REBORN TO REWRITE MY FATE

The white gown was the first thing she noticed.

Valerie stood in the middle of a room that smelled of fresh flowers and expensive perfume, her fingers clutching the silk fabric at her sides, her chest rising and falling too fast, too sharp. The ceiling above her was high and grand. Chandeliers dripped with crystal light. Laughter drifted in from somewhere beyond the double doors, warm and familiar, like something she had heard in another life.

Another life.

Her throat tightened.

She turned slowly, taking in the full-length mirror across the room, and the woman staring back at her made her breath catch. Her makeup was flawless. Her hair was pinned in soft curls that swept one shoulder. The gown she wore was floor-length ivory, hand-beaded at the bodice, the kind of dress a woman wore on the best day of her life.

She looked like a bride.

She looked like hethree,three years ago.

No.

Her knees buckled. She grabbed the edge of the vanity table and held on, her knuckles going white. The room tilted. Her mind reached for something solid, something real, and what it found instead was a prison cell. Cold concrete. The stench of mold and blood. A woman's boot connecting with her ribs so hard the crack echoed off the walls.

She had curled into herself on that floor. She had pressed her face against the ground and tasted tears,and tears and she had prayed,not for rescue, not for mercy, just for it to be over.

And then it was.

She remembered the moon. Half-full and pale through the cell window, the only beautiful thing in that entire wretched place. She remembered closing her eyes. She remembered the silence that came after, clean and absolute, and she remembered thinking, this is what peace feels like, and then she had asked the universe,begged it, with the last breath in her body for one more chance.

Give me one more chance. Let me go back. Let me burn every single one of them down.

The mirror stared back at her.

She was twenty-nine years old. She was in a bridal suite. Outside those doors, a wedding reception was in full swing, and she knew whose wedding it was.

Hers and Anthony's.

Her stomach lurched violently.

The door behind her burst open before she could move, and Anthony Lead walked in wearing a navy suit that had been tailored to make him look like the kind of man who deserved trust. He was handsome. She had once found him devastatingly so. Now the sight of him made her skin crawl straight off her bones.

"There you are." He crossed the room in four strides, his smile wide and easy and completely hollow. "Everyone's asking for you. Come on, the photographer wants the cake cutting shots before..."

She launched at him.

Not elegantly. Not with any plan.

Her hands found his collar and she yanked, and his eyes went wide with shock as she spun him hard into the vanity table. Bottles scattered. He yelped. She grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled, and three years of beatings, three years of slaps and bruises and silent suffering and six years in a prison cell she never deserved, all of it detonated behind her eyes like white fire.

"You liar," she hissed through her teeth, "you manipulative, pathetic, gold-digging liar..."

"Valerie.Valerie, what the..."

She slapped him.

Open-handed, square across the face, the sound ringing off the walls like a gunshot.

He recovered faster than she expected. His hand shot out, fingers wrapping around her wrist, and he twisted  and in the next second, she was being shoved backward, hard, and she collided with the wall and the air left her lungs in a rush.

Anthony's face had changed.

The polished groom was gone. Something uglier had surfaced, something she recognized with her whole body, the thing that had worn his face every day of their marriage while he raised his hand against her. His jaw was tight. His eyes were flat.

"Have you lost your mind?" he said, very quietly.

He stepped toward her.

An arm appeared from nowhere.

A hand closed around Anthony's wrist and wrenched it backward with calm, precise force, the kind that required no effort and made that fact perfectly clear. Anthony gasped. His knees dipped. The grip tightened one fraction more, and then he was turned, redirected, planted against the far wall like furniture being rearranged.

Valerie looked up.

The man holding Anthony's arm was tall. Dark suit, no tie, the top button of his shirt open. His face was sharp and composed and utterly unreadable, the kind of face that existed in gossip columns and business magazines and conversations Valerie had overheard at parties she was never supposed to be at.

He held Anthony pinned with one hand and did not look at him at all.

He looked at her.

"Are you hurt?" he asked.

His voice was even. Unhurried.

She stared at him.

She knew that face.

Adrian Lead.

The room beyond the doors erupted suddenly,heels clicking fast, voices overlapping, and then the doors swung open and they poured in. Anthony's mother in pearls and fury. A cluster of women Valerie recognized as the chairman's former companions. And behind them, moving slower, the chairman himself, silver-haired and granite-faced, filling the doorway like a verdict.

Valerie's eyes swept the room. These people were alive. All of them. Standing in front of her in designer clothes, breathing and flushed and very much not dead.

Her mouth opened.

Adrian released Anthony, stepped smoothly to her side, and said, low enough for only her to hear, "I don't know what happened here. But I'd recommend against continuing it."

He cupped her elbow lightly and steered her through the doors before anyone could speak.

The corridor outside was cool and quiet. He walked her to the far end, past a row of tall windows that framed the evening sky, and stopped.

Valerie pressed her back against the wall. Her chest heaved. Her hands were shaking, and she pressed them flat against her thighs and stared at the floor and tried to remember how to think.

"What is today's date?" she asked.

He looked at her.

A pause.

"June fifth."

"The year."

Another pause, this one longer.

"2024."

The words landed like stones dropped into still water, the ripples spreading out and out until they reached every edge of her. She pressed her eyes shut. The prison floor. The moon. The last tear she had ever cried.

She had come back.

She was really, truly back.

And this time, she was going to make every single one of them pay.