My so-called fiancée and my best friend of ten years shoved me off the rooftop on the day of our engagement. “Don’t blame us, Chloe. Even your own father wishes you were gone. We’re just helping him get what he wants sooner.
”
I watched my own body break on the ground. My father wouldn’t even look at me. I was just a ghost, a spirit bound to the people who killed me. And the worst part?
The man who loved me—Gavin—chose to die for me, to be buried with me, while the people I loved had been the ones to end my life. It was only then that I understood. I had been a fool. So God gave me another chance.
Four years earlier, I was reborn on the day of the bid. I pretended to agree to move in with Gavin, stole his bid documents, and handed them to Landon—the man I thought I loved, the man who had betrayed me in my past life. When Gavin chased me down, I broke three of my own fingers just to protect Landon. I did it for a man who would eventually help kill me.
This time, I knew better. I knew exactly who Landon was: a greedy bastard. And Arya, the girl my father took in, the one whose parents supposedly died saving our family, was a vicious viper. She tried to kill me more than once.
They both had to pay. Gavin caught up to us. He didn’t fall for Landon’s honey trap. He had Landon taken away and turned to me, furious.
“After the bid documents were stolen, I lost hundreds of millions of dollars. Someone has to answer for this. ”
I knew he believed I had betrayed him. He threatened to break my legs so I would stay in his bed forever.
I never loved him in that past life, but I knew I needed his trust. So I gave myself to him fully, enough to convince him that I loved him, that I only wanted him. He was suspicious, but he wanted to believe me. He had always been desperate for me.
Around everyone else, Gavin was a ruthless tycoon. With me, he was an insecure puppy. I told him to marry me. He was so desperate he almost broke.
But he still didn’t fully trust me, and I needed to use the marriage to protect myself from my father and Arya. I fed Landon information, all part of my trap. I gave him Gavin’s password to transfer massive funds into a doomed project—Crockdale Resort. I predicted the geological collapse that would come.
When it hit, Landon’s Harding Group stock plummeted by 90%. He lost everything. He was furious. “You played me, you bitch.
”
I smiled. “This was my plan all along. ”
Landon had me kidnapped to extort Gavin for ransom. But Gavin paid the ransom and came to the warehouse.
He made Landon crawl and beg. Landon still had the nerve to say, “Chloe, I knew you’d come to save me. ”
I laughed. “I’m not here to save you.
I’m here to send you to hell. ”
He went to prison. I let him rot. Then Gavin got shot.
He took a bullet for me, just as he had in my past life. I stayed by his side the whole time he was unconscious, even when the doctors said he might not wake up. When he woke, he was angry at me. He couldn’t trust me.
He couldn’t believe I had manipulated all of it. “I hid the Crocodile geological report from you,” I told him, “and I pushed you to take out those high-interest loans. From the day you and Arya betrayed me, I’ve been waiting for this moment. ”
He called me a bitch, but I didn’t care.
That was just a down payment. Eventually, Landon escaped prison and contacted me, thinking he could use me one last time. He told me he knew where the blind spots were in Gavin’s security cameras, that the guards changed shifts at 3 a. m.
He thought we could run away together. He begged me to give him another chance, reminding me of our college days, of the couple rings and the sycamore tree. I let him talk. Then I laughed.
“Landon, you actually think I’ll leave with you? Gavin and I are getting married. The diamond ring he gave me is better than any junk you ever gave me. Besides, I’m the one who designed your situation.
What makes you think I’d go anywhere with you? ”
He turned desperate and dangerous. He knew my one weakness. He knew where my mother’s ashes were.
“I bribed the crematorium staff,” he said. “The urn was switched long ago. The woman buried in that cemetery isn’t your mother. You visited her grave all those times—didn’t you realize?
”
That broke me. But I didn’t fall apart. Gavin held me, trying to calm me down, and promised he would find the truth. I had a father who hated me and a scheming viper living in my house.
I knew I needed to act. I went back home. Arya was wearing my mother’s jewelry, pieces my father had gifted her from our collection. She sneered at me, insulting my mother.
I had heard enough. I told my father I was moving my mother’s grave. He panicked. He forbade it.
He got nervous. I knew then—I knew the truth was buried there. I confronted my father. “Fifteen years ago, someone anonymously wired a huge sum to the cemetery caretaker, right around the anniversary of my mother’s death.
The payment came from a Reed Group’s account. Do you know who it was? ”
He brushed it off. So did Arya.
