CHAPTER ONE *SOPHIA*

CHAPTER ONE

*SOPHIA*

"You look beautiful, sweetheart. Alexander won't be able to take his eyes off you."

My mother's voice cut through the darkness like a knife, and I jolted awake, gasping. The words echoed in my head words she'd said ten years ago. Words that had started everything.

I sat up, heart hammering, and looked around wildly. Pink walls. Floral curtains. The poster of Monet's Water Lilies I'd taken down when I turned nineteen. My hands flew to my face, touching smooth skin where fine lines should be. No wedding ring. No bruises hidden under makeup.

My phone sat on the nightstand, and I grabbed it with shaking fingers. The date glowed back at me: March 15th. My eighteenth birthday.

"No," I whispered. "No, no, no."

But my reflection in the mirror across the room told the truth. I was eighteen again. A decade had vanished like smoke.

I stumbled to the bathroom and vomited.

Three days passed in a fog. I stayed in my room, claiming illness, while my brain tried to process the impossible. I'd died. I knew I'd died. The car had spun off that cliff, and I'd felt the impact, felt everything stop. Alexander's face had been my last thought not because I loved him, but because I hated that he was my last thought.

Now I was here. Young. Alive. With ten years of memories that hadn't happened yet.

On the fourth day, my mother knocked. "Sophia? The gallery opening is tonight. You promised you'd come."

The gallery. I'd gone to that opening in my previous life, had met Mrs. Laurent who'd encouraged me to pursue art seriously. Then I'd met Alexander six months later and abandoned everything for him.

Not this time.

"I'll be ready in an hour," I called back, and my voice sounded different. Harder.

I stood in front of my closet and pulled out the demure pink dress my mother had picked out. The one I'd worn like a good daughter. I threw it on the floor and reached for something else a simple black dress I'd bought on impulse and never worn because Mother said it was too mature.

When I walked downstairs, my mother's smile faltered. "That's not the dress we chose."

"I changed my mind."

"But sweetheart, pink is more appropriate for"

"I'm eighteen, not twelve." The sharpness in my tone made her blink. I'd never spoken to her like that before. Never pushed back. "I'm wearing this."

My brother Marcus appeared in the doorway, coffee in hand, and raised an eyebrow. "Someone woke up with opinions."

"Someone always had them," I said quietly.

The gallery was exactly as I remembered white walls, soft lighting, wealthy patrons pretending to understand abstract art. Mrs. Laurent spotted me immediately and waved me over, but I barely heard her greeting. My mind was racing, cataloguing everyone I recognized, remembering which artists would become famous, which investments would pay off, which people in this room would matter.

"Your mother tells me you paint," Mrs. Laurent was saying.

In my previous life, I'd blushed and demurred. Said it was just a hobby. This time, I looked her directly in the eye.

"I do more than paint. I create." I pulled out my phone and showed her photos I'd taken yesterday pieces I'd recreated from memory, paintings I'd made in my first life that critics had praised after I'd abandoned art entirely. "I'm building a portfolio. I want to open my own gallery within two years."

Mrs. Laurent's eyes widened. "Two years? That's ambitious."

"I know exactly what I'm doing."

And I did. I knew which emerging artists to invest in. Knew which art dealers were about to go bankrupt. Knew that the sculptor currently being ignored in the corner would have a piece in the Guggenheim by 2020. I'd lived this already.

Over the next eighteen months, I worked like someone possessed. I took out student loans and maxed out credit cards, buying pieces from artists no one else wanted yet. Used my trust fund the one I'd signed over to Alexander in my previous life to rent a tiny gallery space in a neighborhood that would gentrify within a year.

Marcus thought I was insane. Mother thought I was throwing away my future. I didn't care.

By the time I was twenty, Sera Morningstar Gallery was being written about in art magazines. I'd made back my initial investment three times over. And I'd carefully, methodically changed my name professionally so that when Alexander Sterling searched for Sophia Chen, he'd find the political daughter my mother had groomed, not the artist I'd become.

The night of the charity gala, I stood in front of my mirror in a red dress that cost more than my first month's gallery rent. In my previous life, I'd worn pink to this event. Had been nervous, eager to please, desperate to fit in with the society mothers watching.

Tonight, I didn't give a damn what they thought.

"You look different," Marcus said when I came downstairs. He'd agreed to be my date, though he kept giving me strange looks. "When did you get so..."

"So what?"

"Cold."

I smiled without warmth. "I grew up."

The gala was being held at the Sterling Hotel downtown Alexander's flagship property. I'd walked into this building once as a naive girl who believed in fairy tales. I'd left it three years later as a woman who knew exactly what monsters looked like in expensive suits.

The ballroom was full of people I recognized. There was Victoria Ashford in silver, already positioning herself near the bar where Alexander would stand. There was Eleanor Sterling, surveying the room like a queen inspecting her kingdom. And there, across the room, was Alexander.

Thirty-two years old. Devastating in a custom tuxedo. Every inch the billionaire heir who'd charmed me senseless in another lifetime.

He was talking to a congressman, that practiced smile on his face the one that didn't reach his eyes. I'd thought that smile was mysterious once. Now I knew it just meant he was bored.

I turned away deliberately and headed for the bar.

"Champagne," I told the bartender.

"Make that two."

The voice came from behind me, smooth and confident. I didn't need to turn around to know who it was. I could feel Alexander's presence like a cold wind.

I took my champagne and turned slowly, meeting his eyes with complete indifference.

"Do I know you?" I asked, though of course he'd just watched me walk away from his conversation range.

His smile widened slightly, intrigued. "I don't believe we've met. Alexander Sterling."

"How unfortunate for you."

I walked away, leaving him standing there with two champagne flutes and confusion written across his perfect face.

Marcus materialized at my elbow. "Did you just blow off Alexander Sterling?"

"I did."

"Why do I feel like you just started a war?"

I smiled into my champagne glass, watching Alexander's reflection in the mirrored wall as he stared after me.

"Because I did."

"Sophia, what the hell is going on with you?"

I looked at my brother the only person in my previous life who'd suspected something was wrong, who'd tried to help when I was too broken to accept it.

"Would you believe me if I said I've done all this before?”