The elevator chimed and the doors slid open on the top floor. Dangelo forced himself to stand, his breathing ragged. He shoved the bloody pin back into his pocket.

He stumbled down the hallway and pushed into the presidential suite. He walked straight to the bed and sat on the edge, his eyes locked on Annabelle's pale face.

The suite doors banged open. The deputy rushed in, pulling a private trauma doctor behind him.

"Get away from her, sir, let him work on you," the deputy demanded, grabbing Dangelo's shoulder and pulling him back from the bed.

The doctor didn't wait for permission. He took a pair of trauma shears and cut Dangelo's ruined shirt straight down the middle, peeling the fabric back.

Annabelle floated above them. She looked down at his chest and a phantom wave of nausea hit her. His torso was a map of violence. Thick, jagged scar tissue covered his ribs, and right above his heart, a fresh wound was pumping dark blood.

The doctor pressed a thick gauze pad hard against the hole. "You shouldn't have exerted yourself. The physical trauma shifted the shrapnel fragments near your aortic valve."

The deputy stood by the window, his eyes red. He looked at Annabelle's body, his voice thick with anger. "If she hadn't opened her mouth back then, you never would have enlisted."

Annabelle's soul froze. A memory violently forced its way into her mind. She was sixteen, drunk at a prep school party, screaming at Dangelo in front of everyone. I despise heirs who only know how to spend money. I respect men who actually serve this country. You are nothing but a useless bully.

"You gave up the Ivy League," the deputy continued, his voice cracking. "You went to the SEALs. You took that blast in Fallujah to pull your team out, just to prove to a girl who hated you that you weren't worthless."

The truth was a corrosive acid pouring directly over Annabelle's brain. The shrapnel killing him right now was her fault.

She screamed. She threw her translucent body toward him, trying to wrap her arms around his bleeding chest, but she grasped nothing but empty air. The guilt was a physical crushing weight, flattening her.

"Shut your mouth," Dangelo snapped at the deputy, his voice tight with pain. "You never speak of that. If she knew, she would feel obligated to me."

He turned his head slightly. "Call the press. Release the obituary. State that the future matriarch of the Valencia family has passed."

The deputy stared at him in shock. "Sir, you were never engaged. The family elders will initiate a vote of no confidence. They will strip you of your shares."

Dangelo reached down, pulled the pistol from his thigh holster, and racked the slide. The metallic clack was deafening. "Let them try. Anyone who objects goes in the ground next to her."

He turned back to the bed. His hard eyes softened into something unbearably tender. He spoke to the empty air. "I can finally call you mine."

Annabelle let out a wail that tore at the very fabric of her existence. The world around her seemed to lose its color and substance, fading into a muted, echoing silence. The physical room dissolved from her awareness as the sheer gravity of her grief anchored her in place.

Time stopped. The doctor's hand, holding a fresh roll of bandages, froze mid-air. The blood dripping from Dangelo's chest hung suspended in space.

A terrifying pull, originating from a point of blinding white light, seized her soul, ripping her backward through time itself.

A severe sensation of falling crushed her lungs. A high-pitched ringing pierced her eardrums, drowning out her own screams until everything went black.

A sharp, chemical smell of rubbing alcohol punched her in the face.

Annabelle gasped, her eyes flying open. Her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird. She sucked in a massive breath of air. Real air.

Her vision blurred, then snapped into focus. She wasn't in the rotting apartment. She wasn't in the penthouse.

She was staring at the familiar, pale blue acoustic ceiling tiles of the St. Clair Prep School infirmary.

She shot up into a sitting position, throwing the thin white blanket off her legs. She looked down. She was wearing the pleated plaid skirt of the school uniform.

She raised her hands. The rough calluses, the splinter wound, the scars from years of poverty-they were gone. Her fingers were smooth, flawless, and manicured.

The young school nurse walked in holding a clipboard. "You had a severe panic attack right after leaving the principal's office, Annabelle. You were hyperventilating so hard you lost consciousness. We brought you here to calm down."

Annabelle whipped her head around. She stared at the digital calendar glowing red on the wall.

It was the exact date. The day after she had marched into the principal's office and handed over the security footage of Dangelo beating Axel in the locker room.

A violent mixture of pure ecstasy and sheer panic hit her bloodstream. She bit down hard on the inside of her cheek. The sharp tang of copper flooded her mouth. The pain was real. She was alive.

