Chapter 1

The last thing I remembered was the cold. It seeped into my bones from the operating table, a chilling numbness that felt like death itself.

Blood was everywhere, a stark red against the sterile white sheets. I was hemorrhaging, the life draining out of me with every failed attempt by the doctors to stop the flow.

"The baby... the baby can' t be saved," a voice said, distant and muffled.

My baby.

The memory of the argument from just hours before flashed in my mind. Liam, my husband of ten years, his face twisted with rage.

"Is that child even mine, Ava?" he had sneered, his voice dripping with venom. "If it' s some other man' s bastard, I' ll kill it myself."

The pain of his words was worse than the labor pains ripping through me. I had loved this man, my adoptive brother, with a desperate, all-consuming obsession for my entire life. That love had twisted me into someone I didn't recognize, a manipulative woman who had forced him into this cage of a marriage.

Fueled by a decade of his coldness and my own agony, I had spat back, "You' re right. It' s not yours."

A lie. A stupid, hateful lie meant to hurt him as much as he had hurt me.

Now, on this cold table, our child was gone. And I knew, with a certainty that froze my heart, that Liam was behind it. He had gotten what he wanted. He had killed our child.

A desperate rage, black and absolute, consumed me. I saw a scalpel on a nearby tray. My hand shot out, my fingers closing around the cool metal.

With the last of my strength, I lunged, plunging the blade into his chest as he stood over me. "If my child dies," I gasped, "you' re dying with him."

His eyes widened in shock, not with anger, but with a horrifying, gut-wrenching despair. He didn' t fight back. He just looked at me.

As my consciousness faded, his voice was the last thing I heard, frantic and broken.

"Save her! Get the best doctors, I don' t care what it costs, just save Ava!"

He was shouting at his assistant.

"And find her the best lawyer in the country! Give her anything she wants, just... just don' t let her find out about her father. Let her hate me. It' s better if she hates me forever."

Tears, hot and foreign, slid from the corners of his eyes and fell onto my cheek.

Hate him? My father? What did my father have to do with this?

The confusion was overwhelming, a final, crushing weight. A tragic misunderstanding... a love so twisted it had devoured us both.

And then, darkness.

...

"Do you, Ava Miller, take this man, Liam Hayes, to be your lawfully wedded husband?"

The voice, calm and deep, cut through the fog in my head.

I blinked. The blinding white of the operating room was gone. Instead, I saw the soft, ambient light of a church, filtering through stained-glass windows.

My hands were clammy, clutching a bouquet of white roses. A heavy white dress constricted my breathing.

I was at the altar.

My head snapped to the side. There he was. Liam Hayes. Young, handsome in his perfectly tailored tuxedo, his jaw tight. He looked exactly as he had ten years ago, on this very day.

Our wedding day.

The day my ten-year nightmare began.

I was back. I had been reborn.

Liam must have felt my hesitation. He leaned in, his voice a low, impatient hiss that only I could hear.

"Ava, what are you doing? Say 'I do.' Don' t make a scene."

The same cold tone. The same barely-veiled annoyance. Nothing had changed.

My gaze drifted over the crowd. I could hear their whispers, the same whispers that had followed me for a decade in my past life.

"She' s so shameless. Tying him down like this."

"I heard she threatened him, using her father' s company."

"Poor Liam. He had to break up with his long-term girlfriend, Sarah, for this. I heard Sarah was devastated."

Their words didn' t hurt this time. They were just echoes of a life I had already lived and died.

Then my eyes found her.

Sitting in a second-row pew, Sarah Johnson. She looked pale and fragile, a picture of heartbroken innocence. One hand rested protectively over her stomach, a gesture that sent a jolt through me. She wasn' t pregnant yet in this timeline, but the pantomime was clear. She was the victim.

She met my gaze, and for a split second, I saw it. A flicker of triumph in her tear-filled eyes before it was replaced by a look of profound sadness.

It all crashed down on me then. The past, the present, the future I was about to repeat.

In my last life, I heard Liam' s final, desperate words. Don' t let her find out about her father. He had been protecting me, even at the end. Even when I had stabbed him. My father' s death, which I had always blamed on Liam' s cruelty and neglect, was something else entirely. Sarah, the poor, innocent victim, was something else entirely. And Liam... Liam was not the simple villain I had painted him to be.

Our entire relationship, our entire miserable marriage, was built on a mountain of lies and misunderstandings. And I had just died because of it.

I would not do it again. I would not walk back into that cage.

"Miss Miller?" the priest prompted gently.

I took a deep breath, the scent of roses filling my lungs. I looked at Liam, at his cold, impatient face. I looked at Sarah, at her fake, sorrowful performance. Then I looked to the front row, at my father. His face was full of love and hope for me.

In my last life, I chose Liam. And my father died of a broken heart because of the hell my life became.

Not this time.

This time, I choose my father. I choose myself.

I turned back to the priest. My voice was clear and steady when I spoke, ringing through the silent church.

"No. I don' t."