Picture Perfect

On the seventh day after my daughter goes missing, I kidnap an entire kindergarten. I lock away all 27 students and two teachers in a classroom. I tell the police that if they can't find my daughter, I will kill a kid every 30 minutes. The principal falls to her knees, wailing and begging, "It's not my fault that your daughter is missing. Why should other children pay for it?" I glance at my watch. "29 minutes left. Find her." I know she's in this kindergarten.

When my husband told me to go bungee jumping, I did not scream. I did not cause a scene. I just nodded and said, "Okay." Keep in mind, I was eight months pregnant. I only agreed because I had already lived through this nightmare once before. In my past life, his precious childhood best friend, Lily Lane, had been feeling down. My husband, desperate to be her hero, told her he would make her one wish come true. Her wish? She wanted a partner to go bungee jumping with. My husband was terrified of heights, so he could not do it himself. Instead, he volunteered me. I refused on the spot, obviously. I told them I was not going to strap a harness over a baby bump and jump off a bridge. Lily got upset because I would not go. She went to a bar to drown her sorrows, and things went terribly wrong. Someone spiked her drink, and she was assaulted. She could not handle the trauma. She left a suicide note for my husband that read: "If I hadn't gone to the bar that night, would everything be different?" When my husband read that note, he snapped. He wrapped his hands around my throat. "Why didn't you just go with her?" he screamed, squeezing tighter. "Would it have killed you to just say yes?" He strangled me until everything went black. My unborn baby died with me. However, then, my eyes snapped open. I was back. I was standing right there in the moment my husband was asking me to jump.

I was the second princess of the Phoenix Court. And I fell in love with a lowly black serpent. In my past life, just to be with him, I purposely picked that black serpent during the Sacred Bonding ceremony when we each chose our companion beasts. After that, we spent every night together. I didn't care what the whole clan thought. I was determined to marry him. But on our wedding day, that same serpent I'd given my heart to drove an arrow straight through me, killing me while I was three months pregnant. As I lay dying, I heard him hiss bitterly in my ear, "If it weren't for you, I'd have been with Seraphine by now. You should've died a long time ago." That's when I finally got it. All he cared about was power. And he'd been in love with my older sister all along—the sister who was next in line for the Phoenix throne. When I opened my eyes again, we were back at that same moment—the Sacred Bonding ceremony. Before everyone, he dropped to his knees and confessed he loved my sister. He begged not to be bound to me. The whole clan looked at me with pity. But I only smiled and pointed to a small white serpent resting quietly off to the side. That black serpent thought clinging to my sister would make him powerful. What he didn't realize was that only the one I chose would become the true heir to the Phoenix Court.

The day I marry Navy Captain Dean Aldridge, I hear his stepsister Shirley Pierce's inner voice. "Diane is so beautiful and graceful. I wish I could be like her, but I'm nothing more than an unwanted burden in this family… "I really adore her, though. I saved up my allowance to buy her a bracelet as a wedding gift, but I'm afraid she'll think it's unlucky and refuse it." In my last life, those words had filled my heart with pity. I'd accepted the bracelet and even taken Shirley under my wing, teaching her to read and write. But not long after my wedding, my health began to deteriorate for no reason. It wasn't until I lay dying that I discovered the truth—the bracelet Shirley had given me was cursed, and she'd deliberately made me hear her inner voice. She'd long been in love with Dean and was determined to make the Aldridge family hers one day. Now, when I open my eyes again, I find myself back on my wedding day.

The daughter of my father's first love suffered from heatstroke because she was left in the car, so he tied me up in a fit of anger and locked me in the car boot. He looked at me with utter disgust and said, "I don't have a vicious daughter like you. Stay here and reflect on yourself." I begged him, apologized to him, and pleaded for him to let me out, but all I got in return was his ruthless order. "Unless she dies, no one is allowed to let her out." The car was parked in the garage. No one could hear me no matter how much I screamed for help. Seven days later, he finally remembered me and decided to let me out. However, he had no idea that I had already died in that trunk and could never wake up again.

In my previous life, my parents doted on my frail, sickly younger sister. For her sake, they chose a hawk beastman willing to settle in a human city as her husband. Me? They cast me into the deep sea, marrying me off to a giant shark beastman. When the apocalypse came and torrential rains drowned every human city, my parents and sister were left clinging to a rotting plank, adrift on the endless ocean. I couldn't bear to watch them die. With my giant shark husband, I dragged them down into the deep sea to safety. But resentment festered. Seeing me live comfortably while my shark beastman hunted day after day, my parents grew furious that my sister's life paled in comparison to mine. In their jealousy, they laced the fish we ate with poison and killed me. Now, given another chance at life, they've decided my sister should marry the giant shark beastman instead. My biased parents believe she will finally enjoy the blessings they once denied her. But what they don't know is this: after the cataclysm, fish become scarce. And a giant shark… does not survive on scraps. He needs flesh.

