Reborn to Reject the Billionaire Who Ruined Me

I didn't sleep. Around four in the morning I gave up and sat at the kitchen table with a pen and the back of an electric bill, and I wrote down everything I remembered.The contract. The house. The leak at his company, and the folder with my name on it. The cold bed. The floor.By sunrise the list covered both sides of the paper, and I still didn't know what to do with it.Adrian texted again at nine. Then at noon. His assistant called at two, a polite woman named Mrs. Lim, who said Mr. Cole would be sending a car for me at six-thirty. I told her I was sick. I coughed a little to make it sound true."I'll let him know," she said. She didn't sound surprised. She sounded like someone writing it down.At six-thirty the car came anyway. I watched it from the window, black and long, idling by the curb with its lights on. The driver sat there for twenty minutes. Then he left.I'd been so excited the first time. I had borrowed my neighbor's earrings. I remembered turning in front of the mirr

I didn't tell Nadia anything. I hugged her at the door and told her to text me when she got home. She said I was being weird. I said I hadn't slept.Then I locked the door and let my hands shake for a full minute.I couldn't confront her. Not yet. A few messages on a phone weren't proof. They were a sister who would say Vivian pushed her into it, and a cousin who cried better than I did. They'd had three years last time. This time I had them too.So I needed two things. Money, because bookkeeping for small shops wasn't going to carry me. And distance from Adrian Cole.Every plan I tried to make stopped at the same sentence. Does your chest still hurt. I didn't know what he was. I only knew I couldn't think with him in the room.That afternoon I opened my laptop and went through the job boards. Ten minutes in, I found it. Project Coordinator, Harlan Group. The salary was listed, and it was a good one. The office sat across the river from Cole Tower. Everyone in the city knew Cole Holdi

The fourteenth floor was quiet. Eight desks, three of them empty. Mine was the last in the row, right outside a frosted glass door with Adrian's shadow moving behind it.A beige folder sat in the middle of the desk, squared to the edges like someone had measured.I put my bag down and sat. I didn't touch it yet. I had seen a folder like this once, under bright courtroom lights, in my cousin's hands. It hadn't looked like much then either.I opened it.Bid documents first. Cole Holdings letterhead, a tender for the harbor warehouse contract, sixty pages of numbers. Behind them an access log. Behind that, one page headed Confidentiality Acknowledgement.At the bottom, a signature. Elena Brooks.My signature. The loop on the E, the lazy tail on the s. Perfect.I turned the page. Same signature. Next page, same. Fourteen pages, and every one of them carried my name, some with dates beside it in my handwriting. Dates when I'd been in a bakery, or on a bus, or crying in my apartment.I had

Nobody asked me a single question on the way back. Adrian steered me through the lobby with one hand at my elbow, and the guard stepped aside without a word. In the elevator he pressed fourteen and then stood against the far wall, as far from me as the box allowed.In his office he shut the door and turned the lock.I didn't sit. I'd decided in the elevator that I wasn't going to."Say it again," I said."Elena.""Not that. The other one."He looked at the floor. Then at me. "Wren."I had to swallow before I could speak. "My father called me that. He died when I was nine.""I know. You told me in the hospital, the night your mother had her surgery." He rubbed at the scrape on his hand like he'd forgotten it was there. "You said you used to sing in the school corridor so you wouldn't be scared. You said he hummed along from the end of the hall."I hadn't told a living person that in this life. I hadn't told anyone in either."So you remember," I said."All of it.""Since when?""The fo

I listened to it four times. By the fourth, I could hear the café behind them. A baby fussing, a spoon hitting the floor. I could hear Nadia stirring her tea while she talked about me. When I finally nodded, Adrian switched it off, slid it into the drawer, and turned the key. "I want a copy," I said. "I already made one. It's in an envelope by the door." "And the original?" "Two places. One is with my lawyer." He paused. "Not the company's lawyer. Mine." I almost smiled. He'd never told me he had one. "A recording isn't enough," I said. "Vivian will say it's fake. Nadia will cry and say she was joking. They're good at it." "I know. That's why I'm not done." He leaned against the desk, and for the first time I saw how tired he was. His collar was creased. There was a shadow along his jaw. "Fifteen percent of what, Wren? Somebody is paying them. If I can show where the money comes from, they can't call it a joke." "How long?" "Two or three days. My people are checking the tran