New Life: Never a Simp Again

"Why are you just standing there? Get over here and grab these."

A familiar voice came from right beside me, and my heart lurched. The terror of being dragged under by the ocean still had its claws in me.

I snapped my eyes open and found my hands weighed down with shopping bags, a familiar figure standing right in front of me.

Rosalie Burke.

In that moment, I realized I'd been reborn, back in the year the Burkes finally found her.

Right then, I was basically her gofer, small enough for her to crush without thinking twice. I used to be the one on top, the golden child everyone looked up to.

Rosalie had always thought I was an orphan, totally unaware that Dad was a legendary business tycoon in Jorvessa.

Ever since I was a kid, I'd had an insane talent for business, and Dad had been grooming me for years to take over Swain Group.

Mom killed herself when I was 14, the moment she found out Dad was cheating and had a kid on the side. It was more than I could handle, so I ran away from home.

When I hit rock bottom, Rosalie found me and brought me back to the orphanage. In those days, she was like a beam of light in the middle of everything I'd lost.

Soon after, her parents finally found her. She turned out to be the long-lost daughter of a wealthy family.

When Rosalie was taken from the orphanage, she pleaded with her parents to bring me along, and that was how I ended up at the Burke residence.

I knew exactly how hard it was to survive in those high-society families, so I supported her quietly as my way of repaying her.

Rosalie had spent years on her own and knew nothing about business, so I handled it all and smoothed the way for her.

The day she was named heir to Burke Group, I went straight to her, bursting with joy, and asked her to marry me.

On a cliff overlooking the sea that I'd turned into something out of a dream, I dropped to one knee in my suit. "Rosalie, marry me."

"Mark Swain, what makes you think someone like you gets to propose to me?"

Her eyes were full of contempt.

My heart sank. "I thought you cared about me. You told me when we were kids that you'd marry me someday."

Rosalie burst out laughing, her eyes glittering with mockery. Then her face went cold as she looked back at me.

"I lied to you back then. You seriously believed that? You're such an idiot. I'm marrying Romy. He's the next heir to Swain Group."

She stomped all over my feelings. The sweet girl I once knew had turned into a woman driven by nothing but profit.

I lost it and reached for her, desperate for answers, when someone came out of nowhere and shoved me into the sea.

"Go to hell, Mark!"

Right before I hit the water, I caught a glimpse of the person behind Rosalie. It was my half-brother, Jerome Swain.

The sight of them holding each other and kissing seared itself into my memory.

I was the one who helped Rosalie rise higher than anyone else, only for her to kick me straight into hell. Now that I'd been given another life, I was done helping her.

As for my dear brother Jerome, I'd see to it he paid back every last drop of blood he owed me.

Every memory of how Rosalie treated me after she went back to her family in my past life only stoked the hate burning in my chest.

I didn't bother telling her to cut back on the shopping this time.

In the few months since she'd come back to the family, they'd been slammed by a once-in-a-century financial crash, and their business was already going downhill.

Still, she blew money as if it grew on trees, and it just made her father, Edward Burke, even madder.

Either way, it wasn't my business anymore.

While I loaded her bags into the car, I said in a flat voice, "Rosalie, I'm leaving."

"What's with the drama this time? Isn't being my live-in assistant working out just fine? Once you leave the Burkes, what kind of job do you think you're gonna find out there?"

Rosalie leaned against the Rolls-Royce with her arms crossed, staring at me like I was a total loser. That was when the last of my feelings for her went cold.

She'd treated me the same way in my past life, but I'd been so hung up on her that I didn't notice a thing. I just kept throwing myself at her.