The Second Death Of Locke

Abductors bind me in a basement, subjecting me to the torment of dozens. Meanwhile, my husband, Evan Foster, dines by candlelight with his lover, Carmen Locke. My abductors grant me one chance to call for help, and I dial Evan's number. I'm certain he will come for me. I believe Evan would give his life for me, as he once vowed that his future held no meaning without me. Clinging to hope, I call the number etched in my heart. However, Evan scolds me for interrupting their date. "You think I'll come get you? Dream on. Maybe I'll bother to collect your body if you die out there." His words crush me, and I do die. Five days later, Evan stands before the autopsy table, grimacing at the mangled remains before him. Even as the police department's finest forensic expert, having dissected thousands of bodies, he condemns the killer's brutality. Yet, despite his cold dismissal of my desperate plea over the phone, he now wears a look of pity. Evan, if you knew these fragments belonged to me, would you still find me worthy of your compassion?

Faith Sartini should have died once, but fate gave her a second chance. She was murdered by the man she loved and the best friend she had trusted with everything. As her life spilled away, she died watching the one man who truly loved her weep over her bloodied hands — too late for either of them. Faith was reborn. This time she came with one goal — REVENGE. She believes she can take everything from her killers, make them taste the same betrayal they had fed her, and make them regret the day they chose each other over her. She had already paid the price for her blindness once. She would not pay it twice. And this time she wants to give her heart to the man who had cherished her in life and mourned her in death. The ruthless CEO who would never betray her. She had died once. But was it enough?

I never called my stepbrother, Victor Rossi, "brother." I loved him. In my previous life, I forced him to marry me, and we became the most infamously miserable couple in New Hampston's mafia circles. On Monday, he threw me into a lion's cage after starving the beast for three days. On Tuesday, I tied him to a spinning wheel and forced him to play Russian roulette. He hated me for tearing him away from the woman he loved. I hated him because we had grown up side by side, yet even after ten years of marriage, he could not forget the woman from the fishing village. Even in bed, wrapped around each other, we hurled the cruelest curses at one another. When the cruise ship went up in flames, Victor gave me his chance to live. He shoved me onto the last lifeboat, his voice gentler than it had ever been. "This life was exhausting. I don't want to fight with you anymore. Live well. In the next life, let me go." I watched the fire swallow him along with the ship. The deep sea buried everything. The light in my eyes went out with it. I threw myself into the freezing water and ended that absurd, painful life with my own hands. When I opened my eyes again, I returned to the moment I forced him to marry me. In this life, I would not destroy us both. As I watched him kneel before me, defiant even in the face of death, I did not drive away the woman he loved as I had before. "I will let you have her." Under Victor's stunned gaze, my eyes reddened as I spoke softly. "This time, I am the one who does not want you."

In the southern land of Clandestine Empire lies the city of lawlessness where the thirteen-year-old Dio is satisfied with his life. A warm home despite the chaotic city, a loving grandfather, and a humble living are all he needs in his life. However, everything changed when his grandfather died in a fire. He lost everything-- his family, his purpose, and his will to live. At a young age, he was lost with no hope for the future. “How about I help you find meaning in your life again?” It was an offer that he doesn’t even need to consider but because he wants to uphold his grandfather’s dying wish, Dio held the hand that was offered to him. It wasn’t salvation, just a temporary solution to push him to move forward. Little did he know that the hand that he took would lead him to know the reason why his grandfather had to die and how it was all connected to him. Will he be able to continue moving forward and face the future or give up on life and focus on revenge?

Nadia Reyes has died twelve times. Different centuries, different methods — same hands, same face, same cold eyes watching her take her final breath. At twenty-seven, armed with soul memories that science cannot explain and a rage that twelve lifetimes of dying has sharpened into something precise, she stops running. She spends eight months engineering an introduction to Dorian Ashvale — the man her soul recognizes as her killer — seduces him deliberately, and marries him with one goal: end the cycle on her terms before he ends it on his. Dorian doesn't remember any of it. He only knows that Nadia feels like a memory he was never supposed to have, and that marrying her is the first decision in his life that has ever felt completely, terrifyingly right. But as Nadia moves closer to executing her revenge, her forensic genealogy skills uncover something that fractures everything — Dorian's violence across lifetimes wasn't chosen. His soul has been hijacked by an ancient predatory entity that feeds on Nadia's interrupted purpose, growing stronger every time she dies before completing something she was always meant to finish. The monster she married didn't kill her. Something far older did — using his hands. As the entity begins to activate, triggering blackout episodes Dorian cannot control, Nadia faces the most dangerous realization of all thirteen lifetimes: she is falling in love with the man she planned to destroy. Book 1 ends when Dorian surfaces from his worst blackout yet to find Nadia bleeding — and looks at her with the eyes of a man who remembers nothing and is about to lose everything.

Three years ago, I was the most promising member of the Scientific Expedition Team. After entering Salakole, I was killed by my fiancé's true love, Vivian Fowler. She stole my supplies, scratched my face, and pushed me off the ship. I died with my second child in my belly. But when the rescue team came, Vivian said I had stolen her supplies and was going to flee. My fiancé, Winston Patton, wrote a report and erased me from the expedition team. From then on, I became a joke. All the people on the team looked down on me. Until three years later, someone discovered my long-frozen body.