REBORN AND BECOME A BILLIONAIRE'S WIFE

Aurora's POV"Aurora, open this door. Are you dead or something?"Megan's voice cuts through the bathroom door, sharp and annoyed, and then the handle jerks hard under her hand.For one sick second, my whole body locks.Dead.The word slams into me so hard my fingers slip against the sink. I stare at my reflection and stop breathing.Twenty-six. Alive. Unbroken.But I died; I know I died.I still remember the cold floor under my body. Damien is standing over me. Megan laughed behind him, like my life ending was a problem finally solved. I remember trying to breathe and getting nothing. I remember thinking, right before everything went black, that I should have never trusted any of them.Then I opened my eyes here. Six years earlier. Same apartment. Same bathroom. Same voice outside the door."Aurora!" Megan bangs once more. "If you're alive, answer me!" I force air into my lungs and grip the sink harder.This is real; I am back, and everyone who ruined me is still exactly where I left

Aurora's POV"You look tired."That is the first thing Damien says when I open the door.I almost laugh.Not because it is funny, but because in my first life, those exact words used to send me straight back to the mirror. He said it with concern. He wore it like control. A quiet way of reminding me that even my face was something he had opinions about."Come in," I say, and step aside.He walks past me, and something in his cologne, familiar, expensive, and deliberately chosen, makes my stomach turn in a way I don't let reach my face. He is smiling. That warm, easy smile that took me three years to see through.I see through it now. "I made tea," I say, moving to the kitchen."Since when do you make tea at night?" "Since I felt like it."I feel him pause behind me. Good.I pour two cups and sit across from him and let him look at me. He is doing the thing he always does when something is slightly off; he gets softer. Shoulders drop. Voice drops. He leans in like he is letting me into

Sebastian's POV"She was staring at you, sir.""People stare, Lucas.""Not like this." He sets my coffee on the desk and doesn't leave. That alone tells me he has decided this matters more than my schedule. "She wasn't impressed. Wasn't nervous. She was watching you like she already knew something about you that you don't know yourself."I look up.Lucas is standing with his hands folded and his face carefully blank, the face he wears when he thinks he is telling me something I need to hear. In four years, I have learned that his instincts about people are rarely wrong.Almost."Where?" I ask."Coffee shop on Meridian. This morning. You walked past her table, and she looked up." He pauses. "Not at your name. Not at your suit. At you. Like she was reading something the rest of the room couldn't see."I pick up my coffee and say nothing.I remember the coffee shop. I walked through it this morning with my mind three meetings ahead and cataloged the room the way I always do: exits, faces

Sebastian's POV"Something caught your eye, Sebastian?" My uncle's voice reaches me a second after I start moving again.I do not look at him immediately. I keep my pace even. My face gives him nothing. But I know exactly what he is talking about. I stopped. For the smallest fraction of a second, I stopped in the middle of a room I have walked into a thousand times in a thousand different versions and looked at one woman like everything else had gone still around her."No," I say.Vincent studies me anyway. "You never stop walking for no reason." "Then I must have had one." He smiles at that, but it does not reach his eyes.I take the glass a waiter offers me and let the cold settle into my hand. Across the room, Damien Cross still has his hand at the small of Aurora Sinclair's back. Possessive. Calm on the surface. Too calm. A man is trying to look relaxed after watching another man look at what he considers his.It annoys me more than it should.Lucas appears at my elbow without sou

Aurora's POV"Who sent that?"Sebastian's voice is closer now. I did not hear him move, but he is right beside me, looking down at the phone still glowing in my hand.I lock the screen before he can see clearly."No one." "You went pale.""I didn't." "You're still pale."I look up at him and find his face closer than I expected. Close enough that I can see the small tension lines at the corners of his eyes. Close enough that stepping back would feel like an admission.So I don't step back."Do you always watch strangers this closely?" I ask."Only the ones who look like they just saw something that scared them." That lands somewhere uncomfortable in my chest. I slip the phone into my clutch and force my shoulders to relax. "I'm not scared." "Then why won't you show me the message?"Because the message is about you. Because whoever is watching me wants me near you and away from Damien. Because I don't know if that makes you safe or dangerous, and I cannot afford to guess wrong, "Becaus