Chapter 1

I woke up to the familiar feel of cheap cotton sheets, not the rough, stained mattress of the remote facility where I was supposed to die. My eyes snapped open, a breath catching in my throat. The ceiling was white and smooth, not the water-stained, cracked plaster I' d stared at for a year. I sat up, my heart hammering against my ribs. This was my apartment, the one I shared with my wife, Sarah. The sunlight streaming through the window felt real, warm.

I scrambled out of bed, my movements clumsy and desperate. In the bathroom mirror, my reflection stared back, not the skeletal, scarred man I had become, but me. Me from before. My face was unmarred, my eyes clear, though they held a terror that felt ancient. I checked the date on my phone. My hands were trembling. It was the day. The day my life had been systematically dismantled, piece by piece, by the two people I should have been able to trust most.

My cousin, Liam White, and my ex-fiancée, Chloe Davis.

A bitter laugh escaped my lips. I remembered Liam' s face, so full of false sincerity, the day he told me he was marrying Chloe. My Chloe.

"Ethan, I' m doing this for you," he had said, his hand on my shoulder in a mockery of brotherly concern. "She' s toxic. That woman, with all her money and power, she' ll drain you, chew you up and spit you out. I have to protect you. Think of this as my sacrifice."

Sacrifice. He called it a sacrifice as he moved into her mansion, as he started driving her fleet of luxury cars, as he took over the life that was supposed to be mine. I had been naive enough, trusting enough, to believe him. I thought he was my family, my brother.

The lies didn't stop there. He sold one of Chloe's unused sports cars, a vintage Porsche she adored, and then told her I did it to buy a lavish gift for a mistress I didn't have. He maxed out her credit cards on himself, on trips and gadgets, and then claimed it was to cover my secret, crippling gambling debts. Every hole he dug for himself, he buried me in.

And Chloe, the woman I had loved, believed him. Her love for me, once a warm and steady flame, was so easily twisted into a raging inferno of hate. Her wealth and influence, which I had never cared for, became the weapons she used to destroy me.

The final, unforgivable act was with Olivia Reed, Chloe's best friend. Liam had been sleeping with her for months. When Olivia got pregnant, they hatched their most vile plan. On this very day, in my previous life, Liam had staged a fight with her, a fall. The miscarriage was real, but the cause was a lie. They blamed me. They said I had found out about their "platonic" meetings to discuss my "problems" and, in a violent rage, I had assaulted Olivia, killing her unborn child.

That was the lie that sent me away. Chloe, blinded by grief and fury, used her immense power to have me locked away in a private, hellish facility in the middle of nowhere, a place where inconvenient people disappeared. To ensure my silence forever, Liam paid a couple of guards to finish the job. I remembered the sharp pain, the feeling of my own blood pooling around me on a cold concrete floor, and then... nothing.

Until now.

I was back. I was breathing. It wasn't a dream. I had been given a second chance. A chance to not just survive, but to fight back.

My mind raced, piecing together the events of my past life. The sequence was burned into my memory. The phone calls would start soon. The accusations. The public humiliation. The pain.

Right on cue, my phone rang, its shrill sound cutting through the quiet apartment. The caller ID flashed a name that made my stomach clench.

Chloe Davis.

In my last life, I answered in a panic, trying to reason with her, to understand her rage. I had pleaded, I had begged. This time, I knew better. There was no reasoning with a person who had already decided you were guilty.

"Ethan Miller, you piece of trash! Where is my husband?" her voice shrieked from the speakerphone, just as I remembered. The sound was sharp, filled with a venom that was all too familiar. "Did you hide him? Are you covering for him again? I swear to God, Ethan, if you don' t tell me where Liam is, I will ruin you!"

The threats were empty now. She had already ruined me once. She couldn't possibly imagine a fate worse than the one I had already suffered.

I remembered how she and I used to talk for hours, our conversations filled with laughter and plans for the future. I remembered the day I proposed, the tears of joy in her eyes. It was Liam who had whispered in her ear, day after day, that I was weak, that I was using her, that I wasn't good enough. He corroded her trust in me like acid, slowly, methodically, until nothing was left but suspicion.

"Are you listening to me, you bastard?" Chloe screamed through the phone.

I took a deep, steadying breath. The man who had feared her, who had been broken by her, was dead. He died on a concrete floor in a godforsaken facility. The man holding the phone now was someone else entirely.

I didn't say a word. I just let her rage echo in the empty room for a moment longer. Then, with a calm I didn't know I possessed, I ended the call.

The silence that followed was a declaration of war. The game had just begun, but this time, I knew all the moves.