I have been reborn.

The first thing I did in my new life was walk into my fiancé’s CEO inauguration party and break off our engagement in front of all of New York's high society.

In my last life, he did it all for Sloane, his childhood sweetheart. He publicly declared I had a severe mental illness, branded me as paranoid and jealous, and claimed I reeked of a cheap perfume that suffocated him.

For Sloane, his one true love, he had me committed to a private sanatorium. I was broken by a cocktail of drugs and psychological abuse until, with my body and mind shattered, my heart finally gave out.

In this life, when he frowned and told me to get out of his sight, I didn't shed a single tear. I just turned and strode away.

He said my presence made Sloane unhappy, so I moved to a small cottage by the sea.

He said he never wanted to see me again, so I submitted a transfer request and went to the West Coast branch.

I flourished in my new life in California and met a mysterious and powerful tech mogul.

The moment we appeared together, hand in hand, Caleb Hawthorne completely unraveled.

He saw the ring from another man on my finger, and his sanity finally snapped.

He blocked my path, his chest heaving as he fought to contain his rage.

"Emily, take that damn ring off your hand."

I smiled and took a step back. "Didn't you used to despise me?"

"And now that I belong to someone else, I'm suddenly a prize worth fighting for?"

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1

Staring at the stark "Invitation Only" sign outside the Waldorf Astoria's ballroom, I let out a long, slow breath of relief.

At this very moment, my so-called fiancé was painting me as just another gold digger, humiliating me in front of everyone.

The socialites around me cast looks of mockery or pity, but what none of them knew was that I was fucking ecstatic. I had been reborn.

I had returned to the day of my fated fiancé Caleb Hawthorne's CEO inauguration party.

To everyone else, I was the ungrateful, clingy orphan girl.

In every way that mattered—family, background, status—Caleb Hawthorne and I were from different worlds.

He was the heir to the old-money Hawthorne Group, New York royalty. I was the orphan his parents had adopted out of charity, a girl with no name and no connections.

When our families arranged our engagement on my eighteenth birthday, I was foolish enough to think it meant forever.

Everyone pitied Caleb Hawthorne, believing fate had played a cruel joke on him.

He thought so, too.

So on the day of his inauguration party, he put up that sign and locked me out, leaving me stranded in a designer gown instead of standing by his side.

"Emily, we're not trying to make things difficult for you. These are Mr. Hawthorne's orders."

"You know what today is. Miss Sloane is inside. You going in will only make everyone uncomfortable."

Caleb’s most loyal executive assistant, Mark, blocked the entrance, his expression like stone as he delivered the verdict.

On either side, security guards formed a defensive line, a clear display of Caleb’s power.

This whole fortress of security was built just to keep me—his supposedly harmless fiancée—out.

Everyone knew Caleb Hawthorne's hatred for me was bone-deep. So deep that he claimed I reeked of cheap perfume.

In my last life, I hadn't been able to enter the party either.

Like an abandoned puppy, I waited for hours, from daylight into the cold night, desperate for the slightest scrap of affection from my fiancé.

Eventually, I collapsed from a fever in the cold New York autumn rain, the illness settling into my lungs and nearly turning to pneumonia.

When my adoptive parents, Richard and Eleanor, found out, they berated Caleb and tried to push the wedding forward.

The day before the wedding, Caleb's first love, Sloane, suddenly collapsed from a "severe peanut allergy."

Caleb and his inner circle immediately pinned the blame on me, claiming I’d tampered with her food out of jealousy.

Caleb wanted revenge for his beloved Sloane.

He used his family's power to crush me, cut off all my contact with the outside world, and threw me into a private sanatorium that reeked of disinfectant.

I begged him countless times to break the engagement and let me go. Each time, he refused.

Caleb had roared that if his family was using our engagement to chain him, then I would be the one to suffer the consequences.

I endured that torment for five long years—despised by my fiancé as drugs eroded my body and mind.

In the end, my sanity broke. My heart gave out—a final, merciful escape—and I died.

The funny thing was, in the last moments of my life, as my consciousness faded to nothing, I saw Sloane.

She suffered no after-effects from any allergy; instead, she was radiant, glowing on Caleb's arm as his new partner.

She was never allergic. It was just some plant extract she used to frame me.

Their love story was hailed as a triumph of true love breaking free from the shackles of family obligation.

From beginning to end, I was just the villain obstructing their romance.

And this life?

I'm going to live well. I'm going to stay far, far away from Caleb Hawthorne. I’m going to find my freedom on the coast of California.

Under the weight of dozens of shocked stares, I turned and walked away. No hesitation. No regrets.

