The Uber driver hesitated at the wrought-iron gates of the Meyers estate in East Hampton.

"You on the list, miss?"

"I'm the Chief of Staff," Anaya said, flashing an old ID she hadn't turned in. "Open it."

The gate swung open.

The party was in full swing. The bass of the house music thumped against the car windows. White tents, champagne towers, and a sea of people in linen and silk.

Anaya got out. She kept her sunglasses on. She wasn't here to socialize. She moved through the crowd like a ghost, heading toward the guest cottage.

"Well, look who decided to show up."

Anaya stopped.

Adele Townsend stood on the slate patio overlooking the infinity pool. She was holding a flute of champagne, surrounded by her court of socialites. She was wearing a white bikini and a sheer cover-up, looking every inch the future Mrs. Meyers.

Anaya tried to step around her. "Move, Adele."

Adele stepped into her path. "Did you come to beg for your job back? Or did you come to apologize for that little scene in the office?"

The music seemed to dip. People turned to watch. This was the entertainment. The heiress vs. the help.

Barrett was near the bar, talking to a group of investors. He turned, his eyes locking onto Anaya. He started walking toward them.

Adele leaned in close, her voice dropping to a venomous whisper. "You know, Barrett told me about your father. The gambler. The drunk. We all know you're just a gold digger, Anaya. You spread your legs for the boss hoping for a payout, and now you're mad the contract is terminated."

The rage that hit Anaya was cold. Absolute zero.

In her past life, she would have cried. She would have run away, confirming every rumor.

Not today.

Anaya looked at Adele's feet. She was standing on the wet slate, right at the edge of the pool, in four-inch wedges.

Physics.

Anaya didn't say a word. She simply reached out, placed her palm flat against Adele's shoulder, and shoved.

It wasn't a playful push. It was a solid, forceful thrust.

Adele's eyes went wide. Her arms windmilled.

Splash!

The sound was incredibly satisfying. Water sprayed over the expensive guests. The music cut out abruptly.

Adele surfaced, sputtering. Her hair extensions were plastered to her face, her mascara running instantly. She looked like a drowned rat.

"You bitch!" she screamed, thrashing in the water.

Barrett reached the edge of the pool. He looked from Adele to Anaya, his face a mixture of shock and fury. He didn't jump in immediately; he just stared at Anaya.

"Have you lost your mind?" he roared.

Anaya stood on the edge, looking down at them. She felt ten feet tall.

"No," she said calmly. "I found it."

She reached into her purse. She pulled out a piece of paper. It was a formal, printed resignation letter. She had folded it into a sharp paper airplane.

She flicked her wrist.

The paper plane glided through the air, looping once before landing softly on the surface of the pool, bobbing right in front of Barrett's face.

"Consider that my formal notice," she said. "We're done, Barrett. In every sense of the word."

She turned her back on them.

A hush had fallen over the party. She could feel a hundred pairs of eyes on her back, but she didn't care.

She walked to the guest cottage, keyed in the code, and opened the safe. Her passport. A stack of cash. She shoved them into her bag.

She walked out the back gate, where her Uber was waiting.

As the car pulled away, she didn't look back at the mansion. She didn't look back at the chaos she had caused. She looked forward.

One bridge burned. One to go.

The smell hit her the moment she opened the front door of the row house in Astoria. Stale cigarette smoke, old frying oil, and despair.

"You're back."

Brenda, her stepmother, didn't look up from the TV. She was painting her toenails on the coffee table. "Did you bring the money? Your dad owes Tony three grand."

Tiffany, her stepsister, was lounging on the sofa, scrolling on her phone. She eyed Anaya's Balenciaga bag with naked envy. "Is that new? Can I have it?"

Anaya walked past them, her heels clicking on the linoleum. She went to the back room.

Her father, Earl, was passed out on the recliner. The TV was blaring a horse racing channel. He looked old, broken, and pathetic.

Anaya felt a pang of pity, but she strangled it. Pity was what had kept her tethered to this sinking ship for a decade. Pity was why she had almost been assaulted by a loan shark in her last life, trying to pay off Earl's debts.

She walked back to the living room.

Brenda stood up, blocking her path. She held out a greasy business card. "Tony said if you go to dinner with him, he might waive the interest. He likes you, Anaya. You should be nice to him."

Anaya took the card. She looked at it. Tony's Auto Repair & Loans.

She remembered the dinner. She remembered Tony's hands under the table. She remembered running out into the rain, sobbing.

She ripped the card in half. Then in quarters. She let the pieces flutter to the floor.

"Hey!" Brenda screeched. "You ungrateful little-"

Anaya slammed a folder onto the coffee table. The sound made Tiffany jump.

"This is the deed transfer," Anaya said, her voice cutting through the room like a knife. "I am signing over my half of the house to you. It's worth two hundred thousand dollars in equity."

Brenda's eyes widened. Greed instantly replaced anger. "You... you're giving us the house?"

"In exchange for this." Anaya pulled out a second document. Emancipation and Severance of Familial Ties. It wasn't a standard legal form, but it was binding if notarized. "And a promise that you never contact me again."

"Why would we sign that?" Tiffany sneered. "We can just take the house and still call you for money."

Anaya pulled out her phone. She tapped the screen and played a recording.

It was Brenda's voice. "...yeah, just forge Earl's signature on the insurance policy. If he drinks himself to death, we get double indemnity."

Brenda's face went white.

Anaya had recorded it years ago-or rather, she would have recorded it in the future. But in this timeline, she knew exactly where Brenda kept her diary detailing the scheme. She had snapped photos of the pages before coming downstairs.

