Chapter 1 — The Night I Died
The first thing I felt was fabric against my cheek: silk too smooth to be mine.
The second was the metal pressed to my ribs.
A wedding suite should smell like roses. Mine reeked of chloroform, expensive cologne, and fear.
"Don't make this messy," Casper murmured. His voice floated somewhere above me, bright and almost bored. He used that tone in lectures when professors fawned, the same tone he used when he told me I was beautiful enough to distract board members and naive enough to sign anything.
I stared at the chandelier until the crystals blurred into a constellation. "Vivian?" I said. My mouth tasted like pennies.
"Present," my stepsister answered lightly from the corner. "Congratulations, Mia. The dress fits you better than I expected."
Her silhouette was all soft lines—goddess of charity, patron saint of cameras. She'd insisted on this hotel, this suite, this brand of champagne—the only bottle that arrived already opened.
Casper crouched so low I could smell the citrus on his wrist. "You were always your father's little ledger," he said. "All those assets and no instinct. I did try to like you."
The muzzle nudged deeper. I exhaled because there was nothing else left to do. For months I had signed the documents he put in front of me: loan guarantees, silent transfers, a compliance memo that looked routine until it paved a private road straight to Adrian Voss's rooftop.
The night Adrian died—because of me—the city went quiet. Stocks froze. Phones burned. Servers crashed under rumor. It was the loudest silence I had ever heard.
If I hadn't helped, Casper's fund would have been margin-called before sunrise. Vivian's promised board seat would have vanished with the smoke. My father would have realized too late that the daughter he threw away had been the only thing keeping our house from collapsing.
"I won't scream," I told Casper. "Let me look decent."
"Gracious as always." He tilted his head. The gun barrel lifted.
I pulled the veil off and let it fall like snow. Then I whispered, "It won't help."
"What?" His smile faltered.
"It won't fix your debt," I said. "And without Adrian, Artemis won't need you again."
He laughed, but his fingers twitched. Vivian's reflection in the window rippled—just a quiver around the mouth. For a second I saw the truth: they were already afraid. Of the numbers. Of the thing they had woken.
I thought of my mother's charity clinic, of children sleeping under stars full of machines. Of the trust my grandfather built that paid for those stars one by one. Of the night I thought I was saving everyone by killing a man I'd never met.
"I know," I said softly, not sure who I was speaking to. "I know."
When the shot came, the chandelier shattered. Glass fell like rain. I fell with it.
The world blinked.
Then it breathed.
I woke to a cold pillow and the scent of printer ink.
The ceiling wasn't a chandelier but a grid of inset lights. The sheets weren't silk—cheap, pilled cotton from the dorm bulk order. A secondhand clock ticked forward, stuttered over a chip of missing paint at the minute mark, and kept going.
My phone buzzed. July 3. 7:12 a.m. A month before the Voss Dynamics IPO.
My throat made a sound I didn't recognize, a laugh breaking into a sob. My lock screen was a stray cat behind the library and an invitation to The Lin Group Midsummer Fundraiser. I still had the internship badge from our compliance office. There was a coffee stain on my blouse from yesterday—yesterday, which was not the day I died. It was the day before that. The day when Adrian Voss still breathed.
I touched my ribs. No pain. The mirror showed my face unbroken. Somewhere across the city, a man lived who had already died because I was stupid.
My phone buzzed again. Vivian: Breakfast at the Pearl at 8. Wear something demure. Father wants the plan for your engagement announcement.
Under it, a second message. Casper: We'll swing by to pick you up. Put on a smile, sweetheart.
I let the phone buzz itself empty.
I made coffee and poured it down the drain. I scrubbed the stain off my blouse and changed into a black dress that looked like a quiet decision. Then I opened the old metal lockbox under my bed and unfolded the paper I had not signed yet in this timeline: my mother's last letter, asking me to be kind to Vivian.
"I'll be kind," I told the empty room. "After I'm finished."
The Pearl's glass wall turned the harbor into a mirror. Vivian kissed my cheek with air and sat close enough to steal heat. Casper arrived late and held my chair, the perfect fiancé.
