The bodyguard threw the heavy duffel bag into the trunk of the black Cadillac SUV. The canvas hit the metal floorboard with a loud, sickening thud.

Ara slid into the passenger seat. She pulled a slim More cigarette from her purse, lit it, and blew a stream of smoke against the windshield.

"Drive to the Hamptons estate," Ara ordered the driver. "Don't stop."

The SUV sped down Interstate 495 in the dead of night. Inside the trunk, the constant bouncing and swerving jolted a tiny fraction of consciousness back into Amelie's brain.

The air inside the bag was thick and suffocating. Amelie tried to thrash her legs, but the sedative kept her muscles paralyzed. The only sound she could make was a wet, ragged wheeze pushing through her teeth.

Two hours later, the tires crunched over gravel. The SUV pulled through the hidden back gates of the Pierce family's Hamptons estate, stopping far away from the main house, right next to the hunting dog kennels.

The trunk popped open. The bodyguard grabbed the handles of the duffel bag and dragged it out. The heavy canvas scraped violently against the sharp gravel driveway.

Ara stepped out of the car. The cold ocean wind whipped her hair across her face. She pinched her nose, disgusted by the foul, metallic stench of wet fur and raw meat coming from the kennels.

The bodyguard grabbed the zipper of the bag and yanked it open. The freezing night air hit Amelie's face. She gasped, her lungs expanding painfully as she fully woke up to the agony in her broken ribs.

The bodyguard reached in, grabbed her by the collar of her silk nightgown, and threw her onto the freezing mud in front of the cages. The filthy water soaked instantly into her clothes.

Inside the chain-link enclosures, three massive Presa Canario mastiffs began to bark. The sound was deafening. They threw their heavy bodies against the metal gates, making the steel rattle wildly.

Amelie blinked through the dim light of the wall sconce. She saw the dogs. Their eyes were wild, their jaws snapping at the air. Pure, primal terror shot through her nervous system, making her teeth chatter uncontrollably.

Ara walked up and stood over her, a cruel smile stretching across her face.

She pulled a folded piece of paper from her pocket and waved it in front of Amelie's face. "Your suicide note," Ara said. "You couldn't live with the shame of your affairs, so you threw yourself into the ocean. Tragic."

Amelie spat a mouthful of bloody saliva onto Ara's designer shoe. "You are a fake," Amelie croaked, her voice raw. "You steal everything because you are nothing."

The words hit a nerve. Ara's face twisted in fury. She reeled back and slapped Amelie across the face so hard it snapped Amelie's head to the side.

"Starting tomorrow, every single design sketch you ever drew belongs to me," Ara hissed, her face inches from Amelie's. "The entire 'Aura' brand will have my name on it."

Amelie closed her eyes. Hot tears mixed with the cold mud on her face. A hatred so deep and violent it felt like a physical weight settled into her chest.

Ara stepped backward, moving safely behind the secondary iron fence. She gave the bodyguard a sharp nod.

The bodyguard walked over to a plastic bucket. He pulled out a massive chunk of raw, bloody meat and threw it directly onto Amelie's chest.

The smell of fresh blood hit the dogs. Their barking turned into a frenzied, high-pitched shrieking.

Amelie dug her fingers into the mud, trying to drag her broken body away, but the sedative made her arms useless.

The bodyguard walked to the control panel on the wall. He grabbed the heavy metal lever and pulled it down.

The metal gates shrieked as they slid open. Three black blurs of muscle and teeth shot out of the cages.

Amelie's eyes widened in absolute horror as the massive jaws filled her vision.

The first dog slammed into her chest, the physical impact crushing the remaining air from her lungs.

Thick, razor-sharp teeth sank deep into the flesh of her arm, tearing through muscle and scraping against the bone. A pain so absolute it felt like a lightning strike exploded in her brain.

Amelie let out a blood-curdling scream, but the sound was instantly drowned out by the vicious snarling and tearing of the pack.

Ara stood safely behind the fence. She pulled out her phone, initiated a secure, untraceable live video call to Hubert, and turned the screen so he could watch the bloody massacre in real-time without leaving a recorded file.

Amelie's vision went completely red. As the physical agony peaked, her consciousness began to rip apart. In her final second of life, a dark, venomous vow locked into her dying brain: If I ever come back, I will make you drown in your own blood.

Her heart stopped. The darkness swallowed her whole, leaving only the sound of the dogs tearing through the night.

Amelie was falling through a void of absolute blackness. Suddenly, a violent sensation of suffocation grabbed her by the throat and yanked her upward.

She snapped her eyes open and sucked in a massive breath of air, her chest heaving as if she had just broken the surface of a frozen lake.

