The bid opening was about to start, and I knew exactly what I was doing. I’d pretended to agree to move in with Gavin, stolen his bid documents, and handed them to Landon. When Gavin came after me, I broke three fingers protecting Landon. “You’re out of your mind,” Gavin said.
“Do you even know how important those were? ”
I didn’t care. “Did you think I didn’t know you slept with my boyfriend? Does it feel exciting to mess around with your best friend’s man?
”
Landon just shook his head. “Chloe, stop being unreasonable. ”
But I was just getting started. I slapped him.
“That’s for what you did to me. ”
Gavin arrived in time to see it. “Looks like I got here just in time. ”
“What do you want this time?
” I asked. “Did you think this would make me let you off? ”
He didn’t let me off. “After the bid documents were stolen, the entire project collapsed.
I lost hundreds of millions of dollars. Someone has to answer for this. Gavin, take them away. ”
They clamped my wrist.
“Gavin, I can explain. ”
“Explain what? ” he asked. “How you betrayed me again?
”
“Stop it. Let go. ”
“I won’t go soft this time. I’ll put Landon’s body in a display case.
Then break your legs so you’re trapped in my bed forever. ”
“Have you lost your mind? Landon isn’t worth you risking this. ”
His hands were shaking.
“You’re still talking about him. ” He grabbed my chin. “I don’t love him anymore,” I said. “I love you.
”
“Don’t lie to me. I don’t believe a single word you say. ” He pulled me toward the roof. “Do you love him so much that you’d play me for a fool?
Tomorrow I’ll take his bones apart and turn them into windchimes. Pull their spines out and hang them like windchimes. You’ll never see them again. ”
I was crying.
“Since you won’t believe me, I’ll just prove it. ”
He shoved me off the rooftop. I was falling. I hit the ground, and I remember lying there, broken.
Gavin and Landon stood over me, looking down at my body. “Don’t blame us. Even your own father wishes you were gone. We’re just helping him get what he wants sooner.
”
My father couldn’t even look at me as I lay dying. Then I was a ghost. I watched as my best friend and my fiancé tried to tear each other apart. “Pull their spines out and hang them over Chloe’s grave,” Landon said.
“Your company will be finished within three days. ”
Gavin didn’t care about the company. “Chloe, you are mine. Since you’re gone, I’ll join you in death.
We’ll be buried together. ”
It made me sick. I was such a fool. No one who loved me died for me, while the people I loved killed me.
If I could do it all over again, I would. I’d fix every mistake I made. When I opened my eyes, I was four years in the past. The day I’d stolen Gavin’s bid document and brought it to Landon.
The day I’d broken my fingers protecting the man who would eventually betray me. The day I’d chosen wrong. I wasn’t going to choose wrong this time. I married Gavin.
I moved into his house, and I smiled at him, and I didn’t let him see my true plan. He thought I’d fallen for him, that I’d forgotten Landon. He watched me at night, afraid I’d leave him, but I only whispered about our wedding, about our future. I let him believe I was his.
Meanwhile, I noticed things. I noticed that Gavin was hiding things from me. I noticed that my father—the man who couldn’t even look at me when I was dying—was hiding something bigger. My mother died fifteen years ago.
I’d always believed it was an accident. But my father had switched her ashes. He’d taken her body from the grave and hidden it away. My mother’s real remains were out there somewhere, and my father knew where.
And Landon knew where, too. I was waiting for Landon to make a move when I got the call. He wanted to meet. He knew about the meteor shower I’d always dreamed of seeing.
“I want to watch it with you again at your rooftop just like before. Can we? ”
I went. I wore the dress he’d given me at graduation, and I walked onto the roof of my old building, and he was already there.
He looked at me and smiled. “You didn’t even bring a chair because you won’t be around to see it,” he said. Then he pulled a gun. I should have known.
Landon had never been my ally. He was the man who’d pushed me off a roof in my past life, and he was going to do it again. But Gavin was there. He’d followed me, because he never trusted me around Landon.
And he watched me reach out to Landon, trying to distract him, trying to get the gun away. I was willing to die for it. Gavin thought I was trying to save Landon. He didn’t realize Landon knew something about my mother’s ashes.
Landon had said he would tell me where they were, if I could bargain with him. “I know you’re afraid of God,” he said. “And I know where your mother’s ashes are. The grave I visit every year might just hold a stranger’s ashes.
”
I saw the truth in his eyes. He was going to die taking that secret with him. He raised the gun. Before he could pull the trigger, I reached for him, trying to keep the gun from firing.
