"Why?" Thaddeus erupted, his voice cracking with fury. "You actually have the nerve to ask me why?"
He grabbed whatever was within reach and hurled it at me, one thing after another, blind with rage.
"Thaddeus, stop!" Geraldine Simmons rushed in and threw herself between us. "Stop hitting her. You'll kill her if you keep going."
"Letting her die that easily would be too kind."
That was the last thing I heard before the darkness took me.
When I opened my eyes again, I was in a hospital bed. My wrists and ankles were strapped down.
The room was familiar. Sickeningly familiar.
I'd stayed in this private ICU suite before. This was the James family's private hospital.
There was no escaping from here. And the news broadcast playing on the television above me made the despair complete.
The wife of James Group Chairman Thaddeus James suffered a tragic fall at home, resulting in a miscarriage. Complications led to massive hemorrhaging, and she passed away shortly after.
On screen, Thaddeus was presiding over my funeral.
In my last life, he'd lied to me and held my funeral while I was still breathing.
In this life, my funeral was being held while I was still breathing all over again.
I was alive. But I knew it would only be a matter of days before he came to finish the job.
The fear burned away, and what replaced it was rage. I'd been reborn, and I still hadn't been able to protect my child.
I hated him. God, I hated him so much.
I couldn't just sit here and wait to die. I couldn't let history repeat itself.
I thrashed against the restraints, twisting and pulling until the skin on my wrists split open and blood ran down my hands.
The pain was blinding, bone-deep, but I didn't stop. If I wanted to live, I had to give it everything.
If I could make it to the funeral in time, I could expose Thaddeus's entire scheme in front of everyone.
Minutes later, at the cost of the flesh on my left wrist, I succeeded. The restraints came loose.
This room had one advantage: it was on the ground floor.
Beyond the window lay a garden. My odds of getting out were real.
But when I shoved the window open, Thaddeus stepped out of the shadows.
"You really thought you'd wake up to a live broadcast?" His voice was almost amused. "It was a recording. On loop."
He studied me, that mocking glint in his eyes. "Or did you actually believe that if I wanted to keep you restrained, you could just break free?"
His words gutted the last shred of hope in me.
He was right. I'd been naive.
When death is staring you in the face, there's no room left for rational thought. He'd installed surveillance cameras in the house and watched my every move. In a hospital that belonged to him, how could he possibly have left anything to chance?
I watched him close the distance between us, step by step, and I made a decision.
In that moment, I finally understood why people take their own lives.
Because when you're drowning in despair with no light anywhere, death starts to feel like mercy.
If I was going to die no matter what, I refused to let him torture and humiliate me again.
I threw myself headfirst at the wall, ready to end it all.
In the split second before impact, I realized Thaddeus had anticipated this too. He hadn't left me a single opening.
The walls were already lined with padding.
"In here, I'm the only one who decides when you die."
He climbed through the window and grabbed a fistful of my hair, then slapped me across the face. Once. Twice. Again.
"And right now, it's not time for you to die yet."
He tied me to the bed again. I knew every line of Thaddeus's face better than my own, but the expression he wore was so cold it belonged to a stranger.
"Do you know what true despair is?" he said.
"It's when you see hope drawing close. When you think you can almost reach it." He paused. "And then it shatters all over again."
"Like just now, when you thought you had a chance to escape."
"Thaddeus, I want to know why." I held his gaze. "At least let me die knowing the truth."
"I don't believe you'd kill me just because you stopped loving me."
