The Dead First Love Came Home

I'm the male lead's dead first love. Fifteen years after I died, a system brought me back and told me to go save the kid standing on the roof. [He is your own flesh and blood.

If you will not look after him, he will truly have nothing left.] But I've had a filthy temper since I was little, and I was spoiled rotten.

I'm the one who gets waited on, not the other way around. So I walked over in my heels, grabbed him by the collar, and said, "Knock off the dying act.

You've got the same gutless streak as your father." "And where is he, anyway? Doesn't he know I'm back? Why isn't he here to pick me up?" Chapter 1 The boy looked at me quietly.

For a second something blank seemed to cross his face, but it passed almost right away, and he went back to being still water, not a ripple in him. He tilted his head a little.

I had no idea what was going on behind it.

I clicked my tongue, impatient, and gave him an order: "Call Marlon Tremaine." It took him a while to fish out his phone and press a number.

It rang for a full half minute and then went to the recording. I narrowed my eyes. "Marlon Tremaine has the nerve not to answer?

He's gotten brave." Rigel looked like he was used to it, and he was already putting the phone away when I took it right out of his hand and called three or four more times in a row.

Somebody finally picked up, but it was a crisp woman's voice: "I'm sorry, Mr. Tremaine is working.

Please don't disturb him." Then she hung up, without giving me a chance to get a word in. I was about to throw the phone when I remembered it wasn't mine.

I forced my raised hand back down and ground my teeth. "Oh, this guy.

Just you wait." Rigel tugged at my sleeve, and when I looked over, not following, he just looked back at me with those eyes of his, clear as colored glass, and said two words. "Go home." On the way back I checked with the system one more time. "This clam is really my son?" I told Rigel the rideshare was uncomfortable. "Mm," he said.

I told him I didn't like the sound of the driver breathing, that the rhythm was all wrong and it was setting my teeth on edge. "Mm." I told him the shirt he had on was ugly and it was dragging my whole look down with it.

Still: "Mm." By the time I was angry enough to start swearing, asking where the hell Marlon Tremaine had gotten off to, he finally lifted his eyes to me.

His lashes trembled, and he said two words, very quietly. "Business trip." It just about killed me. You could beat him with a stick and not get so much as a fart out of him.

You'd think one sentence would kill him. No matter how I looked at it, that was not my son's personality.

At two years old he could keep Marlon Tremaine up all night, and that was my temper, straight down the line.

Nothing like the clam sitting next to me. [Host, please be a little patient with him.

This child has a very serious mental illness, and difficulty with verbal communication is only one of the ways it shows.] I pressed my lips together and looked at how thin Rigel was, at how dull his eyes were, and my chest actually hurt from how angry I was.

Fifteen years I was gone, and this is how that bastard Marlon Tremaine raised my son! When we got home, the first thing I did was walk through my own room. Good.

Same arrangement as fifteen years ago, and not one of my things was missing.

The only new thing was in the coat closet by the front door: a pair of pale green women's house slippers.

I gave them a glance, saw they were my kind of thing, and didn't think any more about it.

It wasn't until I finished my round of the place that I noticed the kid had gone off somewhere. His bedroom door was locked. I frowned and just opened it with the key.

Chapter 2 The room was pitch dark. No lamp on, curtains pulled all the way shut, not a bit of light getting in.

Light from the living room swung in with the door, and there was one lonely shape sitting by himself in front of the window.

I stomped over, snapped the light on, folded my arms, and sat down facing Rigel.

He sat there blankly, eyes fixed in one direction without blinking, and I couldn't tell what he was looking at. There was no light in his eyes at all.

I stared at him and bit out three words. "I am hungry." Rigel seemed to finally register that I was there.

He heard me, looked down, and ordered delivery on his phone. "I don't eat delivery!" "Is this how Marlon Tremaine has you handling three meals a day?" Rigel put the phone down, kept his head lowered, and went back to ignoring people.

I raked a hand through my hair, turned, walked out, and couldn't stop myself from complaining to the system. "A mess like this, you might as well have left me dead." Behind me, Rigel lifted his eyes and looked over.

His lashes gave a small tremble. I called the system up and got the whole story of what had happened to Rigel in those fifteen years.

The system told me that after I died, Marlon Tremaine sank a little further every day.

There were stretches when he couldn't keep up with his own work, let alone take care of Rigel properly.

