Annabelle threw her legs over the side of the bed. Her bare feet hit the freezing linoleum floor. She didn't bother looking for her shoes.
"Wait, you need to stay for observation-" the nurse started, reaching out to grab her arm.
Annabelle twisted her shoulder, dodging the nurse's hand. She grabbed her leather designer backpack from the bedside chair and sprinted out the door.
She burst into the main hallway. The bright California sunlight streamed through the massive skylights, blinding her for a second. Students in tailored uniforms were clustered by the lockers, laughing and talking about weekend yacht parties.
She slammed her back against a row of cold metal lockers, her chest heaving as she dragged the vibrant, expensive air into her lungs.
She caught her reflection in a small magnetic mirror stuck to a locker door. Her face was flushed with youth. The hollow, dead eyes of her past life were gone, replaced by a fierce, burning clarity.
Her brain rapidly processed the timeline. Yesterday, she had submitted the complaint. If history repeated itself, the school board would issue the expulsion warning to the Valencia family by 3:00 PM today.
And Dangelo, to protect her from the fallout of defending Axel, would accept the blame silently and take the transfer to the East Coast military academy. The path that led to his chest being ripped open by shrapnel.
Annabelle dug her manicured nails into her palms. The sharp pain grounded her. Not this time.
She shoved her feet into her loafers and power-walked down the corridor, heading straight for the principal's office to withdraw the letter.
As she rounded the corner near the science lab, a tall figure stepped directly into her path, blocking her way.
It was Axel. He wore the school blazer, looking perfectly groomed and effortlessly handsome.
The memory of his voice on the phone-You were just a naive ATM-exploded in her ears. Annabelle's pupils contracted into tiny black dots. Her stomach physically recoiled.
Axel flashed that gentle, practiced smile that used to make her heart race. "Anna, are you okay? I heard you passed out."
He reached out, his hand moving naturally to brush a strand of hair away from her forehead. The gesture was dripping with an assumed intimacy.
Bile rose in Annabelle's throat. She took a hard step back and violently slapped his hand away.
The sharp smack of skin on skin echoed loudly down the hallway. Several students walking by stopped dead in their tracks, staring at them.
Axel's smile froze. A micro-expression of pure, dark rage flashed in his eyes, but he instantly buried it under a mask of hurt confusion. He adjusted his shirt cuff, a nervous tell she now recognized perfectly.
"What did I do?" Axel asked, lowering his voice to sound like the wounded victim for the audience around them.
Annabelle stared at his flawless acting. A cold, creeping disgust washed over her.
Before she could speak, Fay pushed through the small crowd of onlookers. She immediately grabbed Annabelle's arm, her fingers digging in. "Anna, stop it. Why are you taking your bad mood out on Axel? He's been worried sick."
Annabelle looked at the girl who had worn her stolen wedding dress. The urge to wrap her hands around Fay's neck and squeeze until her eyes popped out was a physical itch in her fingers.
She kept her face entirely blank. She slowly pulled her arm out of Fay's grip. The memory of Fay wearing her stolen wedding dress, cooing over the phone as she bled to death on a rotting floor, flashed violently in her mind. That horrifying image instantly turned her simmering disgust into a cold, sharp-edged resolve. She looked at Fay with the dead, flat eyes of an absolute stranger.
Fay bit her lower lip, visibly unnerved by the absolute lack of warmth in Annabelle's stare. She took a step back, her hands dropping awkwardly to her sides.
Sensing the shift in dynamics, Axel quickly changed tactics. He unzipped his backpack and pulled out a thick, professionally bound document.
"Look, I didn't want to bother you while you were sick," Axel said, his voice dropping an octave into a persuasive, hypnotic rhythm. "But this is the business plan for the investment project we talked about. It's guaranteed returns."
Annabelle lowered her eyes. She read the bold title printed on the cover page.
Every muscle in her body locked up. The alarm bells in her head screamed.
In her previous life, Axel hadn't pitched this specific cloud-storage startup to her until their senior year. He was presenting it a full year ahead of schedule.
Annabelle snapped her head up. She locked her eyes onto Axel's, searching his face, hunting for the lie.
Axel held her gaze without flinching. But deep in his pupils, there was a calculating, predatory confidence that did not belong to a seventeen-year-old boy.
