Chapter 1

The first time I learned of Scarlett, the air was thick with the smell of scorched metal and something else, something sickeningly sweet. I stood on a gantry overlooking the test pit, the heat from the rocket engine wash still rising in waves. My husband, Liam, stood beside me, his face as blank as the steel walls around us.

"Sign the papers, Ava," he said. His voice was flat, without emotion.

Below us, suspended in a massive industrial claw, were my parents. Their faces were pale, their lab coats stark white against the dark machinery. They were renowned NASA scientists, people of logic and reason, and they were about to be dropped into a fire meant to test the limits of human engineering.

Liam' s mistress, Scarlett, a community organizer with a warm smile and dirt under her fingernails, was apparently pregnant. He had told me this yesterday, in our sterile white kitchen, his words clinical and precise. He needed a "real home" for his new family.

I had laughed, a raw, ugly sound. Then I had driven to his security firm, a place of cold glass and colder men, to confront him. He hadn't argued. He hadn't yelled. He had simply slid a manila folder across his desk. Inside were divorce papers and a blank check.

"Take it," he had said. "It's more than you deserve."

I refused. I told him he was a monster. I told him our life, our marriage, meant something.

He had just stared at me. The next day, two of his thugs cornered me in the parking garage of my office. They didn't say a word. They just broke my legs. The pain was sharp, absolute. Then came the smear campaign, articles painting my family as un-American, my parents' research as a threat. And then he took them.

Now, on the gantry, he held a pen out to me. "Sign," he demanded, his voice unchanged. "Or they're gone."

My hands shook. I looked at my mother, at my father. Their mouths were taped shut, but their eyes screamed. I saw my father shake his head, a tiny, desperate motion. Don't do it.

But I couldn't let them die. My own life was already over.

"I'll sign," I whispered, the words tasting like ash. "Just let them go."

Liam' s lips twitched, the closest thing to a smile I had seen in years. He nodded to the operator in the control booth.

But the claw didn't rise. It opened.

My parents fell. Their screams were cut short by a roar of flame, a plume of violent orange that consumed them instantly. The acrid smell of burning flesh hit me, and I threw up over the railing.

Liam didn't flinch. He just watched me, his eyes empty.

The world dissolved into a haze of grief and fire. There was nothing left. No reason. No future. I turned, and with a final look at the man I had once loved, I threw myself over the edge, into the inferno.

And then I woke up.

I was in my bed, the morning sun streaming through the blinds. My legs were whole. The air smelled of coffee and clean linen. I grabbed my phone, my heart pounding against my ribs. The date on the screen was yesterday. The day I first learned of Scarlett.

It wasn't a dream. It was a second chance.

I didn't waste a second. I didn't cry. I didn't scream. The terror was a cold, hard stone in my gut, but I pushed it down. I had to move. I had to survive.

I scrolled through my contacts until I found the name: Ethan. My childhood friend, now a rising star in the State Department. My finger hovered over the call button, then I stopped. A call could be traced. I opened a secure messaging app instead.

Ethan, I need your help. It's a matter of life and death. I need to disappear.

I sent the message and got out of bed, my movements calm and deliberate. I showered, dressed, and packed a small bag. Essentials only. Passport, cash I had hidden away, a change of clothes. My hands were steady. The woman who clung to a broken marriage was gone, incinerated in that test flame. The woman who remained was a survivor.

I needed to see her. Scarlett. I needed to understand what kind of person could inspire such monstrous devotion.

I found her at a local farmers market, just as the news articles had described. She was running a small booth for a community garden, her hands covered in soil as she bagged fresh vegetables for an elderly couple. She was vibrant, laughing easily, her face open and kind. She wasn't a villain. She was just a woman.

Liam was there, too. He stood off to the side, watching her. He was holding a small, expensive-looking box of chocolates. The same kind he used to buy for me on our anniversary. He looked awkward, out of place among the cheerful, down-to-earth crowd. He looked like a man trying on a costume that didn't fit.

As I watched, an old man a few feet away from Scarlett' s booth stumbled, his bag of groceries spilling across the pavement. Apples and oranges rolled everywhere.

Before anyone else could react, Scarlett was there. She knelt, her hands quickly and gently gathering the scattered fruit.

"Here you go, Mr. Henderson," she said, her voice warm with genuine concern. "Let me help you with that."

She helped him to his feet, repacked his bag, and refused the money he tried to press into her hand. Liam just stood there, watching, a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes.

It wasn't love. I saw that now. It was something else. A desperate, calculated attempt to acquire a life he thought he was supposed to want. Scarlett, with her warmth and her community spirit, was a symbol. She was the key to a normal life he could never build on his own.

And I was the obstacle he would remove with surgical precision.

I turned away, the cold certainty settling deeper into my bones. My past self would have been hurt by the chocolates, by the public display. My reborn self saw only a predator and his unknowing prey.

I had to get my parents out. I had to get myself out. The message from Ethan buzzed in my pocket, and I walked away from the market without looking back. There was no time for jealousy or heartbreak. There was only time to run.