They thought I was bluffing. I wasn’t. I had a plan. The day we moved the grave, Arya pulled out a gun.
She had switched the urn, she admitted. And she had cursed my mother’s soul. But I had already planted my own trap. “Those three guys you sent to kill me have probably been arrested by now,” I said.
“Arya, your plan missed the one person that absolutely shouldn’t have. ”
She shot at me, but the gun clicked empty. My men surrounded her. She was arrested.
That was justice for my mother. As she was dragged away, Arya spat venom at Gavin. “Do you believe what she’s saying? She only married you because you’re rich.
She only cares about Landon. ”
Gavin looked at me. “I only believe you. ”
We found my mother’s real ashes at the bottom of a well, along with the jade pendant my grandmother had given her.
I finally had her back. We planned a real wedding for the 15th. The day I went to see Arya in prison, she tried one last desperate play. She claimed her mother was innocent, that my mother had been the evil schemer who stole my father.
She told a sob story of her mother dying coughing blood in the countryside while my mother lived a comfortable life. But I knew the truth. I had read my mother’s journal. My father had lied to everyone, married my mother after abandoning Arya’s mother, and then forced Arya to change her identity so she could pretend her parents died saving us.
“I know why you’re taking the fall for him,” I said. “Don’t worry, I’ll kill him soon enough. You can meet him in hell. ”
She screamed, “You’ll regret this, Chloe!
You’ll see every word I said is true! ”
I walked away. My father was in the hospital now, after a stroke. I went to his bedside.
He couldn’t speak, but he could hear me. “My mom kept this book locked in the safe,” I told him. “The one you burned was a decoy. You lied to her your whole life, and you even let Arya take the blame for killing her.
Austin Reed, you’re a complete monster. You’re dying to talk, aren’t you? Too bad. God despises you.
You won’t get another chance to speak. ”
I fired him. I took the Reed Group. I became CEO.
I told him I had already picked out his final resting place, just waiting for him to fill it. His blood pressure spiked. The nurses rushed in with sedatives. But revenge felt hollow.
That night, Gavin brought me to the riverbank where the Wakton cruise ship sank fifteen years ago—the one that killed my mother. He told me he had been there, that he had washed up on the same shore as me, blind and terrified, and that I had been the one to ask, “Hey, you still alive? ”
“Chloe, I would have died back then if it weren’t for you. Don’t be scared.
We’ll build a life together. ”
We planned our wedding. Then the threats started. “Mr.
Warren, Gavin is already handling the overseas branch transition documents. He’ll have full control in less than a week. ”
My father, even from his hospital bed, had one last scheme. He pretended to be bedridden, but he had hired assassins.
He wanted to kill Gavin and me at the wedding. He couldn’t stand that Gavin would take over. The assassin sent a message through Gavin’s brother, Axel: “If you want to save her, come to the club alone. ”
Gavin went.
It was a trap. Axel had planted explosives. He forced Gavin to play a hand of cards with their grandfather’s deck, to gamble for my life. “You win and I let her go.
You lose and you go to hell. ”
Gavin won. But Axel had rigged it. The message came back: they had taken Axel.
Gavin raced to the vault, but it was too late. Axel had blown up the building with himself inside. I held Gavin as he broke down. “While organizing the files, I noticed he quietly shut down all those shady deals.
The board members who took dirty money were either forced out or vanished. All these years, he’s been publicly opposing me while secretly pushing out every one of those old-timers. He knew he was running out of time. He had to use the most extreme way to hand you a clean company.
He made sure everyone believed all the Warren Group’s dirty laundry was solely his fault. ”
I realized then: Axel’s sacrifice had been for Gavin. He had given his life to clear his brother’s path. The wedding came.
Everything was beautiful. I stood at the altar, and I married the man who had died for me once and would do it again. Gavin was my whole world. My revenge was over.
My father, my mother’s true killer, died in that hospital bed, alone, hated, with no one to hear his confession. I had finally found peace. We walked out of the church, hand in hand, into the sunlight. My mother’s ashes were finally at rest.
“What do you want for dinner tonight, Mrs. Warren? ” Gavin asked. “I want the noodles you made,” I said.
He smiled. “But I messed it up last time. ”
“Just do as I say. You swore at my mother’s grave that you’d take care of me.
”
He squeezed my hand. “All right, you’re the boss. ”
Gavin and I are expecting. The past is buried.
This time, I will live the life I was denied. We both will.
