While I was unconscious, I spent thirty years watching the complete and utter ruin of my life. I saw how Jackson, the husband I had loved for ten years, took his vicious revenge on me for refusing to accept his illegitimate child. I saw how my family’s company crumbled under the weight of his influence and the old-money power behind him. I saw how my best friend, Chloe, tried to save me from him, only to have her leg mauled by his Dobermans, leaving her crippled for life. And finally, I saw myself, committed to a psychiatric hospital by his own hand, destined to spend the rest of my life in endless darkness. Then I woke up. I had returned to the moments after the car accident, before any of the tragedies began. So when my dearest friend Chloe sent me photos of the secret baptism Jackson had arranged for his illegitimate child, I smiled. Everything from the nightmare was coming true. Good. I rushed to the Devereaux family’s private chapel. When my husband, Jackson, saw me, his face went livid. He grabbed me and dragged me into a corner, hissing, “Ava! What the hell are you doing? If you make a scene, you’ll humiliate us all.” His mistress, Savannah-Claire, clutched the baby to her chest, tears streaming down her face as if she were the victim. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Devereaux…” His parents stepped forward to smooth things over. “Ava, you must be magnanimous. The Devereaux family needs an heir.” I looked at the familiar scene playing out before me, and not a single ripple of emotion stirred within me. In my last life, for the sake of the ridiculous “dignity” Jackson was so obsessed with, I swallowed my anger and lost everything. Not this time. Smiling, I took the gift I had prepared from my bag: an heirloom silver rattle from the Devereaux family. “Congratulations to the newest member of the Devereaux family.” I presented the gift myself, offering impeccable blessings. Under everyone’s shocked gaze, I turned with grace and walked away for good. In the car, Chloe was practically losing her mind. “What is wrong with you? That’s Jackson! You used to…” “The old Ava is dead,” I interrupted. She didn’t understand. It wasn’t that I didn’t hate him. It was that I had already seen the answer key, and I had no interest in walking that same doomed path again. The woman who made a scene, who fell apart, who ultimately destroyed everything—that was the me from my last life. In this life, all I wanted was to make them pay. I took out my phone. My fingertips were cold, but strangely steady. I found the contact for the “new money” tycoon who, in the nightmare, had been the only one to extend a hand to me: Ethan Blackwood. I typed the message and sent it. [In seven days, I’ll be single again. Marry me, and I’ll help you burn the Devereaux family to ash.] … My phone vibrated in my palm. I had just parked on the private drive of the Devereaux estate, the lane shaded by century-old oaks, when the reply came. [Seven days. At the law firm.] Short. Direct. Just like Ethan Blackwood himself. I put my phone away, opened the car door, and stepped into the gilded cage where I had lived for five years as Mrs. Devereaux. On the wall in the center of the living room hung the enormous oil portrait we had commissioned for our wedding. In the painting, I wore an antique lace wedding dress, my smile bright and docile as I leaned against Jackson. He wore a white suit, handsome and confident—the Golden Boy of the South, as all of Charleston knew him. We used to be that. If not for the car accident, if I hadn’t been forced to watch that thirty-year preview of my own tragedy, perhaps this painting, and the last vestiges of warmth in our relationship, would still have the power to hurt me. But now, it just looked like an exquisite obituary. “Martha,” I said, my voice quiet but firm enough to make the old housekeeper stop polishing the silve......
