2

Elena

"I will kill you..." I wheezed, my throat burning as tears choked my voice. "I will kill every single one of you..."

"Kill me?" Adrian smirked, leaning down over the bed rail. "Look at yourself, Elena. You already have one foot in the grave."

His mother let out a shrill, mocking laugh. "You really thought you were something special, didn't you? You actually believed you were worthy of my brilliant son? Stop dreaming and just die already."

Before Adrian could speak again, the door swung open, and his father stepped inside, accompanied by his younger brother, Lucas.

"What is taking you all so long?" the old man grunted, adjusting his suit jacket.

"Dad, you came too?" Vivian asked sweetly, pressing her cheek against his shoulder.

They were all in on it. Every single one of them. The entire family had orchestrated this nightmare, systematically ruining my life while making a complete fool out of me.

I had loved this monster. I had cherished him and treated his family with devotion and respect. When his mother claimed she had a fatal kidney condition, I didn't hesitate—I sold a property my late father had left me to fund her private treatment.

Is this how they repaid my sacrifice?

"Lucas..." I rasped, looking toward my brother-in-law in desperate pain. Lucas had always been kind to me. Even after my husband supposedly "died," Lucas was the only one who seemed to treat me like a human being.

"I can't believe the proud, arrogant Elena Hart is reduced to lying on a deathbed like a helpless dog," Lucas said. His voice was calm, but a dark, sinister malice dripped from every word.

He stepped closer, staring down at my sunken cheeks. "I thought you would have died long before you became this pathetic. But I suppose I got everything I wanted from you first."

"What do you mean?" Adrian asked, frowning slightly at his brother.

"Well, you ran off, brother," Lucas scoffed, throwing his hands up in defense. "You can't blame me. Elena was far too pretty to pass up, so I helped myself to her while you were gone."

I thought my heart had already been broken into a million pieces. I thought the pain couldn't possibly get any worse. But I was wrong. The one person I thought was my ally—the only person who had offered me a shred of comfort—was casually admitting to violating me.

"You shameless rascal!" his mother barked, grabbing Lucas by the ear. "How did you manage to do that behind my back?"

"You know how she was, Mother," Lucas laughed, shaking her off. "She was always pathetically loyal to anyone who showed her a little bit of warmth. All I had to do was act like a caring brother, and she trusted me completely."

"You actually slept with her?" Vivian gasped in fake disgust before turning to sneer at me. "How cheap."

"Thanks to her simple, naïve mind, it was remarkably easy," Lucas bragged, stepping up to my pillow. "I slipped something into her milk every night. She thought I was helping her sleep. She had no idea what was happening to her after she closed her eyes."

The warm milk flashed through my mind—every single night, after I stumbled home exhausted from working three backbreaking jobs to pay off Adrian's fake debt, Lucas handing me that glass, telling me to rest well.

It was all a trap. A twisted, repulsive trap designed to drug me so he could assault me in my sleep.

"You... you will all rot in hell!" I screamed, my body convulsing violently against the sheets. The heart monitor went completely berserk, its loud, frantic beeping filling the room. My entire life had been a lie. My marriage was a lie. Their affection was a lie.

"Look at the bright side, Elena," Lucas added with a smug grin. "You lived a fulfilled, sacrificial life."

Fulfilled life, my ass.

How could I die like this? How could I possibly close my eyes and rest in peace knowing the monsters who destroyed me were going to walk away with my money, my dignity, and my life?

I wanted to tear my own soul out of this paralyzed body. I wanted to drag every single one of them down to hell with me!

"It's time to rest now, my dear Elena," Adrian spoke softly, stepping up to my IV line. "It's time to go."

He pulled a thick syringe from his coat pocket. Through my tear-blurred vision, I saw the clear liquid sparkling inside the barrel.

"Thank you for everything, Elena," Adrian whispered, a bright, handsome smile spreading across his face. "May we never meet again in any lifetime."

He jammed the needle into my neck and plunged the poison into my veins.

Instantly, my vision began to go dark. My body vibrated with a terrifying, icy numbness. As the cold darkness swallowed me whole, the last thing I saw was the family standing over my body, throwing their heads back and laughing so cruelly that the sound echoed in my ears...

"Gasp!"

I sat bolt upright, air violently rushing into my lungs as cold sweat drenched my skin. My heart was hammering against my ribs—not like a failing organ, but with raw, booming life.

I blinked frantically, gasping for breath as I looked around the room, my mind still tangled in the fog of the poison, the laughter, the needle in my throat.

Wait. Was I... alive?

There were no white hospital walls. There were no heart monitors beeping in the background. The smell of disinfectant was gone, replaced by the faint, familiar scent of expensive rose perfume and warm sunlight. I looked down at my hands—they were smooth, healthy, and completely unbruised. No IV needles. No sunken skin.

What is happening to me?

My hands shook as I fumbled for my phone on the nightstand, my thumb trembling as I unlocked the screen. I stared at the date in the corner, certain I was reading it wrong.

It couldn't be right. It wasn't possible.

Three years. I had gone back three entire years, to the exact afternoon Adrian's family had staged his death.

My breath caught somewhere between a sob and a laugh. Was I dreaming? Had the poison finally driven my mind somewhere it couldn't come back from?

But my heartbeat was too real, the sunlight through the curtains too warm, the ache in my healed body too solid to be a dying hallucination.

Then it hit me—clear and undeniable. I had been wronged too badly, too completely, for this to be some cruel trick of my dying brain. Fate, or whatever force still had a shred of justice left in it, had given me something no one deserved twice.

A second chance.

A slow, dark, wicked smile spread across my face as a wave of pure, unadulterated power flooded through my veins.

I am back. And this time, I won't be their fool. I'll be their worst nightmare.