She instinctively grabbed her stomach and her arm, expecting to feel shredded flesh and exposed bone. Her hands met smooth skin, covered only by a few tender bruises.

Her vision slowly focused. She wasn't in the mud of the Hamptons. She was lying on a lumpy spring mattress that smelled heavily of mildew and cheap bleach.

A flickering fluorescent bulb buzzed above her head. Peeling floral wallpaper covered the walls. The heavy rumble of a New York subway train shook the floorboards.

Amelie rolled off the bed. Her legs wobbled, but she forced herself to stand. She stumbled into the cramped, filthy bathroom and gripped the edges of the cracked porcelain sink.

She looked up into the shattered mirror. The face staring back at her was young, pale, and strikingly beautiful, but it was not hers. Her pupils dilated in absolute shock.

A sudden, sharp spike of pain drove into her temples. Memories that didn't belong to her flooded her brain like an electric shock. She gripped her head and dropped to her knees on the cold tile.

She was in the body of a twenty-two-year-old girl named Gena Corbett.

The memories settled. Gena's adoptive parents had drugged her tonight. They sold her to a loan shark named Mitch Kowalski to pay off their gambling debts.

The cheap lock on the motel room door clicked loudly. A heavy, balding man in a cheap suit pushed the door open, reeking of stale whiskey and sweat. It was Mitch.

Mitch yanked at his tight tie, loosening it. His greasy eyes scanned the room and landed on Gena kneeling by the bathroom door. He licked his lips.

Amelie-now Gena-stood up slowly. The timid, terrified girl Mitch expected was gone. The eyes looking back at him were dead, cold, and filled with the absolute violence of a woman who had just been eaten alive.

Mitch laughed, a wet, ugly sound. He lunged forward, reaching out with thick hands to shove her onto the mattress.

Amelie's memories flashed-the expensive Krav Maga instructor she had secretly hired after Hubert's first violent outburst years ago. Muscle memory took over. Gena shifted her weight and sidestepped with desperate but practiced precision. Mitch's momentum carried him forward, and he crashed face-first into the dusty mattress.

He grunted, pushing himself up, his face red with sudden anger. He swung his arm backward, backhanding Gena across the face.

Gena's new body was still sluggish from the drugs her parents had given her. She couldn't duck in time. The heavy ring on Mitch's finger caught her cheek, splitting her lip. The taste of copper filled her mouth.

That single drop of blood ignited the dormant, raging hellfire inside her. Gena reached out and grabbed the heavy, thick glass ashtray sitting on the nightstand.

Mitch turned around and lunged at her again. Gena didn't step back. She swung the heavy glass ashtray with every ounce of strength in her body, smashing it directly into the center of Mitch's forehead.

The glass shattered. Mitch screamed, a high-pitched wail of pain. He stumbled backward, clutching his bleeding face, and crashed into the floor lamp, sending it toppling over.

Gena didn't hesitate. She stepped forward, grabbed his shoulders, and drove her knee upward, burying it deep into his groin.

Mitch collapsed to the floor like a sack of wet cement. He curled into a tight ball, wheezing and groaning, completely incapacitated.

Gena stepped over his twitching body. She reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a wad of twenty-dollar bills and a set of car keys.

She grabbed Gena's canvas tote bag from the chair, shoved the door open, and ran out into the pouring rain of Queens.

The freezing rain hit her face like tiny needles. Gena tilted her head back, opened her arms, and let the water wash over her. The physical sensation of the freezing rain proved she was alive. She had a body. She had a second chance.

She ran down the sidewalk for three blocks, her lungs burning. She ducked into a dark, narrow alleyway overflowing with garbage cans and pressed her back against the wet brick wall to catch her breath.

She repeated her new name in her head. Gena. She would use this body to tear the Pierce family down to the studs.

A sharp, rapid series of footsteps echoed from the deep end of the alley. Then, the distinct, muffled thwip-thwip of a silenced pistol firing.

Gena's muscles locked. She dropped into a crouch and scrambled behind the shadow of a massive green dumpster.

A tall, broad-shouldered silhouette stumbled around the corner of the alley. The man took two uneven steps and collapsed, splashing heavily into a deep puddle of dirty water less than six feet away from where Gena hid.

Gena held her breath. The faint orange glow of the streetlamp at the end of the alley illuminated the man lying in the puddle. He was wearing a bespoke Savile Row suit, but the fabric around his abdomen was soaked in a dark, spreading stain of blood.

The man grunted, rolling onto his side. He pushed his back against the brick wall, his chest heaving. His right hand gripped a black Glock pistol. His eyes darted around the shadows, sharp and wild like a cornered wolf.

The sound of leather shoes splashing in the puddles echoed from the street. Two men were talking in low, urgent voices, moving closer to the alley entrance.

