Chapter 1

My husband's protégé, Macy Sterling, bragged that she could "sense bombs with her eyes closed."

Her intuition failed her, and she accidentally triggered a secondary detonation sequence.

I had to step in, using a high-risk liquid nitrogen cooling method to save the entire building.

Because of her blunder, Macy was removed from the front lines and suspended.

My husband, Grant, tried to speak up for her, but I stopped him.

"If you defend her now, you won't save her. You'll just get dragged down and suspended right along with her!" I warned him.

Macy couldn't handle the pressure and staged a fatal accident that blew her to pieces.

She left a note accusing Grant of choosing his own safety over her when she needed him most.

Grant didn't say a word at the time.

He simply kept that letter hidden away in his study.

Years later, Grant had become a world-renowned bomb disposal expert.

During a terrorist attack, I was the one strapped with a timed explosive.

He arrived on the scene to disarm it, but right in front of me, he deliberately mimicked the exact mistake Macy had made years ago.

He looked at the countdown and gave me a faint smile. "See? She was just nervous back then.

If I had encouraged her instead of silencing her, she would be a hero today."

The bomb went off, and I was vaporized.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the exact moment he was about to defend her.

He had no idea that inside this building sat the core servers containing the nation's highest secrets.

1

The moment I realized I had been reborn, I turned around and headed straight back to the dorms.

I ignored the scene and shut off my encrypted communicator immediately.

In my past life, Macy's mistake sent her into a panic, and she spammed me with messages begging for help.

I had just finished a 72-hour black-ops mission and hadn't slept a wink, yet I still rushed over to clean up her mess.

I risked my life, enduring the searing cold of liquid nitrogen.

I saved those core servers.

Because of my intervention, the military didn't court-martial her.

They only suspended her pending an investigation.

If she hadn't screwed up again later, she could have eventually gotten her job back.

But she was fragile. After a few snide remarks from colleagues, she staged that "accident" and killed herself.

In the end, my husband blew me up just to prove a point for her.

I pulled the blanket over my head and slept until dawn.

The next morning, I turned my phone back on.

The screen was instantly flooded with hundreds of missed calls and blood-red emergency alerts.

I took my time washing up, put on my uniform, and casually made my way to the scene.

Outside the police line, the air was so thick with tension it felt like it would shatter.

Every face was etched with desperation and fear.

Macy was slumped on the ground, her hair a mess, shaking like a leaf.

The colleagues surrounding her looked like they wanted to skin her alive.

"It's all your fault, Macy! You and your stupid 'blind intuition' crap!"

"Now look what happened! The secondary detonation is active! We're all dead!"

"Just wait. General Brooks is going to have us all court-martialed for this!"

Macy's eyes darted frantically through the crowd until she spotted me.

A light flickered in her eyes, as if she had found her only lifeline.

But a split second later, her gaze shifted to one of deep resentment.

She pointed a trembling finger at me and screamed with everything she had.

"It's her!"

"It's Sienna Reed! I called her all night long! She could have saved us!"

"She turned off her phone on purpose! She wanted us all to die!"

In an instant, every pair of eyes turned toward me like a thousand jagged blades.

Macy seized the moment, stumbling toward me and shoving her phone in my face, showing the endless log of missed calls.

Her eyes were bloodshot, her voice shrill and full of fake agony.

"Sienna! You know better than anyone what's inside this building!"

"This is a matter of national security! You went off the grid at a time like this? What were you trying to pull?"

The crowd went silent.

Everyone was waiting for my explanation.

I looked at her disgusting face, and the hatred from my past life surged through me.

Then, I raised my hand.

SLAP!

The sound of the hit was sharp and loud, echoing across the pavement.

Macy was stunned, clutching her cheek as she stared at me in disbelief.

I shook out my numbing wrist and spoke in a voice like ice.

"Are you out of your mind?"