The smell of ozone, burnt copper, stale cigar smoke defined Eliza's final memory. The air, metallic, clung to the raw wound, a useless testament to cheap security she dismissed minutes earlier She lay slumped against cold concrete in a disused warehouse on Seoul's outskirts a single overhead bulb casting long, mocking shadows.
Above her stood Director Sterling, the man who personally gave her the promotion company car just six months prior. His face, usually softened by calculated corporate benevolence, now a mask of cold flat utterly indifferent finality. "It's just business, Eliza. The Sterling Group can't risk exposure. Your loyalty commendable, your knowledge became a liability—a significant one." His words, delivered with the chilling neutrality of an analyst discussing losses, were the epitaph of her devotion Twelve years, Eliza poured intellect relentless energy into the Sterling conglomerate. She bypassed ethical guidelines, shielded them from public scandals, defended their stock against hostile takeovers, personally ensured their growth into a multinational behemoth. Worked herself into a state of chronic exhaustion, sacrificing health personal life for their brutal ambitious success. Her reward? Not a golden retirement, but this brutal end. She hadn't been killed by a market rival or an act of random nature; she was murdered by the very family she'd vowed to save. It was not merely betrayal; it was the final most efficient step in a cold-blooded corporate cleanup after she discovered the hidden account ledgers detailing decades of illicit arms dealing massive tax fraud.
As the Director signaled his guard, the warehouse lights flickered out entirely. The darkness instant, absolute, terrifying. Eliza's life ended not with a bang, but a silent echoing corporate erasure.
Then, the static burst—a blinding fracturing white flash felt like a billion volts of electricity tearing her consciousness apart stitching it back together with crude overwhelming force. The sensation agonizing, a violation of time itself.The pain vanished replaced by expensive lavender scent clean linen.
Eliza gasped a sharp ragged sound tore at her throat bolted upright in a bed too soft far too large. Swallowed the scream clutched luxurious silk sheets of a long-forgotten room . Disorientation battled disbelief. The ghastly ornate floral wallpaper of her childhood bedroom sickeningly familiar, the date flashing on the antique clock radio confirmed impossible, miraculous terrifying: June 14, 2013. Ten years. She had been sent back a full decade.
She was no longer the exhausted cynical thirty-five-year-old corporate puppet with the terminal diagnosis she'd hidden from the world. She was Eliza Chen, twenty-five years old, once again the most invisible peripheral figure in the entire powerful Sterling family tree. The physical change jarring. Her skin smoother, unmarked by the stress of the near-future. Her hands, pale thin, capable of trembling, a sign of youth vulnerability she thought she'd forgotten. Behind the eyes of this younger body, the calculating mind of the thirty-five-year-old strategist was wide awake.
Eliza Chen was the granddaughter never quite rich enough, never quite sharp enough, certainly never manipulative enough to survive the family's brutal hierarchy. She was the family's perpetual disappointment, the one they tolerated at mandatory social functions never trusted with real power. In the previous timeline, this weak standing had been her downfall. Now, this very insignificance her most valuable asset. No one would ever suspect this Eliza Chen of plotting a meticulous decades-spanning corporate personal sabotage.
A wave of crushing nausea hit her as the full weight of her reality settled. Why here? Why now? The answer, cold certain, dawned on her like a revelation. It wasn't a gift; it was a cosmic correction. She had learned from her past terminal illness that Fate is not canceled, only transferred. Her fate—the early death, the betrayal, the crushing misery—had been violently severed. Now loose, an invisible malignant energy seeking a new host. She had to ensure that the fate found its rightful recipient: the true architect of her misery, her cousin, Victoria "Vicki" Hayes. Vicki, who had been behind every petty humiliation engineered the circumstances that led to Eliza's initial corporate vulnerability.
The door creaked open, her mother, a woman perpetually stressed by her inferior social standing within the family, peered in, her face already tightening with anxiety. "Eliza! Get dressed. You're already late. You have to be presentable for the engagement dinner, remember? You can't embarrass us tonight of all nights."
The engagement dinner. A cold knot of desperate purpose formed in Eliza's stomach. That dinner—this very night—was the event that truly set the Sterling Group on its path to total untouchable global dominance. It was the night her perfect scheming cousin, Vicki Hayes, was set to announce her engagement to the most powerful ruthless bachelor in Asia: Julian Seo, the CEO of Titan Investments. Julian Seo. The name tasted like ashes on her tongue. The man who, ten years later, would not only control the finances that directly enabled the family's greatest crimes but also sign off on the order that ended Eliza's life.
Eliza realized the dreadful efficiency of the opportunity. To ensure Vicki inherited the entire miserable package—the betrayal, the early death, the poverty—Eliza needed to secure the cornerstone of Vicki's future power. She needed the man who would make her enemies invincible. If she could marry Julian, she wouldn't just be disrupting Vicki's life; she would be inheriting the power that nearly killed her, securing the perfect vantage point from which to dismantle the Sterling Group brick by poisonous brick. It was a terrifying brilliant gamble rooted in absolute necessity.
Eliza threw the sheets back with sudden force, startling her mother, already fluttering nervously with a dress draped over her arm. "Mother, stop. Where is the dinner being held? Give me the location, the guest list, the minute-by-minute itinerary. Quickly. Every detail." Her mother blinked, unused to her daughter's sudden intense focus demand for technical information. "The Azure Vista ballroom, dear. But you can't go in that—you look like you just woke up, that old dress is wrinkled."
Eliza was already grabbing the car keys from the dresser, her mind racing through corporate law contract clauses. "They want presentable? Fine. I'll give them a show they won't forget, but it won't be the one they expected." She paused at the door, her hand resting on the smooth wood, looked back at her bewildered mother. "And tell me the exact time the engagement announcement is scheduled for." "Half-past seven. That gives you less than twenty minutes, Eliza! You can't—" But Eliza was already gone. She had less than twenty minutes until Vicki Hayes stepped onto that podium secured her engagement. Twenty minutes until the foundation of the Sterling Group's untouchable power was solidified. She had to act now, before Vicki's fate was locked down.
Rushing down the grand staircase of the family estate, the young face of Eliza Chen reflected in the polished banister was that of a fragile young woman—a complete nobody in the family structure. Behind her eyes, the cold analytical mind of a corporate strategist who had already mastered the next ten years of this world was fully engaged. I have the script, she thought, a fierce desperate surge of purpose filling her chest. The memory of the warehouse, the metallic smell of her own blood, fueled her. And this time, I'm rewriting the lead role. Vicki Hayes will not just lose the man; she will inherit the whole wretched destiny I was supposed to endure.
She pulled the car out of the drive, the scream of the engine echoing the frantic pounding in her ears. She was going to crash a party propose to a man she knew would kill her, securing a contract both her shield her final opportunity to cheat fate. The road ahead long, but for the first time in either of her lives, Eliza felt truly terrifyingly free. She was married to revenge, heading straight for the man who held the key to her past her future.