Father did not hug me. He looked at me like a transaction he wanted off the books. "Mia," he said. "Casper's fund is taking a position on Voss. The market will be… sensitive. You'll attend the gala with Vivian and keep the Lin name soft."
"Of course," I said. "After I resign."
Silence took the table.
"You will do no such thing," Father said.
I smiled. "Compliance at Lin Group isn't a good look while I'm secretly engaged to a man shorting the city's most anticipated IPO. I filed a conflict memo this morning. You'll get the copy."
Casper's fingers tightened around his glass. Vivian's lashes fluttered. Father's jaw clicked—the tell he never knew he had.
I set a thin folder on the table. "Also, housekeeping. Your pet auditor at Shae & Co. misdated a vendor invoice by thirty-one days to inflate a loss against the charity's book. If the press finds that, the clinic closes. I thought you might prefer an internal correction."
Vivian's smile splintered. She reached for the folder. I slid it away.
"Demure enough for you?" I asked sweetly, and left them rearranging their faces.
By noon, I had a new phone number, a private email, and a meeting request sent to a name nobody sent meeting requests to.
Adrian Voss, CEO. Voss Tower. Tonight.
> Subject: Proposal.
Terms: Mutually beneficial.
Cost: A ring you don't have to wear.
He replied six minutes later with a one-word calendar invite: 8:00.
I stood in the dorm shower until the water ran cold. I braided my hair back like armor and counted what I had: a month of foreknowledge, a stack of tiny legal knives, and a debt no flowers could cover.
At seven, the harbor wind pressed itself against my coat like a warning. Voss Tower climbed out of the water like a blade; the lobby was glass and falling light. Security moved like theater—precise, silent, confident nothing could surprise them.
I didn't wear heels. I wore flats with rubber soles because I planned to walk out no matter what. I carried a leather folio and a pen that could sign away a life.
The elevator recognized the appointment and became a private room—recessed cameras, no music. It opened thirty stories up where the air tasted the way iron smells.
A woman waited by the glass wall, tablet in one hand, badge clipped at an angle that said she spent no time in mirrors.
"Evelyn Shao," she said. Compliance Chief. Her eyes moved the way a chess player touches each piece before a match. "You requested to see Mr. Voss and offered no agenda."
"I offered terms," I said. "Agenda is for people without leverage."
She didn't smile. "What leverage?"
"Three kinds," I said. "Information, timing, and a willingness to be hated."
That got me a fractional nod.
The door behind her was glass without a handle. When it slid open, cold air sighed with it.
He was taller than the photographs suggested. Not beautiful—precise. Lines drawn with a ruler. Dark suit, no tie, a watch not expensive so much as inevitable. The kind of man in whom expense is assumed.
He didn't offer a hand. "Ms. Lin." His voice was unhurried. "You have eight minutes."
"I'll need six."
"Four now," he said, glancing at the harbor. "Two if you waste one more on arithmetic."
Evelyn took her place near the door like a witness.
"Your company has an internal leak feeding the Artemis Circle," I said. "They'll try to crash sentiment pre-IPO through a false compliance scandal—vendor fraud tied to your biotech pilot. Same playbook they used at NeuroHelix. The leak isn't in Legal. It's Operations. Your COO, Jonas Reed, is either compromised or careless enough to be usable."
He did not blink. "Evidence."
"In my folio," I said. "Also not in my folio, because you like redundancy."
"Continue."
"You'll win the filing battle if you anticipate the timing," I said. "Artemis moves on Thursdays at three p.m. Eastern because two of their favorite judges like long weekends. They used Shae & Co. through a shell to plant false loss recognition at Lin Group's charity—testing the story they plan to hang on you."
Evelyn's head turned a millimeter. The way she didn't look at me told me I'd stepped exactly where it hurt.
"Your source," he said.
My last life, I nearly said. I swallowed the truth.
"A leak in my family," I said instead. "And a fiancé who plays cards with men who don't like lights. I brought the signatures you'll need to revoke Shae & Co.'s access. Pre-drafted, no obligation."
"Why." His eyes were the color of the harbor when a storm decides.
