Chapter 1

Our house was a two-story building out in the suburbs.

I had already made it to the second floor, but the rain poured down in relentless sheets. The water rose with terrifying speed, already surging past my waist.

My mother was shorter than me. The flood had reached her neck, and her eyes were filled with panic.

"It's going to be okay, Mom. We'll be rescued!" I soothed her, helping her climb onto the desk before pulling myself up beside her.

This time, I didn't call my wife, Tricia Williams, for help. Instead, I dialed Corey Spencer, the rescue team's deputy captain.

But it was Tricia who answered.

"That's enough, Michael! Every second counts when people are dying—can you stop making a scene? You can swim, and there's a kayak at home. If anyone's least likely to get hurt, it's you!"

She hung up after shouting in fury. She had completely forgotten that I had nearly drowned while trying to save the man she loved. Ever since, I had carried a deep-seated fear of water.

As for the kayak she gave me on my birthday… Nathan Lager had said he wanted one too, and she'd immediately moved it into her car. I never even got to touch the packaging.

But having lived through one lifetime already, I had given up trying to explain anything to Tricia.

I called Corey again.

This time, he answered in person—but his attitude was no better.

"Come on, Michael. You're a grown man. Do you really have to be this dramatic?

"No matter how much the captain loves you, she can't keep putting up with this.

"She's already taken the rest of the team to rescue Nathan. Stop calling. No one has time to entertain your nonsense. You're just wasting rescue resources!

"If you weren't the captain's husband, I'd curse you out even worse. People like you are the most annoying!"

After a string of insults, Corey blocked my number.

In truth, it didn't matter anymore.

Just moments later, all network communications collapsed. No calls could go through. No messages could be sent. Even standing on the desk with my mother offered little relief.

The water soon rose to my armpits. My chest tightened; each breath became harder to draw.

My mother was in even worse shape. If I hadn't been holding her, the water would have already swallowed her whole.

In about twenty minutes, the flood would claim us both.

"Michael, put me down. If you exhaust yourself, neither of us will survive." My mother's voice trembled.

"It's okay. We'll definitely be rescued before we drown."

I strained to lift my chin higher, desperate for clearer air, but my nose stung as tears threatened to fall.

In my previous life, the moment the flood reached the second floor, I had called Tricia for help.

She came to save me—and because of that, she missed Nathan's call.

He jumped into the floodwaters and ended his life.

Before dying, he posted a video accusing me of bullying him for over a decade, driving him into severe depression.

Now that I had even stolen the woman he loved, he said, he could no longer endure it.

Nathan had been a famous anti-depression influencer. Once the video surfaced, the internet turned on me with savage intensity, pushing me to the brink of mental collapse.

I insisted I had never done any of those things, but no one believed me.

Aside from my family, only Tricia stayed by my side. She said it wasn't my fault. She showed me a gentleness and care I had never known from her before.

For a time, I felt grateful. I believed I had chosen the right partner—that I was the happiest man in the world.

Yet, on the first birthday after Nathan's death, Tricia slipped sedatives into the food my mother and I were eating and took us to his grave.

She forced us to atone with our lives.

"You can swim, and there's a kayak at home. You were never going to drown, yet you still called me for help… In the past ten years, that was the one time I chose you—and it killed Nathan. You deserve to die!"

But I was her husband. Wasn't it only right for her to come save my mother and me?

Tricia yanked my hair, hurling the vilest insults at me. Her bloodshot eyes made her look possessed.

"If even a single hair fell from Nathan's head, I'd feel like I'd failed him. How dare you bully him like that right under my nose?

"Does it hurt, watching your mother die? When Nathan died, I felt even worse than you do now!

"Didn't you lie about almost drowning that day? Then taste it for yourself—see what it's like to drown and die!"

I wanted to say I had never bullied Nathan. I wanted to cry out for help. But not a single word would come.

As I listened to my mother's voice break into hoarse screams of agony, the water filled my eyes, my ears, my mouth—until it claimed every inch of me.

In the end, all I could do was weep, helpless and despairing, as death closed in.