Chapter 4

It was a voice memo I’d recorded on my eighteenth birthday ten years ago.

My younger self’s bright voice echoed through the enormous master bedroom.

Michael’s expression froze.

He spun around and stared at the tablet’s cracked screen.

A recording from ten years ago couldn’t possibly have appeared in a modern cloud backup.

Not unless the tablet was really syncing with the past in real time.

“Where did you get that fake recording?”

Michael strode over and stomped on the tablet.

The screen shattered completely.

He pointed at me viciously.

“Linda, you’re completely insane!

“You think pulling this disgusting stunt will make me feel guilty?

“Let me tell you something. It’s perfectly normal for a man to have a little fun on the side.”

Chloe immediately chimed in.

“Exactly, Linda. Who still plays the pathetic, devoted wife these days?

“You can’t have children, and you’re crippled. Why are you still clinging to your position as Mrs. Grant?”

“Chloe can give me a son. What can you do?” Michael added coldly.

I stared at his expensive shoes.

“Ten years ago, you said you’d rather never have children than put me through the pain of childbirth.

“Now you’ve brought your secretary into our bed.

“You disgust me, Michael.”

Michael flew into a rage and scooped Chloe into his arms.

“Clear out this bedroom.

“Starting tomorrow, Linda can live in the basement.

“Chloe’s pregnant. She needs a large room where she can rest, not a lunatic’s bad luck hanging over her.”

With that, he carried Chloe out without looking back.

The door slammed behind them, and everything fell silent.

I lay on the floor, every bone in my body aching.

This was the ten-year marriage I’d traded my dreams and my legs for.

Like a dog, I dragged myself toward the corner and reached for the tablet.

I didn’t care whether the person on the other end was real or just a hallucination.

I had to tell my younger self not to cancel that flight.

Go to Paris.

Just as my fingers reached the shattered screen, a faint blue light appeared beneath the cracked glass.

The screen was destroyed, but the system was still running.

A new notification appeared through the web of broken glass.

It was a photo.

In it, the torn pieces of a plane ticket to Paris were being carefully taped back together.

Then messages began pouring in.

“Linda at Eighteen: I checked his phone.”

“Linda at Eighteen: He wasn’t out meeting clients at all. He was texting his first love.”

“Linda at Eighteen: He said he’d dump me as soon as he got my family’s investment.”

I froze.

I hadn’t known any of this ten years ago.

My warning must have made my eighteen-year-old self suspicious.

So she’d checked Michael’s phone.

The course of fate had shifted.

The past was changing.

Suddenly, I burst into uncontrollable laughter.

I laughed until my tears mixed with blood and splattered across the screen.

Everything Michael had now, including his billion-dollar fortune, had come from me.

I’d sold the mansion my parents left me to provide the startup money for his company.

If my eighteen-year-old self left him and took that money to Paris, Michael would be a nobody today.

Worse, he’d be buried under the massive loan-shark debt his first love had racked up.

I wiped the blood from my face.

Ignoring the glass embedded in my bleeding palms, I used every ounce of strength I had left to type on the shattered screen.

“Linda at Twenty-Eight: Take the ticket and go to Paris.”

“Linda at Twenty-Eight: Cut off every cent of funding to Michael immediately.”

A green check mark appeared beside the messages.

They’d gone through.

Then Michael’s furious roar came from outside the bedroom.

“What the hell is going on? Why has the company suddenly lost all its funding?”