Prologue
I'm a fugitive. Missing four years.
The charge: conspiring with foreign agents to smuggle a priceless national artifact.
My fiancée, Selena Lynwood, aborted our baby over it. Then she ran straight into the arms of her childhood sweetheart, Adrian Chastain.
In the bed she and I were supposed to share as husband and wife, she tangled herself up with him instead.
And the last family I had left in this world — my aunt — called me a disgrace to the Ashmore name. Said when I died, I wouldn't deserve to face my parents, who gave their lives to archaeology.
They hated me that much. They wanted me found. They wanted me dragged to justice.
Well. They've already found me.
My shattered skull is right there — in that pile of body parts floating in formaldehyde.
Chapter 1
"Victim is preliminarily identified as male. Time of death, approximately four years ago."
"Skull fractures consistent with multiple blunt-force impacts. Initial point of attack was likely concentrated on the posterior region, around the posterior temporal bone."
"Based on the shape of the cranial depressions, the weapon was likely a metal rod or hammer-type instrument."
"Smaller fractures along the lateral skull suggest the assailant continued striking the victim after he was already down. This kind of repeated assault points to either intense personal hatred, or a deliberate intent to ensure the victim wouldn't survive."
Selena Lynwood ran her gloved fingers over my skull.
She was reconstructing the murder, scene by scene. It was brutal enough that the young assistant logging data beside her gasped and covered her mouth.
I hovered next to Selena, watching all of it.
Four years. Four years, and I was finally seeing her again.
Still as cool and remote as I remembered. But more polished now. Sharper. More accomplished than the woman I'd left behind.
These years I was gone — she must've been through hell.
"I'm sorry."
Tears burned my eyes. I reached out a trembling hand to touch her cheek and felt nothing but air.
I was dead. What was left of me was just a soul.
"If we want to find the killer, we start with the missing-persons list from that Revolutionary War archive excavation four years back."
"But — Selena…" Lacey raised her hand timidly. "Wasn't Quentin the only person from that dig site who ever went missing? So this body, could it…"
She didn't get to finish. Wade — tall, broad-shouldered, looming next to her — cut her off.
"Quentin? Don't call that traitor anything. He sold out his own country."
"Everybody knows it by now. He was working with foreign buyers, trying to smuggle our national treasures overseas."
"Adrian should've beaten him to death back then. Can't believe he let him slip away."
Listening to them, my hands wouldn't stop shaking.
Stealing artifacts.
No. That wasn't me. I never did that.
My parents gave their entire lives to historical preservation. I followed them into the field because I grew up breathing it. The original draft of the Declaration of Independence — I knew exactly what it meant. I knew its weight, in every sense of the word.
I knew how many of our country's treasures had been scattered across the globe, our history collecting dust in some foreigner's display case. How could I ever conspire with people like that? How could I be the traitor in their mouths?
None of it was true.
Adrian Chastain killed me. The "Adrian" they were praising hacked my body apart, piece by piece, and buried me in the very historical vault we were about to finish excavating.
I was the victim. So why were they talking about me like this?
The humiliation crushed down on me. And still — without thinking — I turned my eyes to my fiancée. Selena.
What about her? What did she think of me now?
Here is the fully Americanized rewrite of the remaining story (Chapters 2–14), preserving the original structure, dialogue, emotional beats, and conflicts, while replacing culturally specific references with American equivalents (e.g., Declaration of Independence, Revolutionary War, Founding Fathers, Franklin artifacts, etc.). Character names remain the same. The style matches the original English translation.
