chapter 1

Lionel Linwood lowered his voice to a coaxing whisper. “Please sign right away. Your husband doesn’t have the luxury of time.”

I clenched my fists while that gentlemanly nightmare of a doctor kept smiling. Beneath his polished veneer lurked a predator.

In my previous life, he had accepted Colin Sorrell’s money and forged a file that said my husband suffered total renal failure. When tests showed I was a perfect match, I wept with gratitude and signed the consent form without a second thought. Now, with a second chance, I would sooner carve off my hand than sign that page again.

When Lionel offered the paperwork again, bile rose in my throat.

I covered my mouth, gagged, and rushed for the door. “I’m not feeling well,” I gasped. On the way out, I kicked a chair toward his polished shoes. His piercing scream followed the crash.

He called my mother-in-law, Margaret Sorrell, to report the new crisis, and I let him. The stage had been set up, so how could we be short of actors?

After the operation in my previous life, I learned the truth. Colin had never been ill. My kidney rested in Autumn Langley, his beloved first crush.

The discovery hollowed me out. I hurled a divorce settlement onto his desk and turned my back on the life I had once protected.

“I bought this flat before our marriage,” I said, trembling with fury. “Take your filthy lies and get out.”

Colin agreed at once, face awash in contrition, and promised we would file the divorce papers the next morning.

We never reached the registry office. Halfway across the bridge, the brakes failed without warning.

My car snapped through the guardrail and plunged into the churning river. Water poured in, icy and relentless, muting my scream.

As darkness claimed me, my disembodied soul drifted above the flood, forced to witness what came next.

Autumn leaned out of her car window, grinning. “Did that idiot truly think she could leave with the money?”

Colin pulled her close, his hand sliding along her thigh while greed burned in his eyes.

He murmured, “So what if she uncovered the truth? We tampered with her brakes a month ago. Now she is gone, and every penny, every brick, belongs to us.”

Their words cut through me like a blade, spilling invisible blood.

The husband I adored and the cousin I sheltered had wanted me dead from the start.

Fury drove me forward. I lunged, hands poised to crush their smug throats, yet my fingers passed through air while they kissed, oblivious.

I screamed, “Colin Sorrell, Autumn Langley, may you both die in misery!”

Blood-tinged tears fell, but I could only watch Colin rush my body to the crematorium and sell the ruined car for scrap.

They used my savings to fund their wedding and moved into my home as though I had never drawn breath.

Then, they spread tales that I had lived in depravity, and the whole town spat on my name.

Perhaps my hatred carried too much weight, because instead of fading into the afterlife, I woke in my own body, days before the transplant.

I forced the tide of hatred back behind my lashes, wired a private investigator his fee, and walked toward the ICU in slow, deliberate steps. This time, the game was mine to play, and they would dance to my tune.

Inside the ICU, Colin lay fragile and motionless, a tangle of tubes rooting him to the bed. Tears pooled in his eyes as he stared at me, a silent plea carved into every line of his face.

Through the thick glass of the visitation window, he parted cracked lips and let out a ragged moan. “Viv... I feel awful. Did you speak to Dr. Linwood?” As he spoke, the heavy foundation masking his skin flaked away with each faint tremor of his cheeks.

Hatred welled up in my heart. How did I ever miss such clumsy acting in my previous life? Afraid I might come too close, he had spared no expense, booking a private ICU suite to keep me at a distance. I despised my love-struck blindness even more than I despised this man, who was lower than any stray dog.

I was three years older than Colin, so when he began courting me, I refused at once.

However, he would not give up. His smile burned with enthusiasm, his eyes brimming with concern as he pressed gift after gift into my hands. “Viv, I brought your favorite whole milk and some eggs. You’re far too thin—you need to eat. I sewed this backpack for you. Do you like it? It’s going to rain tomorrow, so I’ll pick you up. And when the cold sets in, I’ve knitted a scarf just for you.”

Little by little, he slipped beneath my guard, and after my father died, he was the only one who stayed by my side. The week he graduated, we married, and in those early days, he attended to my every need.

I thought I had chosen well, but when the truth surfaced, I realized I had been wrong from the beginning. He never wanted me—only the flat and the money my father left behind.

Seeing my blank stare, Colin lifted his voice. “Viv, I’m sorry. We planned that island trip, but with my condition, I can’t go with you now.”

He wore the same mask of remorse he had perfected after my death, a performance honed to an art.

In that previous life, he had stood at my funeral, clutching my urn and wailing so loudly the mourners trembled. “Viv, how could you leave me like this? What am I supposed to do without you? I told you I didn’t care about the affair—why would you kill yourself over it?”

His performance of grief nailed my name to a pillar of disgrace. He even hired a man to play the role of my alleged lover. Together, they crashed the funeral, the intruder tipping the urn so that my ashes scattered across the grimy drain, erasing the last trace of me from the world.

“Viv, why haven’t you signed the consent form?” Margaret’s sharp bark yanked me out of the haze of recollection.

Clutching the Kidney Donation Consent Form, she marched up to me and thrust it beneath my nose. With a curt gesture, she ordered my father-in-law, George Sorrell, to seize my hand. Together, they pinned me in place, ready to force my signature.

“The doctor says Colin cannot hold on much longer. Sign, and do it now,” Margaret snapped.

“I will not sign!” I shouted, each syllable cracking like a whip in the air.