The knife trembled in Evelyn Carter's hand.
The edge caught a flash of morning light, bright as truth, and for one breath, the world was silent — except for the thunder in her chest.
Her husband stood a few feet away, perfectly composed as always, though his gray eyes held something she'd never seen before: disbelief.
"Evelyn," Alexander said, his voice low, steady, the way he spoke when the world around him was chaos. "Put it down."
But she didn't.
Because she remembered everything.
Not just this morning.
Not just the fight they were about to have.
She remembered dying.
---
The memory came like a storm — sharp, bright, merciless.
Oliver's hand had been on her throat. Hannah's laughter — her adopted sister's laughter — had been echoing in the glass hall of the company she'd helped build. Her parents' voices had blended with the sound of her own pleading.
They'd called her foolish. Pathetic.
The woman who had once been loved by the wealthiest, most powerful man on the continent — and had thrown it all away for lust and lies.
They'd said they didn't need her anymore. That she knew too much.
And when she'd tried to run, they'd made sure she wouldn't.
The room had spun, her blood staining the marble she used to walk across like a queen.
And then Alexander had come.
He wasn't supposed to be there — not after everything, not after she'd left him for his nephew. But he came anyway. He fought for her. He bled for her.
He found her.
He held her.
And when she died in his arms, she saw the truth she'd been blind to all along.
He had never been cold.
He had been protecting her.
His last words had been a whisper against her skin. "If there's another life… I'll find you."
And she had answered, weakly, "Then I'll love you right."
Then everything went black.
---
Now, she was here again.
Back in the mansion she'd once called a prison.
Back in the silk nightdress she wore the morning she betrayed him.
Back in the same study, the same hour, the same argument that had ended with her stabbing him.
Except this time, she wasn't the same woman.
She wasn't confused.
She wasn't naive.
She wasn't theirs to manipulate anymore.
Alexander didn't know that the woman standing before him had already died for him once.
He didn't know she'd watched him die trying to save her.
He only knew that his wife had woken early, dressed in haste, and demanded to leave the house to meet another man — his nephew.
Now, he stood between her and the door, his expression unreadable.
"You're not going anywhere, Evelyn," he said quietly. "Not with him. Not after what I've learned."
In her past life, that was the moment she'd snapped — when anger, humiliation, and every poisonous whisper her parents and sister had fed her exploded inside her chest.
She'd thought he was controlling her. Cruel. Jealous.
She'd grabbed the knife from his desk — the one meant to open letters, not flesh — and plunged it into him before she could even think.
This time, she froze.
Her hand still lifted, but now she could see his face — the calm under his fury, the desperation he tried to hide. His voice broke, barely perceptible. "You don't understand, Evie. They're using you."
And suddenly, she remembered it all: the forged documents, the lies, the trap Oliver had set.
They'd started it all here — this morning — when she left the house to "meet Oliver in private."
That was how they had begun destroying her.
Not this time.
Her breath shook. She dropped the knife. It hit the marble with a dull clang.
Alexander's shoulders loosened by an inch. He didn't move closer — he never did — but the air shifted between them.
"Evelyn," he said again, lower this time, a whisper she almost missed. "What's going on?"
Tears burned behind her eyes. She wanted to tell him everything — how she'd seen his death, their children's pain, how she'd been played like a fool by the people she'd called family.
But she couldn't. Not yet.
If she told him now, he'd think she was mad.
And she needed time — to plan, to protect, to make them pay.
So she did the only thing she could.
She looked up at him and said softly, "You're right. I'm not going anywhere."
---
When he left the room a minute later, suspicion still shadowing his face, Evelyn sank to the floor.
Her heart ached for the man she'd misunderstood — the one who'd died for her when she didn't deserve it.
She pressed her hand over her heart and whispered the vow again, not as a promise to heaven, but as a declaration to herself.
> "This time, I'll love you right.
And I'll destroy every last one of them."
The morning sunlight crept across the floor, catching the faint reflection of the knife.
It wasn't time to pick it up yet.
But soon — very soon — the people who had written her downfall would learn that the woman they killed once had come back with their names etched in her memory.
And this time, Evelyn Carter wouldn't die.
This time, they would.