Chapter 1

The smell of gasoline was the last thing I remembered before the fire swallowed everything.

Flames licked up the expensive curtains of the Miller family mansion, the place I once called home. My wedding dress, a cruel joke of white silk, was turning black at the edges.

Across from me, kneeling in the inferno, was my new husband, my stepbrother, Liam Thompson.

He wasn't looking at me. His eyes were fixed on a small, silver locket in his hand. He clicked it open, and the flickering light of the fire danced on a tiny photo inside.

It was Sarah Jenkins, my stepmother. His stepmother.

"You ruined it all, Ava," Liam sneered, his face twisted in a way I'd never seen before, a mask of pure hatred. The drug-induced wildness I saw weeks ago was gone, replaced by a cold, sharp sanity that was far more terrifying.

"My years of devotion to her," he spat, his voice cracking. "All a joke because of you. She couldn't take it. She couldn't take the shame you caused. She jumped off a bridge, Ava. Because of you!"

The heat was becoming unbearable, but a cold dread washed over me. It all clicked into place. His obsession wasn't a sudden madness. It was a long, festering love for our stepmother.

My sacrifice had been for nothing.

Weeks ago, on a day just like this, I had found him in a frenzy, high on something, tearing at Sarah' s clothes. To protect my father, John Miller, a proud ex-military man, from the scandal, I had locked myself in the room with Liam, taking the blame.

Sarah, with tears in her eyes, had played the perfect victim, accusing me of seducing her son. My father, wanting to protect my reputation before my college entrance exams, made a decision. He transferred his assets to Liam and forced us into this marriage, a desperate attempt to contain the "shame."

And now, on our wedding day, Liam had decided to end it all.

"She needed vengeance," he whispered, his eyes gleaming with mad devotion. He dropped the locket and pulled out a knife. "And I will give it to her."

He lunged at me, the heat from the fire nothing compared to the searing pain as he carved her name into my skin. S-A-R-A-H.

"She will be a part of you forever," he hissed.

Then he picked up the locket from the floor, its metal now hot from the surrounding flames. He forced my jaw open.

"Swallow it," he commanded. "Swallow every piece of the love you destroyed."

He broke the chain, shoving the small, hot pendant into my mouth. I choked, the sharp edges scraping my throat. He forced the chain in next, piece by piece. My vision blurred, my lungs screaming for air they couldn't get.

In the final, suffocating moments, as the roar of the fire faded into a dull hum, I heard a voice.

It was faint, pleading.

Sarah's voice.

"Liam, no... stop..."

Then, darkness.

A sharp, antiseptic smell filled my nostrils. My eyes snapped open.

I wasn't in the fire. I was in my own bedroom, the familiar white canopy of my bed above me. Sunlight streamed through the window.

A commotion echoed from downstairs. A man's frantic yelling, a woman's feigned sobs.

My blood ran cold.

I knew those sounds. It was the day of the incident. The day my life was destroyed.

I was back.