Chapter 1

Camille Chaney brushed off my cold words and stepped forward, blocking the doorway.

But I was faster. The door slammed shut and caught her hand hard.

She screamed, and I released it on instinct.

She seized the moment and forced her way in, pointing straight at my nose and shouting, "Dexter Revell! Are you insane? You crushed my hand!"

She came from a rural background, but after we started seeing each other, I took over all the hard work at her family's home.

Years without labor had left her hands soft, like a city woman's, without a trace of calluses. I saw her knuckles crushed red by the door and felt nothing.

The pain of suffocating to death in my previous life still felt like yesterday. I was holding myself back from stepping forward and choking her. That was already considered emotionally stable to me.

I stayed silent, and Camille's anger spiked.

"Did you lose your voice? I told you I'm pregnant. Do you know what that means? Go to my family and make it official now. If my belly starts showing and people find out, how am I supposed to live with that?"

She'd said the same thing in my last life.

Back then, we were already engaged, but her father died unexpectedly. She said she had to mourn, so she delayed the wedding.

I didn't think much about it at the time. A path to college had finally opened up again, so I figured I'd give it a try. If I got in, maybe I'd land a decent job, and life might turn out better down the road.

I didn't expect Camille to get pregnant before any acceptance letter arrived.

I honestly couldn't remember which night it had happened, but I decided I wasn't going to walk away from it. So I gave up my chance to go to college and married her.

A few months after we married, Camille gave birth to a son. We were already scraping by, and it only got worse. I worked myself to exhaustion to support her and the child.

It wasn't until opportunities opened up and I started working in the city that things began to improve.

Still, Camille complained almost every day.

"Just look at you. Half your life's gone, and all you are is the head of some little factory. Look at the principals and teachers. They're the ones folks respect. And then there's you, looking like a beggar."

I didn't think much of it at the time. Our marriage had never been about love. It was arranged from the start, and there wasn't much feeling in it.

Given enough time, her complaints were bound to surface. What I didn't see then was that she'd already put it in my face that Howard Salter was the one she really wanted.

He was the school principal whom she called respectable.

After his wife died, he lived alone and vowed to dedicate the rest of his life to education. Everyone praised him for it, and even I felt a trace of admiration.

I didn't learn until much later that he'd taken my place at the college. He also carried on a secret affair with Camille for decades, had her deceive me, and saw to it that their son inherited my factory.

Once every bit of value I had left was wrung out of me, they had me killed.

I still recalled when she came to the hospital to see me while I was dying, something she rarely did.

Her face, smoothed and tightened by who knew how many procedures, didn't show a flicker of emotion. Her voice was even colder.

"There was never much between us. But you spent decades helping Howard raise my son, so I guess I should thank you. Once you're dead, Howard will bring us home, and I'll be the principal's wife."

She reached over and yanked out my oxygen tube.

As my breathing failed, the last thing I saw was the malice in her eyes.

The memory ended there. I looked at Camille standing in front of me, took a deep breath, and forced the anger down.

"I'm about to leave for college. This marriage was just something our parents arranged, and it can be called off anytime."

I finished and shoved her right out the door. I didn't give an inch, no matter how much she shouted or cursed.

This time, I wasn't going to let her ruin my life.