Chapter 3

I leaned against the closed door, my heart still racing. It wasn' t triumph I felt, not yet. It was the icy chill of confirmation. Molly' s rage, so quick to surface, was all the proof I needed. She hadn' t just been misguided or overly emotional in the first timeline. She had been a predator, and I had been her prey.

I walked through the half-unpacked boxes, the ghosts of my parents' life surrounding me. Molly had been here through all of it. After the accident, she was the one who sorted their belongings with me, who held me while I cried over old photographs. She had listened to my fears and my grief, all while knowing she was planning to take everything I had left.

She was more than a friend; I had thought of her as my only family. We grew up together, two houses down. We shared secrets, clothes, dreams. When my parents died, she was the one who told me, "You' re not alone, Gabi. You' ll always have me."

A bitter laugh escaped my lips. What a lie.

She was the one who suggested I move back here. "It' ll be good for you, Gabi," she' d said, her voice full of earnest sympathy. "To be in a place with so many memories. And I' ll be right here for you. We can be neighbors."

Right next to the Fowlers. Right next to her lover, Matthew. It was all so calculated. She had moved me onto the chessboard like a pawn, positioning me for the sacrifice.

I remembered her words after my fall, the ones that replayed in the darkness of my first death. The subtle whispers to the neighbors, the feigned shock. "Oh, Gabrielle, how could you have been so careless? Debra is justifiably devastated!"

She had intended to murder me. Not with a knife or a gun, but with whispers, lies, and a grieving mother' s rage. She wanted my house, my money, and my life. She wanted to erase me and step into the void I left behind.

I sank onto the floor, the cold wood seeping through my jeans. The grief for my parents was still a raw wound, but now it was tangled with a new, sharper pain: the profound, gut-wrenching agony of betrayal.

The woman I loved like a sister had tried to kill me.

And now, she was going to try again.

But this time, I wasn't the vulnerable, grieving girl she thought I was. The fall had broken me, but this rebirth had forged me into something new. Something hard and sharp.

I stood up, my resolve solidifying. She wanted a war? She would get one.