The Debt of A Lifetime

Moonlight leaked through the high, narrow window like a blade of silver, slicing the darkness just enough to reveal the man standing before her. The pale glow carved along the strong lines of his face, catching on the austere cut of his cheekbones and the subtle tension in his jaw. But it was his eyes—those dark, unyielding eyes—that halted the breath in Aria Vale’s lungs. They were fixed on her with a heat that felt both familiar and foreign, as if he were seeing a memory overlaid atop her living form.

Damian Cross.

A name that once meant salvation, destruction, and everything in between.

Once, in a life she had clawed her way out of only to be dropped into again, she had been stranded on his private island—Celeste Monroe’s parting cruelty to a girl she despised. And there, Aria had learned that Damian was nothing like the monstrous gossip that shadowed his empire. He was dangerous, yes, but not in the ways she had feared. His danger lay in how effortlessly he drew the world toward him, how impossibly magnetic he was behind that aristocratic reserve.

Later, when she became his bride, heir to heir, he had adorned her in jewels and silk so fine they felt like a second skin. She had mistaken that tenderness as possession, proof that he had coerced her family or twisted her fate. Under Liana Vale and Victor Loan’s manipulation, she had believed the worst. And so she had repaid his devotion with treachery—leaking his secrets, undermining his holdings, delivering him a glass of poison with hands that shook from fear instead of guilt.

The memory struck her now with renewed violence, lodging beneath her ribs like sharpened bone.

Yet here Damian stood again—alive, close enough that she could trace every shadow that moonlight painted across his skin. Her fingers brushed the warmth of him as if confirming he was more than a ghost of regret.

She had waited lifetimes for this moment.

But this Aria was not the naïve girl who had died in his arms. She saw things more clearly now, especially the faint tremor in his vision. His pupils were blown wide, unfocused—not with desire but with the unmistakable signature of an industrial-grade sedative. Someone had dosed him, heavily.

So why had he come to her?

His hand rose, as confident as ever, and cupped her jaw. The touch stole the air from her body. Then his mouth found hers—heat, pressure, a collision of longing and something far more desperate. For a heartbeat, she leaned into it, letting the ghost of her past self breathe through her.

But when he pulled back, the look in his eyes seared through her defenses. She could feel the promise there, the pull she had once surrendered to without resistance. He had owned too much of her for too long.

Yet the Vale Estate was full of listening walls, sharp-eared staff, and unseen traps. One whisper, one misstep, and Damian’s reputation—already precarious—could fracture. His future as head of the Cross Consortium depended on maintaining a façade she could not afford to shatter.

“D-don’t…” Aria tried, but the plea trembled weakly. Damian’s fingers tightened around her wrists, not cruel but unyielding, his strength amplified by whatever drug coursed through his veins.

Pain flashed white behind her eyes as his grip jolted something deep inside her. Tears broke free, unbidden and hot. Above her, Damian’s breath shuddered out, his voice roughened to gravel as he whispered a name she had never heard from him.

“Mira… finally mine.”

Her heartbeat faltered.

Mira?

Men only cry out names like that when they are drowning in love.

And suddenly the world shifted beneath her.

The timeline had changed. The version of him who had loved her—singularly, fiercely—was gone. In this life his heart belonged to someone else, someone he mistook her for in the haze of drugs and memory.

Finally, she understood their wedding night: his distance, his hesitation, the way he had traced her features with reverent confusion whispering, “It’s you, isn’t it?”

But it had never been her.

Just a reflection. A substitute.

A placeholder for a woman she had never met.

The tiny flame of hope she had carried into this life flickered once—then died. She folded inward, clutching her palms until her nails stung. Only when Damian’s body went limp with exhaustion did she slip free. With swift precision, silver needles glinted between her fingers as she struck pressure points to ease the drug’s toll.

Whoever Mira was no longer mattered.

Debts from their last life still bound her, and she would repay every one.

By dawn, Damian would walk into his boardroom immaculate, his strength restored only because she poured hers into him. And as the room dimmed, Aria held onto a single vow:

Whatever I owed you before, I will repay in full—no matter what I must sacrifice.