Barbara Barrish Barry

They lowered my coffin into the ground while I was still breathing. I heard the dirt hit the lid. Thud. Thud. Thud. Each shovelful a heartbeat I wasn't supposed to have. My name is Seraphina Wolfe. Three days ago, I was the sole heir to a four-billion-dollar empire. Tonight, my own husband and my sister are toasting champagne over my "tragic accident." But I'm not dead. I clawed my way out of six feet of wet earth, my wedding dress turned to a shroud, my manicured nails ripped to the bone. And I remember everything. Let me back up twelve hours, because you deserve to feel exactly what I felt. I'd woken in a dim room, groggy, a needle mark in my arm. My husband, Damien, sat beside the bed, stroking my hair like he loved me. "You've been so tired lately, darling," he murmured. "Drink this. It'll help you rest." I trusted him. God, I trusted him. Eight years of marriage. Eight years of building Wolfe Industries side by side after my father died and left it all to me. So I drank. The tea was bitter. My limbs went heavy. The room tilted. The last thing I saw before the darkness took me was my younger sister, Vivienne, stepping out of the shadows, slipping her arm around my husband's waist. "Is she finally out?" she asked. Damien smiled. "She won't wake up. The dose was enough to drop her heart rate flat. The doctor on our payroll signs the certificate. Twenty-four hours, she's in the ground, and the estate transfers to her grieving widower." Vivienne giggled—that same giggle I'd loved since we were children. "And then it's ours. All four billion." I wanted to scream. I couldn't move a muscle. A tear slid from my paralyzed eye, and Damien wiped it away with his thumb. "Don't cry, Sera," he whispered. "You always were the emotional one. That's why you were so easy to fool." The darkness swallowed me whole. I woke in the dark again—but this time I was in a box. The drug had worn off faster than they planned. Cheap chemistry. Greedy people always cut corners. My fingers found wood inches from my face. The air was thin and cold and smelled of soil and rot. Panic clawed up my throat, and then something colder than panic took its place. Fury. I am Cornelius Wolfe's daughter. He built an empire from a single warehouse and a loaded gun. He raised me to dig my way out of anything. So I dug. I don't know how long it took. My nails split. My lungs screamed. The dress my husband chose to bury me in—the very dress I wore to marry him—shredded against the splintering wood. When my hand broke through the surface and felt cold night air, I didn't cry from relief. I smiled. Somewhere across town, in my own mansion, my husband and my sister were sleeping in my bed, dreaming of my money. They thought they'd buried a grieving wife. They had no idea they'd just buried a Wolfe. I dragged myself up onto the grass, mud-caked and bleeding, and looked up at the moon. "You wanted me dead," I whispered to the night. "Now watch what the dead can do." Then I heard footsteps behind me. A flashlight beam cut across the graveyard. And a man's voice—deep, shocked, achingly familiar—said: "Seraphina? My God. You're supposed to be in that grave."