District attorney candidate Liam’s televised debate was a nationally broadcast disaster. He held up a teddy bear, his voice thick with emotion as he tried to speak for a victim, only for the moderator to point out, live on air, that the victim’s name on the bear was misspelled. The public reaction was instantaneous and brutal. Everyone was laughing at him, calling him a fake, a performative clown who couldn’t even get the details right. And I, the chief strategist of his campaign, watched it all unfold from the backstage monitor without saying a word. Because this was my second time living this day. In my last life, I did everything I could to stop this farce from ever happening, to save his political career. And what did I get for it? When a much larger campaign finance scandal broke later, he didn’t hesitate to throw me to the wolves, letting me take the fall to protect himself and his lover, Chloe. “Ava, you owed her this,” he’d said, his voice flat ......