My first act in this new life was supposed to be severing my engagement to Caleb Hawthorne at his high-profile inauguration party.

But I couldn't get into the ballroom. I would have to find another opportunity.

Back at the Hawthorne estate, I took off the blue dress I had specifically chosen to match the color of Caleb's eyes.

Everyone in New York’s high society knew I was Caleb Hawthorne’s pathetic little shadow.

When it came to anything concerning Caleb, I was always the first to notice, the first to give without expecting anything in return.

I obsessed over every tiny detail of his life, all in the desperate hope he might spare me a single glance.

Caleb had complained more than once about how tiring it was to manage the group, saying he wanted to go to the mountains in Aspen to ski and relax.

So, coordinating with his schedule, I secretly arranged the entire ski trip to Aspen, including the top-tier resort.

He’d once mentioned the snow there was the purest, the best for clearing his head.

But in my past life, Caleb never went to Aspen with me at all.

He chose to go on vacation with Sloane to an island in the South of France.

I was ordered to stay behind and sort through old family documents.

That night, I slipped on a ladder in the archives and broke my leg.

I spent two months in a private hospital room. When he returned, he just complained that I smelled of medicine.

That feeling—of your life plunging into hell while the man you're supposed to marry looks at you with utter disgust—I would never experience it again.

Getting away from Caleb Hawthorne was the first step.

I packed quickly, taking only my ID and a few changes of clothes, ready to head downstairs.

The door burst open and Caleb stormed in, still in his black tailored suit and reeking of whiskey.

Seeing me with a suitcase, he sneered. He moved with startling speed, lunging forward to snatch the suitcase from my hand and hurl it against the wall.

The crash echoed through the room. The suitcase cracked open. Clothes scattered everywhere.

I frowned. "Caleb, what are you doing?"

"Emily, I should be asking what you're doing!"

"What are you, twelve? Still running away from home?"

"What's next? A hunger strike? Or hurting yourself to threaten me?"

Caleb's breathing was ragged, his golden eyes filled with disgust as he hurled accusations at me.

"Emily, you're not a child anymore. Stop thinking you can manipulate me into accepting you by threatening to leave!"

I stared at my shattered luggage on the floor. The last ripple of emotion in my heart stilled.

"Who told you I was threatening you?"

People like him and Sloane—the hypocrite and the sadist—were doing just fine.

I had been lucky enough to get a second chance at life. Why should I waste any more of it on them?

Caleb snorted. He said nothing, but his eyes were full of contempt, as if convinced I couldn't live without him.

Sloane, who had followed him in, wore a white dress, looking every bit the innocent little flower.

"Emily, if you wanted to go to the party, you could have just talked to Caleb nicely. You two have an engagement; he wouldn't have really kept you out."

"Running away like this is fine once. But twice is just being theatrical."

Sloane's words were laced with insinuation, mocking the foolish things I'd done in the past to get his attention.

Caleb's gaze grew even more disgusted. It even carried a murderous glint.

A bitter memory surfaced.

I suddenly remembered something.

After Caleb and Sloane got together, his attitude toward me changed completely.

It was as if I were something filthy.

In anger, I had once pleaded with my adoptive mother, Eleanor, begging her to help me dissolve the painful engagement.

Sloane twisted this into me cursing their love.

From then on, Caleb hated me, ignored me, and refused to communicate with me by phone.

Sloane's little clique isolated me, bullying me during equestrian lessons, and he turned a blind eye to it all.

I met Caleb's gaze, my voice steady. "You're overthinking it. I'm not threatening you. I'm packing because I'm moving to the cottage on Long Island and applying for a transfer to the West Coast branch."

Caleb grunted, as if I were making up a clumsy excuse to save face.

Sloane tugged on Caleb's sleeve, her voice dripping with saccharine sweetness.

"Caleb, perhaps we should let Emily stay. She’ll be all alone out there. What if something were to happen?"

Caleb's brow furrowed as he weighed the pros and cons. After all, his parents, Richard and Eleanor, still cared about whether I lived or died.

I refused again. "No, thank you. I've already filled out the application."

A muscle in Caleb's handsome jaw tightened. He let out a derisive laugh. "You hear that? She wants to go get herself killed."

"Stop this nonsense, Emily. You're so naive you wouldn't last three days out there."

Sloane sighed, stepped forward, and pretended to take my arm intimately.

Where Caleb couldn't see, her sharp nails dug into my flesh.

A sharp pain shot through me. I instinctively shoved Sloane away.

She staggered back a few steps and crumpled to the floor, staring up at me with a wounded expression.

"Emily, you… I was just trying to show you some concern…"

"You fucking bitch, Emily!"

