Chapter 1: The Executioner's Platform

Everyone in the city wanted me dead, and in a few seconds they were going to get their wish.

I knelt on the cold concrete of the Parker Tower rooftop with my hands cuffed behind my back. The wind pulled at my hair. Below me, thousands of people filled the street and the terrace, shouting my name like a curse. Genevieve Parker. Villainess. Traitor. Someone threw a drink from the crowd and it splashed across my shoulder. I did not even flinch. I was too busy trying to understand how I got here.

I knew this scene. I had read it in The Crown of Roses, the night before I died in my own world. It was the final chapter. The cruel chairman’s daughter meets her end, and the sweet heroine gets her happy ending.

I never thought I would be the one kneeling.

I lifted my eyes. At the edge of the rooftop stood Christian Whitmore, heir of Parker Group, tall and golden in his white tuxedo, his face as cold as the concrete under my knees. Beside him stood Juliette Hayes, the heroine, with her hands folded and her eyes wet with tears. They looked like a photograph. A perfect couple watching the monster get what she deserved.

But I saw something the book never mentioned. When the crowd cheered, Juliette’s mouth curled into the smallest smile.

It was gone in a blink. Nobody else saw it.

“Genevieve Parker,” a spokesman called out, his voice booming through the loudspeakers. “For the crime of treason against the Parker family, you are sentenced to death.”

I wanted to scream that I had done nothing. That this was not even my body. That I had only been in this world for a few months, and I had spent every one of them trying to stay out of trouble.

Nobody would have listened. They had already decided who I was.

The executioner stepped forward. He was a huge man in a black mask, and the pistol in his hand caught the morning sun. He raised it slowly. The crowd went quiet, as if the whole city were holding its breath.

My heart pounded so hard I thought it would break my ribs. I looked for one friendly face in the crowd, just one. There was none.

Then his finger began to tighten.

I screamed.

I screamed until my throat burned, and then I realized I was screaming into a pillow.

My eyes flew open. There was no wind. No crowd. No sun on a gun barrel. There was only a pale ceiling above my head and the soft gray light of early morning coming through tall windows.

I sat up so fast that the room spun. My hands flew to my neck. It was whole. No cuffs, no cuts, no blood. I touched it again and again, as if it might disappear.

“Miss Parker!”

The door burst open and a young maid ran in, her brown hair half out of its pins. She was breathing hard, her cheeks pink. I stared at her.

“Rosalie,” I whispered. The name came to me without effort, like a memory that belonged to someone else.

“Miss Parker, are you ill? I heard you screaming.” She hurried to the bed and took my hands. “You are so cold.”

“What day is it?” My voice cracked.

She blinked. “It is the fourteenth of September. Have you forgotten? Mr. Whitmore is here. He arrived a short while ago and is waiting in the private lobby.”

The fourteenth of September.

My blood went still.

I knew that date as well as I knew my own birthday. In the novel, this was the day of the Parker Foundation gala. The day Genevieve Parker, jealous and desperate for Christian’s attention, poured wine over Juliette’s gown in front of the entire company. It was the first domino. Every terrible thing that followed came from that one humiliating night.

And three months after that night, Genevieve was dead.

Three months. I had been given three months.

I pushed the blankets away and stumbled to the tall mirror beside the wardrobe. The girl staring back at me had long dark hair, sharp eyes and a proud, beautiful face. It was a face the whole city hated. It was a face I had only seen on a book cover.

It was mine now.

“I really did it,” I said quietly. “I really crossed over.”

“Miss Parker?” Rosalie said, confused.

I turned to her and forced a smile. “It is nothing. Just a bad dream.”

A very bad dream. The kind that shows you exactly how you will die.

Rosalie hurried to the wardrobe and pulled out a gown of deep red silk, the kind that made people stop and stare. She laid it on the bed with a small, nervous smile. “I have prepared your dress for tonight, Miss Parker. Shall I fetch your usual jewels? The ruby set, and the little dagger pin Mr. Whitmore once admired?”

I almost laughed. The dagger pin. In the book, Genevieve wore it to threaten Juliette in a dark corridor. It was proof of her wickedness.

“No,” I said. “Put it away.”

Rosalie froze. “Miss Parker?”

“No ruby set. No dagger pin. And I will not be wearing the red dress.”

“But the gala...”

“I will not be attending the gala.”

Her mouth fell open.

I walked back to the mirror and looked straight into the eyes of the villainess. I made her a promise, and I made it out loud so there would be no taking it back.

“I will not go to that gala. I will not chase Christian Whitmore. And I will not die for a story I never chose to be in.”

The reflection stared back, and for a moment it almost looked like she was thanking me.

A sharp knock came at the door. Rosalie jumped and rushed to open it. A courier stood in the hallway, stiff in a dark suit, holding a sealed letter with both hands.

“A message for Miss Parker,” he announced. “From Mr. Cassian Wolfe, CEO of Blackthorne Capital.”

I turned around slowly.

Cassian Wolfe.

I knew that name, but not because he mattered. He was a side character, a cold and distant billionaire who appeared in only a few scenes and said almost nothing. Readers barely noticed him. The author had killed him off quickly and without ceremony.

Why would he be writing to me?

I took the letter and broke the seal. The handwriting was neat and sharp. I read the words once, then twice, because I was sure I had made a mistake.

Mr. Cassian Wolfe, CEO of Blackthorne Capital, respectfully requests the hand of Miss Genevieve Parker in marriage.

The paper trembled in my fingers.

In the novel, Cassian Wolfe never proposed to Genevieve. They never even spoke. He was a ghost in the margins, a man the story forgot.

And according to the book, he was supposed to die tomorrow.

I looked up at the courier, my heart hammering again.

“Tell me,” I said, and I hated how small my voice sounded. “When did Mr. Wolfe send this?”

The courier nodded. “At dawn, Miss Parker. Mr. Wolfe said you would understand the urgency.”

I did not understand anything. But as I stood there with the letter shaking in my hand, I felt the story shift beneath my feet, like a floor sliding away.

Te man who was meant to die tomorrow wanted to marry me today.