One time Marlon Tremaine got drunk and slept two days straight, dead to the world. In all that time Rigel didn't eat a bite.

He cried until he passed out from hunger, and they only brought him back in the emergency room. After that, Marlon Tremaine handed Rigel off to a nanny and threw himself into work.

The nanny could see that Marlon Tremaine didn't have his heart in the boy, so she treated Rigel badly too.

She often didn't cook for him, and now and then she hit him and screamed at him.

Nobody found out until Rigel stopped eating altogether and collapsed, and Marlon Tremaine came rushing home. By then Rigel was already very sick. He couldn't even go to school.

Marlon Tremaine fired the nanny, and then he couldn't find anyone to look after the boy, so his executive assistant, Tanya Kirby, spoke up on her own and took the job. "Tanya Kirby?" I thought of the woman who had picked up when I called Marlon Tremaine.

So that was her. [Rigel dislikes her a great deal.

She is also the reason he and your husband had a very serious fallingout.] [Three years ago, in order to balance work and family, Marlon Tremaine was preparing to marry Tanya Kirby.

Rigel would not allow it.

He held a knife to his own wrist and made Marlon Tremaine swear he would never bring Tanya Kirby into the house, or he would kill himself.] I couldn't believe it. "Marlon Tremaine actually wanted to marry somebody else?" [Please be assured, Host.

He did not marry Tanya Kirby in the end.

To this day the two of them are still only a supervisor and his subordinate.] [However, since that time Tanya Kirby has held it against Rigel, and she no longer treats him the way she once did.] I frowned. "What did she do?" [With the nanny as a warning, she has not dared to do anything out in the open.

She simply tells Rigel every day: your mother is never coming back. You need to be more sensible and stop making things hard for your father. What Mr.

Tremaine needs is a wife who can stand at his side and be his right hand, not a dead first love.] I gave a cold laugh. "Oh, that's good.

His right hand." [Host, what do you intend to do next?] "Marlon Tremaine's out of his mind.

I'll just knock it back out of him." I smiled, savoring it. "And that Tanya Kirby, pulling this on my son.

She's got a beating coming." What I didn't expect was how fast I'd end up going headtohead with Tanya Kirby.

Chapter 3 The next morning I was still asleep in my room when a burst of racket woke me with no warning. I pulled the covers over my face and was about to go back under.

Then I heard the argument outside the door. A woman's voice, with blame all through it: "Rigel, how could you just bring a stranger home?

And a woman nobody knows anything about?" "I know you've never liked having me around Mr. Tremaine, but that is no reason to strike back at him like this. Where does that leave Mr.

Tremaine? And what does that make you?" But whatever Tanya Kirby said, Rigel's position was the same. He was not letting her in.

Tanya Kirby raised her voice a little. "Rigel, when you refuse to listen like this, it is deeply disappointing." "Do you really want me to tell Mr.

Tremaine that you brought a cheap woman home and let her sleep in your mother's room?" I couldn't hear what Rigel said, but Tanya Kirby's tone turned hard. "In that case, I'll have to let Mr.

Tremaine come discipline you himself." I was playing with my nails. When I heard that, I laughed once and opened the door.

Rigel saw me come out and frowned a little. "Did I—wake you?" "It's fine. I was about due to get up." Tanya Kirby looked me over. "You are pretty, I'll grant you that.

No wonder you managed to seduce Rigel into this." "But as long as I am at Mr. Tremaine's side, I will never let your kind set foot in the Tremaine house.

Rigel is a simple boy, he barely deals with the outside world, and that is exactly what you saw and used to get your hooks into him—" Crack! It rang out clean and bright.

Tanya Kirby covered the bright red finger marks on her cheek and stared at me, refusing to believe it. "You actually dared to hit me?" I smiled. "You're exactly who I meant to hit." Tanya Kirby took a deep breath and spoke into her phone. "Mr.

Tremaine, you heard all of that.

What Rigel has done this time is completely out of line, letting this woman run wild in your house—" "Wait." Marlon Tremaine's voice came out of the phone, carrying an excitement almost too faint to catch and a joy he couldn't hold down. "Turn on the video.

I want to see her face." Tanya Kirby faltered for a beat, but she did what Marlon Tremaine said, switched the video on, and raised the camera at me. "Get out." The voice that said it came with a thin cold edge.

Rigel stepped in front of me and put his hand over the camera so Marlon Tremaine couldn't see my face.