"Because I plan to destroy people who think I'm a pawn," I said. "And I can't do it while your company is bleeding. Also—" I let the silence stretch. "—I'm offering you insurance you can't buy."
"What kind."
"A marriage license."
Evelyn inhaled. The harbor went very quiet.
"No," he said.
"You haven't heard terms."
"I don't need a wife," he said. "And I don't purchase people."
"Good," I said. "Neither do I. This is a secret marriage. No cohabitation. Renewable quarterly. I retain my name. You retain your life. The wedding is a transaction to bind us in ways contracts can't. When Artemis tries to weaponize morals clauses or rumor, the existence of a marriage—known to exactly four people—lets you trigger protections I set up in advance."
"You want my protection," he said.
"I want the power to pay my debts," I said. "And I owe you one I can't pay with flowers."
At that, something sharpened in his gaze. Not softer—clearer. "Debts."
"In return, you get an ally with nothing left to lose and no interest in your wallet," I said. "Someone willing to be hated publicly if it keeps you clean. I will hand you a mole within sixty days, deliver Artemis's middleman within one-twenty, and gift-wrap my ex-fiancé's indictment by one-ninety."
Evelyn's mouth almost remembered how to curve.
"Who taught you to talk like this, Ms. Lin?" he asked.
"People who forgot I was listening."
"Sit," he said quietly.
I sat.
He opened the folio without looking down. First page: a neat map of shell companies. Second: a timeline with Thursdays circled in red. Third: a draft severance for auditors who would never see it coming.
"You say 'marriage' like an umbrella," he said. "What you want is a shield with case law."
"Yes."
"If I refuse?"
"Then I still send the documents," I said. "Artemis doesn't get to have your company. But I go to war alone."
He studied me like an equation. "You are twenty-four."
"Yes."
"And you think you are made for war."
"I think I was made for numbers," I said. "War is just numbers with weather."
This time Evelyn laughed, a precise sound like a finger snap.
"Bring me proof Jonas is dirty," he said. "Before midnight."
"I can bring a pattern," I said. "Proof requires a trap."
"Set one," he said.
"I'll need a recorder, a conference room with thin walls, and your assistant to book Jonas at nine-thirty for a 'casual touch base.' Also someone who can misfile a document believably."
"Believably," he repeated.
"Like they've done it before."
Evelyn's eyes warmed by a degree. "I'll make a call."
He rose. "Ms. Lin, if you are lying—"
"I'm not," I said, rising too. "But if I fail, you'll have lost an hour. If I succeed, you'll gain a wife you don't have to see and an enemy you'll never have to."
He turned his watch so the face hid against his skin. "I don't accept unknowns."
"Good," I said. "Then you'll like the part where I remove them."
At nine-thirty, Jonas Reed sauntered into Conference 4B with a laugh that carried. He shook my hand too long and called me "Miss Mia" like I was a mascot.
At nine-thirty-one, Evelyn "accidentally" slid a thin folder under the wrong door two rooms down. At nine-thirty-three, Adrian's assistant mentioned the NeuroHelix case had moved. At nine-thirty-five, the recorder in my pen caught Jonas phoning a number labeled HERMES and saying, "Thursday still works."
At ten, I placed the call list on Adrian's desk.
At ten-oh-five, he looked up.
"Midnight was generous," I said. "We don't have that kind of time."
"You used my people like you've always had them," he said.
"No," I said. "I used your enemies' habits. Your people only had to be themselves."
He tapped my pen once against the glass, then set it precisely in line with the folio. "Evelyn, prepare the marriage contract template."
I didn't breathe for three seconds and then I did.
"But understand this," he said softly. "I only enter contracts I can enforce. If you are lying to me, there will be no court gentle enough to save you."
"Lucky for us," I said, "I plan to tell you everything except the one thing that would put you in danger to know."
"Which is?"
"What happens to you when I fail," I said.
The harbor threw our reflections back at us, two silhouettes made of glass and night.
The door slid open. Evelyn returned with a ring box and a folder labeled PRIVATE: Voss/Lin — Provisional.
My phone vibrated. A new message, no name—just a photo: a rooftop, a shadow at the edge of a glass parapet, a caption that read—
AGAIN.