Introduction

They called my family's gift the "Midas touch," uncanny luck ensuring prosperity for those in our orbit.

Julian Thorne, from a lineage cursed with men dying before thirty, desperately needed it for his survival.

His mother, Victoria, proposed a lucrative partnership to save her son.

In my first life, I accepted, pouring my essence into his success, helping him defy fate, celebrating his 30th birthday.

But he paraded his new love, Isabelle, and publicly denounced me as a fraud, shattering my reputation.

My assets frozen, my name disgraced, everything I had vanished by morning.

He then abandoned me at a desolate, chemical waste site, where I died alone and terrified, my hometown withering under his cruel hand.

The metallic tang of chemicals, the stench of decay – that memory seared into my soul, a cold reality of his ultimate betrayal.

How could the man I saved condemn me to such a horrifying end?

Then, I blinked.

I was back.

Reborn, on the very day Victoria Thorne first offered that cursed contract.

My hands steady, I pushed it back.

"No," I said, my voice quiet but cutting, shattering the chains of my past and forging a new destiny.