On the day the gauze was removed from my eyes, I joked that I was blind. "Don't be afraid if you can't see. I'll take care of you my entire life." My husband and best friend took care of me while I was in the hospital. They sincerely made that promise to me. However, when we got home, all three of us were on the same bed. My best friend rode on top of my husband breathlessly. They were caught up in their intimacy as they thought I could not see. My best friend was worried I would suspect something and spoke up to eliminate any suspicion. "Uhh… Summer, I'm just giving your husband a massage." I was so disgusted that I wanted to throw up, but I held myself back. Once they were done, I was about to find an excuse to leave the room when my five-year-old suddenly ran in. "I miss you so much, Mom!" Hearing that warmed my heart, and I opened my arms to hug him, but he ran past me and lay down next to my best friend instead. The 'happy family of three' were all smiles and threw me looks of disgust. I could no longer tolerate this. When I called my lawyer, I told him to bring me the divorce papers. If they wanted to become a family so badly, I would make their wish come true. I just did not know if my best friend could afford to earn a decent enough income to take care of my useless husband and son.

When my best friend, Tricia Tate, finds out I have secretly switched my husband's used rubber with her father-in-law's, she has a full-on meltdown right then and there. In my last life. Tricia had been abused by her husband and asked to stay at my place for a while. I felt sorry for her and agreed to let her stay temporarily. But just two weeks later, she unexpectedly found out she was pregnant. I was about to ask her what had happened when her husband suddenly showed up and broke my husband's leg before dragging my whole family into court. In court, Tricia sobbed uncontrollably, accusing my husband, Jayden Lowe, of being a predator and claiming he had assaulted her while she was living with us. She said I didn't just ignore it but helped him carry it out. Jayden and I denied everything in court, but she pulled out an amniocentesis report, proving that the baby was indeed Jayden's. The internet exploded with hate against us, and the court sentenced both of us to prison, ordering us to pay her ten million in emotional damages. In the end, Jayden and I went to jail, while Tricia took that ten million, aborted the baby, and lived happily ever after with her husband. When I open my eyes again, I am back to the very day Tricia came to stay at my house.

On my 50th wedding anniversary, I took my worn, crumbling marriage certificate to City Hall to renew it. The clerk glanced at it—and froze. “This certificate is fake. Our records show you’ve never been married.” I stared. “Impossible. I’ve been married to Damien Slater for fifty years.” The clerk pulled up his file. “Well…Yes, Mr. Slater is married—but his wife’s name is Vanessa Grant.” Vanessa. His widowed sister-in-law. A military doctor who’d spent decades living among the troops. My hands shook as I returned home and confronted Damien. He didn’t even try to deny it. “I’ve treated you well all these years. Isn’t that enough? Vanessa is my true love. I only ever wanted her—our children, our life.” My son counseled me and said, “To spare your feelings, my parents kept it a secret their whole lives. You’re getting old now. What more do you want?” Only then did I learn the truth. The child I had raised with my own hands was never mine by blood. Decades ago, Vanessa and I gave birth on the same day. To ensure her child would grow up with intellect, privilege, and a future that I could provide, Damien switched our children. My own son? Damien drowned him in the pond the moment he drew breath. And I—fool that I was—raised Vanessa’s boy as my own. I even got him all the way to Claremont University. The truth broke me, and I collapsed. When I opened my eyes again—I was back. Back to the day I went into labor.

In my previous life, I was eight months pregnant when my mother-in-law and husband forcibly dragged me to grab decorative gift boxes from the Christmas tree. I told them there was nothing inside, but my mother-in-law slapped me across the face while my husband pulled me into the crowd. A stampede broke out. They clutched their gift boxes and fled to save themselves, while my child and I were trampled to death. They eagerly tore open all the gift boxes with high hopes, only to find exactly nothing, just like I'd warned them. But as I lay dying, I noticed something in the final gift box. A Black Widow spider with an hourglass pattern on its belly crawled onto my mother-in-law's hand. This spider carries deadly venom. Anyone bitten either dies or suffers permanent disability. When I open my eyes again, I'm back on Christmas Day. This time, watching my mother-in-law and husband gear up to fight over those Christmas gift boxes, I won't try to stop them!