My husband shoved me off an icy cliff when I was nine months pregnant—then went home to collect the $50 million policy on my life.
PART 2:
The next morning, I watched my own funeral from a hidden room beneath Adrian Voss’s mountain estate. Nearly two hundred people filled the church, mourning a woman who was still alive. My sealed coffin rested beneath white lilies while Maverick stood beside it wearing the blue tie I had given him on our fifth anniversary. He looked like a grieving husband—until the minister spoke my name and **Maverick smiled**.
Piper stood only a few feet behind him, dressed in black and pretending to be heartbroken. Whenever the mourners looked away, her hand brushed against his. My mother, Evelyn Hart, sat in the front pew with her hands tightly folded. For one painful moment, I wanted to believe she was truly grieving me.
The minister told everyone I believed love was a promise renewed each day. Maverick lowered his head as if the words had wounded him, but I saw no tears. An elderly neighbor hugged him and whispered that I had loved him deeply. Maverick calmly replied, “I know.”
When the last mourner left, Piper moved closer to him and demanded to know when the fifty-million-dollar insurance policy would be paid. Maverick told her to be patient, but she reminded him that my death was supposed to solve everything. Then Evelyn approached them, and the sorrow vanished from her face. “Not another word in this church,” she warned.
Adrian’s hidden cameras followed them to a private hotel suite near the funeral. Maverick immediately poured himself whiskey and demanded confirmation that my death certificates had been filed. Evelyn placed the documents on the table and told him the insurance money was almost meaningless. What mattered was the **multibillion-dollar Voss Continuity Trust** activated by my son’s birth.
Evelyn explained that Maverick, as my surviving husband, could request temporary control of the company. Once the court approved him, he would transfer the voting rights to a secret holding company she had created. Maverick and Piper could then take their money and disappear. But Piper became furious when Evelyn admitted she never intended to give her a seat on the board.
“Mother, you promised me,” Piper snapped.
That single word nearly stopped my heart. Piper was not merely my husband’s lover or his executive assistant—**she was Evelyn’s secret daughter**. Evelyn grabbed Piper’s wrist and warned her never to call her Mother outside that room. Piper laughed and reminded her that I was already dead.
Evelyn looked directly toward the window and said, “After thirty years, the life Peyton stole from us can finally be returned.” I could barely breathe as Adrian shut off the screen. I demanded to know what life I had supposedly stolen, but he claimed I had already heard enough. That was when I realized my murder was connected to something far older than Maverick’s greed.
I told Adrian I would remain legally dead until every person involved exposed themselves. He warned that waiting could be dangerous, but I had already survived my husband’s hands and the mountain’s cold. “I spent twelve years waiting for Maverick to become the man he pretended to be,” I said. “I can wait a little longer to destroy him.”
That night, Adrian brought me a temporary voting proxy and asked me to sign control of Voss Meridian over to him. He claimed it was the only way to protect my inheritance while I recovered. But Maverick had also claimed he was protecting me when he pushed insurance papers beneath my pen. I returned the document unsigned and told Adrian, **“Maverick pretended to love me before asking for my signature—you arrived with a helicopter.”**
