Chapter 1

I woke up.

The smell of smoke burned my nose, thick and choking.

Flames licked the walls of the university' s performing arts building.

My twin sister, Chloe, was inside, screaming.

Ryan Ashton, my boyfriend then, was a silhouette against the fire, ready to run in. He wasn't looking at me, he was looking at the fire, at Chloe.

He was always looking at Chloe.

A memory, sharp and cold, sliced through me.

My first life.

I remembered grabbing Ryan' s arm, begging him not to go.

"Chloe will die if I don't!" he' d screamed, yanking away.

His shove sent me sprawling, my hand smashing against a fallen piece of debris. The bones crunched.

My violin career ended that night.

Chloe died anyway, consumed by the fire.

Ryan came out without a scratch.

He blamed me.

"If you hadn't tried to stop me, I could have saved her!"

His family, the powerful Ashtons, believed him. My parents, the Millers, always eager to please the wealthy, believed him too.

They all sided with Ryan.

He married me. Not for love. For revenge.

Years of it.

He broke me down, piece by piece.

He made sure everyone knew I was the monster who let her sister die, who ruined his life.

My parents whispered their agreement, their eyes cold. "You always were selfish, Ava."

He made my life a quiet, constant hell.

Then, he killed me.

A heatwave, an old storage room at the back of his family's estate, no windows, no air.

The door locked from the outside.

I remembered the suffocating heat, my desperate bangs on the door, then nothing.

Now, the smoke, the screams, Ryan poised to run.

It was happening again.

This time, I knew what to do.

I stepped aside.

He didn' t even glance at me.

He charged into the inferno, shouting Chloe' s name.

I watched him go.

My hands were safe. My future, maybe.