Chapter 1

The first thing I remembered from my last life was the smell.

Stale beer, blood, and the cheap, cloying perfume Jenna always wore.

I was on the cold concrete floor of the brewery, my brewery, watching my fiancé Liam kiss my best friend Jenna. My head was bleeding. They had just pushed me.

"Is she dead?" Jenna asked, pulling away from him.

"Doesn't matter," Liam said, his voice cold. "With her gone, her parents will be lost. The brewery is ours."

They left me there to die.

Now, I was staring at that same man, my fiancé Liam, very much alive. The memory was a ghost, a cold layer over my skin. We were in my parents' living room, the one with the big windows overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains.

He stood in the center of the room, arms crossed, the picture of entitled charm.

"Chloe, it' s simple," he said, his voice smooth but with an edge I now recognized as a threat.

"I need the tuition for the Master Brewer program. It' s twenty thousand dollars. And Jenna needs a place to stay. She' s my best friend, she' s going to be my assistant. We need to cover her moving expenses and her first six months of rent."

Jenna, standing beside him, looked down at her worn-out shoes. She played the part of the poor, loyal friend so well. "Oh, Chloe, I couldn' t ask you to do that. It' s too much."

Her voice was soft, but her eyes flickered toward Liam, a quick, shared glance of conspiracy.

My mother, a practical woman who built our brewery from nothing, shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. "Liam, that' s a lot of money. And paying for Jenna' s expenses… it seems a bit much."

My father, who always had a soft spot for me, just looked at me, waiting for my reaction. In my last life, my reaction was to cry and beg.

Liam' s face hardened. "This isn' t a request. This is about our future. My future. I' m going to be a star in the brewing world. Do you want to be married to that man, Chloe? Or do you want me to walk away right now and find someone who actually supports my dreams?"

He was giving me an ultimatum. The exact same one.

This was the moment it all started. The moment I chose him over my family. The moment I signed their death warrant and my own.

But this time, I had the memory of my own blood on the floor.