"I have photos of your diary, Brenda," Anaya lied smoothly, bluffing with the truth of the future. "Sign the paper. Or I go to the cops for conspiracy to commit insurance fraud."

Earl stirred in the other room. "Anaya? Is that my girl? Do you have twenty bucks?"

Anaya didn't look toward his voice. That part of her was dead.

Brenda snatched the pen. Her hands were shaking. She signed the document.

Anaya took the paper, checked the signature, and put it in her bag.

"Goodbye, Brenda," she said. "Enjoy the house. The bank is foreclosing in three months anyway."

She walked out.

"You bitch!" Brenda screamed after her.

Anaya stepped out onto the sidewalk. The Queens air felt lighter.

She got back into the waiting taxi. "New Jersey," she told the driver. "Nana Rose's house."

As the car crossed the bridge, her phone buzzed. A notification from her banking app.

ALERT: Your secondary credit card ending in 4490 has been frozen by the primary account holder.

Barrett. He was cutting off her money. He thought that would bring her crawling back.

Anaya reached into her wallet. She pulled out the black Amex Centurion card. It was heavy, made of titanium.

She rolled down the window. The wind whipped her hair. Below, the East River churned, dark and murky.

She flicked the card. It spun in the air, catching the last rays of the sun, before disappearing into the water. He thinks this is his power over me, she thought with cold satisfaction. He has no idea about the crypto wallet, about the knowledge I hold. This card isn't a lifeline; it's a leash. And I'm cutting it myself.

She had her own money now. She had the knowledge of the next three years of market trends. She didn't need his.

She needed to disappear.

Monday morning at Meyers Media was a catastrophe.

"Anaya!" Barrett yelled, staring at the empty desk outside his office.

Silence answered him.

A terrified temp assistant hurried in, spilling coffee on the saucer. "Sir? I... I don't know where the files are."

Barrett swept the cup off his desk. It shattered against the wall.

"Get out!"

The temp fled.

Barrett ran a hand through his hair. He was unraveling. The office was in chaos. The Townsend merger was stalling because the due diligence team had found "irregularities" in the logistics subsidiary-exactly what Anaya had warned him about.

How did she know?

The door opened. His PR director, Marcus, walked in, looking pale.

"Boss, we have a problem. The video from the Hamptons. It's on TMZ."

Barrett stared at the tablet Marcus handed him. There it was. Anaya, looking like a vengeful goddess in a summer dress, shoving Adele into the pool. The paper airplane landing.

The comments were brutal. But not for Anaya.

"Finally someone pushed that plastic doll."

"Who is the girl in the dress? She's iconic."

"Townsend's lawyers want a statement," Marcus said. "They drafted this. It condemns Anaya as a disgruntled, violent ex-employee."

Barrett looked at the draft. It called Anaya "unstable" and "jealous."

He picked up his pen. He should sign it. It was the smart business move.

But he remembered the look in Anaya's eyes at the pool. It wasn't jealousy. It was indifference.

He threw the pen down. "Bury it. No statement."

"But sir-"

"I said bury it!"

That night, Barrett drove his Aston Martin too fast on the LIE. The rain was coming down in sheets, mirroring the storm inside his head.

He reached for his phone to call Anaya again. He needed to hear her voice. He needed to yell at her, or maybe beg her. He didn't know which.

The car hydroplaned.

The world spun. Metal screeched against concrete. The airbag deployed with a punch to his face that knocked him into darkness.

In a cozy kitchen in New Jersey, Anaya was kneading dough. Nana Rose sat in her rocking chair, knitting.

"You okay, child?" Nana asked.

"I'm fine, Nana."

Anaya's phone rang. A strange number.

She answered. "Hello?"

"Ms. Rowe? This is the OnStar emergency service. We have a crash alert for a vehicle registered to Barrett Meyers. You are listed as the primary emergency contact."

Anaya's hands paused in the flour. She remembered the day she'd set that up. Barrett had tossed her the keys and said, "Handle this," too important to fill out his own paperwork. He never would have thought to change it. He never thought she would leave.

In her past life, she would have been in the car. Or she would have been rushing to the hospital, sobbing, holding his hand while he yelled at her for his own reckless driving.

She looked at the flour on her fingers.

"Is he alive?" she asked.

"The paramedics are on scene. He is conscious but disoriented."

"Good," Anaya said. "You have the wrong number."

"Ma'am? The system says-"

"His fiancée is Adele Townsend. Call her. And remove my number from your database."

She hung up.

She tapped the screen and blocked the number. Then she went back to the dough. She pressed her palms into it, folding it over, burying the past.

Barrett woke up in the ER. His head throbbed.

"Anaya?" he croaked.

His assistant, Marcus, was standing by the bed. He looked uncomfortable.

"Sir... Ms. Rowe... we called her."

"Where is she?" Barrett tried to sit up.

"She said to call Ms. Townsend. She hung up on the operator."

Barrett froze. The pain in his head was nothing compared to the hollow ache in his chest. She didn't come. She didn't care.

The door flew open. Adele rushed in, followed by a photographer.

"Oh, my poor darling!" Adele cried, posing perfectly by the bedside. "Did you get the shot?" she hissed at the photographer.

Barrett looked at Adele. He looked at the camera lens.

Suddenly, a vision flashed in his mind. A cold, gray cell. Anaya, curling on a cot, alone. Dying alone.

It was so vivid, so real, it made him nauseous.

He pulled his hand away from Adele.

"Get out," he whispered.