We struggled, and I heard a gunshot, and I saw Landon fall back. A dark stain spread across his chest. Gavin had shot him. He lowered the gun, shaking.
“Chloe, I lost. I thought I could make you fall for me. I should have known you never got over him. ”
“It’s not like that,” I said.
“I love you. You’re the one I love. ”
But he didn’t believe me. He kept muttering, “Do you love him that much?
You got all dressed up to watch the meteor shower with him right after we got engaged. You tried to save him, and you were even willing to die for it. ”
I didn’t know what to say. I tried to convince him, but he just walked away.
I went home and prepared my mother’s memorial. My father called, asking why I was planning to move her grave. “Your mother has been resting there for many years,” he said. “Why move the grave?
”
“I keep dreaming she tells me she’s cold,” I said. “I’m going to have experts find her a better resting place. ”
He got nervous. I noticed.
I knew I was on the right track. “Dad,” I said, “why are you so nervous? Unless there’s something hidden in that grave. ”
He told me to come home on time the next day and not cause trouble.
When I arrived for the memorial, I walked right past him and went to a locked storage room. He and Arya followed me, acting like I was being dramatic. “This isn’t my mother’s urn,” I said. “The latch is brass.
But my mother’s urn had a white copper latch. ”
“You’re too young back then,” my father said. “You remember it wrong. ”
But I didn’t.
I opened the urn and found it empty. Then I found the real one, hidden at the bottom of a well, with the jade pendant my grandmother had left me inside. They tried to kill me that day. My own father and Arya pulled weapons, and they admitted everything.
Arya had killed my mother. My father had lied to us all, pretending Arya’s parents died saving us, covering up the truth with a sick story about an accident. I survived. Gavin and I walked away from that cemetery, and my father was arrested, his empire imploding.
I found my mother’s ashes and brought them home. I got my revenge. I should have felt relief. I thought I’d be happy.
But revenge was like digging a hole. When you finally reached the bottom, you might just be left standing there alone. Gavin’s brother Axel had appeared a few days before the wedding, out of nowhere, and Gavin was afraid. He thought Axel was coming to destroy the family.
Instead, Axel handed me a file. He’d been secretly running the Warren Group while Gavin and I fought in public, pushing out the corrupt board members, cleaning up the shady deals I’d been exposing. “All these years, he’s been publicly opposing me while secretly pushing out every one of those old-timers,” I said as I read the file. “And like a fool, I kept fighting him for so long.
He knew he was running out of time. He had to use the most extreme way to hand you a clean company. ”
Axel knew everything. He’d been protecting his brother the whole time.
I went to find him, to thank him. But he was gone. He’d staged an elaborate plan to get the corrupt members of his own family out of power, and then he’d quietly taken the blame for everything, disappearing into the shadows. And now Gavin and I were sitting in a quiet restaurant, the kind we’d never been able to enjoy before.
Gavin reached across the table and took my hand. “I want to give you a proper wedding. Everything was so rushed before. I owe you that.
I want you to marry me with your mother watching over us from heaven. ”
I smiled. “Sounds good. ” I paused.
“Why the 15th? ”
“I believe that day will bring us luck. ”
We got married on the 15th. It was a small ceremony, just the two of us and a few close friends.
I wore my mother’s jade pendant, and I felt her presence with me. For the first time in years, I felt at peace. My father’s sins caught up with him in a hospital room, unable to speak, unable to defend himself. Arya vanished, likely taking what was left of her father’s money and running.
The Reed Group was mine now, washed clean of my father’s corruption. Gavin was adamant we have whiskey for my birthday. I couldn’t stand the smell of alcohol while pregnant, so I only brought him a tiny bottle. He was young, and I still had so many secrets I was keeping from him—the truth about my father, about Arya, about what I’d done to get revenge.
I looked at my husband, the man who had once pushed me off a rooftop in another life, and I realized I had what I’d never had before. I had a partner who trusted me. “Let’s go home,” I said. “Yeah, let’s go.
What do you want for dinner tonight, Mrs. Warren? ”
“I want the noodles you made,” I said. “But you messed it up last time.
”
“Just do as I say. ”
I laughed, and it was easy, and for the first time, my past didn’t hurt to look at. Gavin held my hand as we walked out of that restaurant, and I knew I was going to be all right. I was going to build a life, and Gavin was going to build it with me.
We were finally on the same side. We were finally looking forward. My mother would have wanted that.