Annabelle threw her legs over the side of the bed. Her bare feet hit the freezing linoleum floor. She didn't bother looking for her shoes.

"Wait, you need to stay for observation-" the nurse started, reaching out to grab her arm.

Annabelle twisted her shoulder, dodging the nurse's hand. She grabbed her leather designer backpack from the bedside chair and sprinted out the door.

She burst into the main hallway. The bright California sunlight streamed through the massive skylights, blinding her for a second. Students in tailored uniforms were clustered by the lockers, laughing and talking about weekend yacht parties.

She slammed her back against a row of cold metal lockers, her chest heaving as she dragged the vibrant, expensive air into her lungs.

She caught her reflection in a small magnetic mirror stuck to a locker door. Her face was flushed with youth. The hollow, dead eyes of her past life were gone, replaced by a fierce, burning clarity.

Her brain rapidly processed the timeline. Yesterday, she had submitted the complaint. If history repeated itself, the school board would issue the expulsion warning to the Valencia family by 3:00 PM today.

And Dangelo, to protect her from the fallout of defending Axel, would accept the blame silently and take the transfer to the East Coast military academy. The path that led to his chest being ripped open by shrapnel.

Annabelle dug her manicured nails into her palms. The sharp pain grounded her. Not this time.

She shoved her feet into her loafers and power-walked down the corridor, heading straight for the principal's office to withdraw the letter.

As she rounded the corner near the science lab, a tall figure stepped directly into her path, blocking her way.

It was Axel. He wore the school blazer, looking perfectly groomed and effortlessly handsome.

The memory of his voice on the phone-You were just a naive ATM-exploded in her ears. Annabelle's pupils contracted into tiny black dots. Her stomach physically recoiled.

Axel flashed that gentle, practiced smile that used to make her heart race. "Anna, are you okay? I heard you passed out."

He reached out, his hand moving naturally to brush a strand of hair away from her forehead. The gesture was dripping with an assumed intimacy.

Bile rose in Annabelle's throat. She took a hard step back and violently slapped his hand away.

The sharp smack of skin on skin echoed loudly down the hallway. Several students walking by stopped dead in their tracks, staring at them.

Axel's smile froze. A micro-expression of pure, dark rage flashed in his eyes, but he instantly buried it under a mask of hurt confusion. He adjusted his shirt cuff, a nervous tell she now recognized perfectly.

"What did I do?" Axel asked, lowering his voice to sound like the wounded victim for the audience around them.

Annabelle stared at his flawless acting. A cold, creeping disgust washed over her.

Before she could speak, Fay pushed through the small crowd of onlookers. She immediately grabbed Annabelle's arm, her fingers digging in. "Anna, stop it. Why are you taking your bad mood out on Axel? He's been worried sick."

Annabelle looked at the girl who had worn her stolen wedding dress. The urge to wrap her hands around Fay's neck and squeeze until her eyes popped out was a physical itch in her fingers.

She kept her face entirely blank. She slowly pulled her arm out of Fay's grip. The memory of Fay wearing her stolen wedding dress, cooing over the phone as she bled to death on a rotting floor, flashed violently in her mind. That horrifying image instantly turned her simmering disgust into a cold, sharp-edged resolve. She looked at Fay with the dead, flat eyes of an absolute stranger.

Fay bit her lower lip, visibly unnerved by the absolute lack of warmth in Annabelle's stare. She took a step back, her hands dropping awkwardly to her sides.

Sensing the shift in dynamics, Axel quickly changed tactics. He unzipped his backpack and pulled out a thick, professionally bound document.

"Look, I didn't want to bother you while you were sick," Axel said, his voice dropping an octave into a persuasive, hypnotic rhythm. "But this is the business plan for the investment project we talked about. It's guaranteed returns."

Annabelle lowered her eyes. She read the bold title printed on the cover page.

Every muscle in her body locked up. The alarm bells in her head screamed.

In her previous life, Axel hadn't pitched this specific cloud-storage startup to her until their senior year. He was presenting it a full year ahead of schedule.

Annabelle snapped her head up. She locked her eyes onto Axel's, searching his face, hunting for the lie.

Axel held her gaze without flinching. But deep in his pupils, there was a calculating, predatory confidence that did not belong to a seventeen-year-old boy.