decision."
The next morning, Paige arrived with a folder.
Among the documents was something worse than the affair: Damian had used a house in North Druid Hills that my father left me as collateral.
With that loan, he had transferred 180 million dollars to a company owned by Chloe.
My inheritance.
My house.
My money.
Everything had been used to finance the woman he married while I was lying on an operating table.
I looked at Paige and said:
"Get the lawyers, the movers, and eight trucks."
"What are you going to do?"
I slowly got to my feet, holding my chest.
May you like
"I'm going to welcome my husband home."
And no one could imagine what Damian was about to find when he returned from his honeymoon.
