Chapter 1

The lights were blinding, a searing white that pierced through the fog in Sarah Miller' s mind.

A microphone stood before her.

Rick Harrison, her boss, the CEO of Innovatech Solutions, was supposed to be beside her, his hand on her back.

This was the press conference. Their engagement announcement.

But the memory that slammed into her wasn't of an engagement.

It was of cold metal against her temple, three distinct, deafening explosions.

Rick' s face, contorted not with love, but with a chilling rage.

"You drove Tiffany to this!" he' d screamed, his voice raw.

Tiffany Hayes, his goddaughter, his secret lover.

Sarah remembered the blood, warm and sticky, pooling beneath her.

The penthouse floor, cold against her dying cheek.

Her last vow, a whisper torn from her soul: "If I get another chance... I will never love Rick Harrison again."

She blinked. The lights remained. The expectant hush of the room pressed in.

She was alive. Reborn.

A gasp rippled through the assembled tech press and VIPs.

Sarah turned. Rick was no longer beside her.

He stood a few feet away, his back to her, his gaze fixed on the audience.

He, too, remembered. She saw it in the sudden, sharp intake of his breath, the way his shoulders tensed.

Then his eyes found Tiffany in the crowd.

Tiffany, looking artfully distressed, a single tear tracing a perfect path down her cheek – just as they' d planned in the other life, a cue for Rick to "rescue" her from the supposed pressure of his engagement to Sarah.

Rick moved.

Not towards Sarah.

He strode towards Tiffany, his charismatic smile, the one that had once made Sarah' s heart ache, now firmly in place.

He reached Tiffany, took her hand, and knelt.

"Tiffany, my love," Rick' s voice boomed, amplified by the room's speakers. "I can't do this. I can't pretend anymore. It's always been you."

He pulled a ring box from his pocket – not the one intended for Sarah, but a different, gaudier one.

"Will you marry me, Tiffany? I'll shield you from all the vicious rumors, all the societal judgment. I love you."

Tiffany' s feigned shock was a masterpiece of manipulation.

She nodded, tears of "joy" streaming.

The room erupted, not in applause for an engagement, but in confused murmurs, then outright gasps of disbelief.