Before anyone could react, he pulled me into the room and locked the door behind us.

Tanya Kirby slapped at the door from the other side, laying into him. "Rigel, when did you turn so rebellious? Going against your own father over a woman.

You're going to disappoint him terribly..." Rigel's voice was flat, perfectly calm. "None of your business." Tanya Kirby kept working on him out there, sweettalking, then wearing away at him, and none of it did any good.

Even when she reported him to Marlon Tremaine, Rigel acted like he hadn't heard a thing.

She burned close to an hour at that door before she couldn't stand it any longer and left on her own.

Inside the room, I studied Rigel, turning it over. "Why don't you want Marlon Tremaine to see me?" What he'd done was genuinely out of character, and it wasn't a kid throwing a fit.

He might look like a boy who didn't fit in anywhere, but he noticed everything and felt everything, and if he'd done that, he had his reasons.

Rigel lifted his head a little and looked at me.

Then he reached out all at once and caught my wrist, and there was the faintest shake running under his voice. "Don't—leave." Chapter 4 Warmth hit my chest all at once.

I put an arm lightly around Rigel's back and stroked the top of his head, once, and again. My voice came out gentle. "Don't be scared.

I'm not going anywhere." Rigel put his head down and stayed there against me for a few seconds, then stepped back and pulled out his phone to show me a file.

The longer I read, the tighter my frown got. "What is Marlon Tremaine thinking?

He actually agreed to this?" The file listed the ten strongest college students the scholarship program under Marlon Tremaine's name had funded in recent years.

According to the writeup, he was going to choose one of those ten and adopt him as a son.

I was angry enough to call him up on the spot and chew him out. "He's out of his mind, and his brain is shrinking the longer he lives.

Dumbass." Rigel tugged at my hand. "It was Uncle Pierson—who set it up." "Don't—trust him." That stopped me.

Rigel's uncle was my cousin Pierson Havelock, who had grown up right alongside me. He and I got along well enough.

Back when I dug in about marrying Marlon Tremaine and my grandfather wouldn't hear of it, Pierson was the one who talked him around for me.

I made myself cool down and looked at Rigel. "What else do you know?" He shook his head. "It's all right.

I'll handle all of it." I called my grandfather's chief of staff, laid the situation out plainly, and asked him to look into Pierson Havelock for me, and into where Marlon Tremaine was at the moment. "Of course.

I'll put people on it right away and have results for you in three hours." "Wait. One more thing." "...Miss Waverly, does Mr.

Waverly know you're back?" "I haven't told my grandfather yet. There's no hurry on that." "Actually, is he in good health?" "Mr. Waverly is as strong as ever. He just misses you.

He talks about you constantly." I blinked.

There was a knot in my throat. "I miss him too." The chief of staff told me Marlon Tremaine had just flown back into the country, and that straight from the airport he was heading to the company for a meeting to announce the heir he'd picked.

I told Rigel to stay put at home, changed the code on the house, and drove out to the airport to head Marlon Tremaine off.

All those years I was gone, and this was how he took care of Rigel. Beautiful work.

Working off what the chief of staff had sent me, I got in behind a car and was about to pass it and cut it off when I realized the direction was wrong.

This was not the way to the company. I eased off the gas and hung back at a distance, because I wanted to know what he was actually going to do.

The car just drove straight out of the city.

I stayed behind it and watched its line start wandering all over the road, until it braked hard and scraped to a stop along the guardrail.

The door came open and the two men inside spilled out, locked together and swinging at each other. Marlon Tremaine was plainly outmatched.

He got hauled up and pinned against the car window and took a vicious punch that folded him in half and dropped him into a crouch.

The driver pinned Marlon Tremaine to the ground, picked up a rock, lined it up over Marlon Tremaine's head, and started to bring it down.

I pulled over, got out, dug a wrench out of the trunk, and ran at them, heels cracking on the pavement. Then I swung it down hard on the driver's head.

His grip on Marlon Tremaine went loose and he turned toward me, crooked and off balance, and before he could finish turning I put a kick into him and knocked him flat.

Marlon Tremaine was a wreck. His clothes were filthy and the hair over his forehead was stuck flat across his eyelids.

He was breathing hard, and he squinted up at me, and the motion of getting to his feet stopped dead.

He held that position, staring at me, and murmured to himself like a man talking in his sleep. "Di? Is that you?" Chapter