Chapter 1

My last memory of my first life was Ethan, standing over my grave.

He wasn't crying. He was smiling, a cruel twist of his lips I knew all too well.

"I forgive you, Chloe," he said, his voice smooth as poison. "I forgive you for getting in our way."

Then he turned, putting his arm around Jessica, and they walked away with the son I had raised, leaving me to rot in the cold, wet ground.

The rage was so absolute, so complete, that it ripped through death itself and threw me back.

I gasped, my eyes flying open. I wasn't in a cheap coffin. I was in my own body, young and alive, standing on the cracked asphalt of a desolate back road in my struggling Rust Belt town. The year was 1995.

Right in front of me, just a few feet away, was a baby carrier.

In my past life, a wave of pity had washed over me. I' d rushed forward, scooped up the baby, and taken him home. That single act of kindness was the beginning of my end. The town, deeply religious and quick to judge, branded me a fallen woman. Ethan had swooped in, a charismatic savior offering marriage to "protect" me.

It was all a lie.

He manipulated me, convincing me to give my union apprenticeship spot-my one ticket out of this dead-end town-to his "frail" sister, Jessica. He said she needed it more. After we were married, he smothered our own newborn child in his crib and then vanished. He and Jessica left me to raise their abandoned baby, the one they'd named "Lucky," while I also cared for their arrogant, demanding mother.

Decades of my life, gone. Wasted. I gave them everything, and when I got sick, they threw me away like trash. They returned only to reveal the truth: they were Lucky's real parents. They had planned it all. My own adopted son then shoved divorce papers in my face and left me to die in a derelict trailer.

Now, seeing that same baby carrier, I felt nothing. No pity. No compassion. Just a cold, hard fury that settled deep in my bones.

This time, I wouldn't be their fool.

I turned my back on the carrier and the wailing infant inside. I walked away without a second glance.