Chapter 1

The last thing I remembered was the cold, sterile smell of the hospital room and the sound of the heart monitor flatlining. My wife, Ava Lewis, wasn't there. She was arranging the funeral of my adopted brother, Ben Carter.

My own birthday had been my death sentence. Mr. Chen, a business rival I had crushed, came for revenge with a knife. He lunged for me. Ava, my bodyguard, my fiancée, the woman I loved more than life itself, moved without hesitation. She threw herself in front of Ben.

The blade that was meant for me, or should have been blocked by her, severed my spinal cord instead.

I spent the next ten years in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the neck down. Still, I married her. I thought her coldness was just her nature. I thought she felt guilty. I gave her everything, the Miller fortune, my name, my unwavering, pathetic love.

She never let me touch her. Not once in ten years.

When she died of a sudden illness a year before me, I finally learned the truth. Her lawyer delivered her personal effects to me. Inside a locked box, I found stacks of letters. Love letters. All addressed to Ben.

"My dearest Ben," one began, "seeing Ethan look at me with such devotion makes my skin crawl. It should be you. It has always been you."

I found bank statements showing a steady flow of money from her accounts to his, funding his failed startups and lavish lifestyle. She had been bleeding me dry for him.

Her last diary entry was a week before her death. "Ben is everything. If I have to die, I pray I am reborn and find him again. I will protect him with my life, just like I did on that day."

The beeping of the monitor faded into a deafening silence. My world went black.

Then, a voice cut through the darkness. "Ethan, it's time to decide."

My eyes snapped open. I wasn't in a hospital bed. I was in the grand living room of the Miller estate, the afternoon sun streaming through the bay windows. My father, his face firm and expectant, sat opposite me.

And there they were. The four women my family had raised to be my companions, my protectors, and my potential wife. Summer, sweet and quiet. Lucy, bubbly and cheerful. Chloe Davis, with her sharp tongue and a permanent smirk that always annoyed me.

And Ava Lewis. She stood slightly apart, her expression cool and distant, just as I remembered. She was beautiful, an ice queen I had spent a lifetime trying to melt. The sight of her sent a jolt of pure, undiluted hatred through me.

This was the day. My twenty-fifth birthday. The day I chose my future wife in my past life.

The day I chose Ava.

"Well, Ethan?" my father prompted, his voice laced with impatience. "We all know who you're going to choose. Just make it official."

Everyone looked at Ava. She met my gaze, a flicker of triumph in her cold eyes. She expected it. They all did.

I remembered the wheelchair. The lonely nights. The letters filled with her disgust for me and her obsession with Ben.

I took a breath, the air tasting sweet with a second chance.

"I've made my decision," I said, my voice steady.

I looked past Ava, past her confident smirk, and my eyes landed on the one person who always seemed to be in my way, arguing with me, challenging me. Chloe Davis.

In my last life, she was the only one who visited me in the hospital after the first year, until I, in my blind devotion to Ava, told her to stop coming.

"My choice," I announced, my voice ringing with finality, "is not Ava Lewis."