The wounded man tried to raise his pistol, but his arm shook violently from blood loss. The heavy gun dipped toward the pavement.

Gena pressed herself flat against the dumpster. She wanted to stay out of it, but her eyes caught the glint of metal on the man's wrist. It was a limited-edition Patek Philippe watch. A watch that cost more than a house. Whoever this man was, he had serious money and power. He could be the exact weapon she needed against Hubert.

She pressed her back against the freezing metal of the dumpster, her mind violently flashing back to the agonizing pain of the dogs tearing into her flesh. A single, hot tear slid down her cheek, but she immediately wiped it away with the back of her bruised hand. Crying was for the weak. Amelie Pierce was dead, ripped apart in the mud. The woman breathing in this alley was Gena, a ghost resurrected solely for revenge. She needed power to crush Hubert and Ara. She looked at the bleeding billionaire. Gena made a split-second decision. She slid out from behind the dumpster, moving silently across the wet pavement. She dropped to her knees behind the man and clamped her hand hard over his mouth.

The man flinched violently. He swung the heavy grip of the pistol backward, aiming for her skull. Gena jerked her head back, feeling the wind of the metal pass an inch from her nose.

"Don't move if you want to live," Gena whispered directly into his ear.

The man froze. He turned his head slightly, his sharp eyes locking onto hers. He saw a soaking wet girl with cold, dead eyes. He slowly lowered the gun.

Gena grabbed him under the armpit. She gritted her teeth against his heavy weight and dragged him deeper into the narrow gap between the dumpster and the wall. She pulled a large, flattened cardboard box over them, plunging them into total darkness.

Footsteps crunched into the alley. The bright, blinding beams of tactical flashlights swept across the brick walls and the garbage cans.

The light passed over their cardboard shield twice. Gena was pressed flush against the man's chest. She could feel the rapid, heavy thud of his heartbeat against her collarbone.

A single drop of blood fell from the man's soaked shirt and hit the puddle below with a soft plink.

One of the flashlights stopped moving. The heavy footsteps started walking slowly toward the dumpster.

Gena's stomach tied itself into a knot. Her fingers tightened around the metal car keys in her pocket, preparing to stab for the eyes.

Suddenly, a feral cat shrieked. It launched itself off the top of the dumpster, knocking over a stack of empty glass bottles. The glass shattered loudly across the concrete.

The hitman cursed, startled by the noise. The flashlight beam swung away. "Nothing here, just trash. Let's check the next block," the man muttered. The footsteps faded away.

Gena waited until the street was completely silent before she pushed the wet cardboard off them. She let out a long, shaky breath, her skin covered in cold sweat.

The man leaned his head back against the brick wall. A cynical, lazy smirk touched his pale lips. "Thanks, stray cat," he rasped, his voice deep and gravelly.

Gena ignored his smirk. She reached directly into the inner breast pocket of his ruined suit jacket.

The man's hand shot out and clamped around her wrist like a steel vice. His grip was painfully strong despite his injury. His eyes turned instantly lethal. "What do you think you're doing?"

Gena stared at him, her face completely blank. She yanked her wrist free, reached back in, and pulled out his black leather wallet. She flipped it open and pulled out his New York driver's license.

The name printed on the plastic card hit her like a physical blow to the chest: Claudio Pierce.

Amelie's memories screamed in her head. Claudio was Hubert's uncle. He was the black sheep of the Pierce family, a notorious playboy, and the only person in the entire empire that Hubert genuinely feared.

Gena dug her fingernails so hard into her palms that they broke the skin. She forced the massive wave of shock and vicious joy down into her stomach. Fate hadn't just given her a second chance; it had dropped the perfect weapon right into her lap.

Claudio narrowed his eyes, tracking the micro-expressions on her face. "You know my name," he stated. It wasn't a question.

Gena kept her face perfectly smooth. She tossed the wallet onto his chest. "I know the Pierce family. Didn't expect to find the billionaire playboy bleeding out in a Queens garbage dump."

Claudio chuckled, wincing as the movement pulled his wound. He wasn't offended; he was intrigued by how calm she was.

"I saved your life," Gena said, her voice flat. "You owe me. I need a safe place to stay tonight."

Claudio opened his mouth to agree, but the loud, piercing wail of NYPD sirens erupted from the main street. The gunshots had finally drawn the cops.

Claudio's jaw clenched. "I can't be seen by the cops right now," he muttered, trying to push himself up.

Gena grabbed his arm, wrapping it over her shoulder. She hauled him to his feet. Together, they limped out of the shadows, moving toward the rusty fire escape at the far end of the alley before the red and blue lights could trap them.