Caleb exploded. The oppressive weight of a man used to getting his way slammed into me. He shoved me back, hard.

My head slammed against the corner of a table. Pain exploded, and my vision blurred.

I heard Caleb’s furious roar.

"What is wrong with you, Emily? Is bullying people some kind of addiction?"

"The very air in this estate is foul just from you being in it. You disgust me!"

I braced myself against the wall and slowly pulled myself to my feet, trying to block out his increasingly vicious words.

"I'll move out. Immediately. Don't worry."

"You'd better do what you say."

Caleb's anger caught in his throat, as if he hadn't expected me to agree so readily.

He glared at me, then swept Sloane up into his arms and strode away, cradling her like a priceless treasure.

I touched the sticky warmth on the back of my head. Blood. Red and fresh. Not the cheap perfume he despised.

Back when Caleb and I weren't on such bad terms, when we learned we were engaged, when we knew we would eventually get married, I used to follow him everywhere.

He was rebellious. He'd sneak into bars to drink. I'd follow.

Later, he got into a fight with the son of a business rival.

I tried to break it up and accidentally got a cut on my finger.

In that instant, Caleb had turned into a ferocious beast.

He beat a guy a head taller than him until he was begging for mercy, all because the asshole had made me bleed.

But the man who once flew into a panic over a paper cut on my finger had just slammed my head against a table for another woman. He called me worthless. He told me to go die.

It didn't matter anymore.

Once my adoptive parents returned and my transfer was approved, I could finally end this disastrous engagement.

I glanced at the servants nearby, forcing myself to muster something resembling a smile.

"Could someone please call the family doctor for me?"

A young, new maid started to step forward, but an older housekeeper pulled her back.

Their hushed conversation, despite their efforts to be quiet, carried clearly to my ears.

"Are you crazy?!"

"Don't you know Mr. Hawthorne hates this woman?"

"If he sees you helping her, you’ll be out on the street before you can blink!"

The young maid froze, glanced at me again, then lowered her head and scurried off.

I shook my head, a bitter smile on my lips. I crawled to the corner and picked up my shattered phone.

My adoptive parents traveled year-round, expanding the group's overseas markets.

They were home for maybe three or four days a month.

Caleb was the sole master here. He had said it more than once.

I wasn't a true Hawthorne. My problems were my own to solve.

So no one dared to come near me.

Whenever I came home, leftovers were thrown out, even if I hadn't eaten.

The plates on the table were empty. Not even a sip of hot soup.

But I was used to it.

I dragged myself to the pharmacy and bought disinfectant and bandages.

I went back to the estate to pack my things. This time, no one stopped me.

The servants watched me struggle alone with cold eyes, as if I were invisible.

That afternoon, I packed everything and loaded it into an old, used Jeep.

It was something I'd bought with years of saved allowance.

I was going to Long Island. Away from the hustle of Manhattan, there was freedom.

Three days after leaving the estate, Caleb called. His voice was drunk, and the background was noisy.

"Where are you?"

"Zero-Point Club. Top-floor suite. Come pick me up."

I was on the roof of my seaside cottage trying to patch a leak when my phone rang. The unexpected call broke my concentration, and a wave of irritation washed over me.

"Caleb Hawthorne, what do you want?"

There was silence on the other end. It seemed he hadn't expected me to use his full name.

Even the sounds of revelry around him quieted down.

I asked again. No answer. I was about to hang up.

Caleb suddenly spoke, his voice laced with anger.

"Emily, where are you?"

I put down the hammer, wiped the sweat from my brow, and answered nonchalantly.

"Didn't you say the very air was foul with me under the same roof? Well, I moved out."

"Don't worry. I'm not coming back. I've already submitted my transfer request to HR."

The man's breathing grew heavy. He sneered.

"Emily, when did you become so obedient?"

"Weren't you the one who used to cling to me endlessly?"

"Since you're suddenly so damn obedient, why don't you follow all my orders? I told you to get out of my sight. Why haven't you disappeared completely?!"

"Emily, I don't care what game you're playing. But if you do anything to Sloane again, I won't spare you!"

The wind on the roof was strong. It made me a little cold. I gazed at the distant sea.

It took me a moment to realize how absurd his logic was.

His mocking voice continued.

"What, nothing to say?"

"Aren't you tired of playing these pathetic little games every day?"

"Apologize to Sloane, and I might allow you to come back. You can have the guest room."

I spoke slowly, my voice so calm it surprised even me.

"Alright, Caleb Hawthorne. I promise you. I will disappear."

Before he could respond, I hung up the phone. And blocked his number.