Mirabelle POV

"Ahh!" My eyes shot open in fear. I looked around frantically, my heart slamming against my ribs like it wanted to jump out.

The smell of disinfectant.

A white ceiling.

A narrow bed with soft white sheets.

I was in a hospital. My mind was still muddled, my heart still pounding from what I thought had just happened, some fear that clung to me from wherever I had just been.

Then I heard my mother's voice, crying before I understood the words. in disbelief, I felt her warm palm rub against my cheek.

"Mimi, you're finally awake. You scared the hell out of me and your brother."

Tears streamed down my face before I even realized I was crying.

Mom…

"Mom?"

I said it again, disbelieving. "Mom? Is that really you? You're alive?."

"Mimi, what's wrong? Don't scare Mommy like this. Are you still feeling unwell? Should I call the doctor?"

Still lost in confusion, I whispered, "Am I in heaven? Did you and my brother come to keep me company? You died, Mom. And big brother—he went to prison…"

"Doctor! Doctor! My daughter is awake!" my mother shouted, cutting off my spiraling thoughts.

Snapping out of it, I grabbed her hand before she could pull away, hugging her, breathing in her scent, needing to know she was real.

She was real.

Her warmth. Her scent. Her heartbeat under my ear.

It was all real.

I held her gently, afraid that if I squeezed too hard, the illusion would shatter and I would wake up back in that hotel room, back on that cold floor, watching my own blood flow beneath me.

"She's fine, just needs rest tonight. And she can be discharged tomorrow," the doctor said after his examination.

"Thank you, doctor,thank you, really" my mother said, while shooting me a look that seemed to say I dare you to protest. I smiled helplessly, only thinking: I've been reborn. Three years earlier. Well, well.

I watched as she talked to the doctor about my condition in a daze, as though I were floating somewhere just outside my own body, and for those few minutes, I wouldn't have traded the moment for anything else in the world.

The day passed faster than I expected. By evening it was time for my discharge. My mother packed my things—my slippers, my toiletries, and a little care package for hospital to be given to elderly patients.

* * *

That night, sitting in my room in front of the mirror, I studied my own reflection and let out a long breath.

"Hmm," I murmured,as the coldness settle over my face—not the kind of coldness that kept people away from coming closer, but the kind that said, quite plainly, scram.

I touched my cheek and thought of everything I had given Samson—my time, my youth, my heart, in the end.

I smirked at myself in the mirror.

"How pathetic ."

Because of him—directly or indirectly—my mother had died and my brother had was killed in prison for a crime he never committed, and everything my family had built over two generations had become someone else's harvest. Hatred flared behind my eyes and I forced it back down, it's like a fire I intend to use later, not one I want to be consumed by.

My reflection,the hardened look in it eyes looked like it had already made a decision.

"Since I've been given a second chance," I whispered, "no one is taking what's mine. Not again. I'll protect my family this time. I swear it."

FLASHBACK

"Samson, my brother's just been arrested. Please, come help me." I begged into the phone, squatting on the cold floor of my room, one hand braced against the wall, clearly it was the only thing holding me up.

"Dammit," Samson snapped on the other end. "Mirabelle, this is the hundredth time you've called. Can't you take a hint? I'm ignoring you on purpose. Why are you so slow?" He kept going, and going, and through the phone I could feel every ounce of his irritation, his impatience, like a chill against my skin.

I felt suffocated, unable to understand how everything had happened so fast. Just days ago I had been happy—genuinely happy—celebrating that Samson was finally going to propose to me soon.

I made a round of enquiry,until I found out where he was: a five-star hotel not far from my home. So I went.

"Samson, please open the door." I knocked, again and again. "I know you're in there. Samson!"

When the door finally opened, he stood there half-dressed with just towel around his waist, his forehead creased in irritation.

"You…"

I pushed past him and bumped into a woman wrapped in a bedsheet. I didn't need an explanation to understand what had occurred. My heart didn't just crack. It shattered, all at once, cleanly, like glass dropped on tile.

I had wanted so badly to believe it was a dream. A mere fleeting nightmare and I would wake from any second.

I was still too naive to know better.

Something in my head went loose and I lunged for the woman's hair, wanting—to know why, but Samson pushed me from behind and my head went bang! against the wall.

"What did—" I thought I saw panic flash across his face. Regret, even. But it was fleeting.

I tried to breathe. I tried to ask him why, one last time. But the air went in and refused to come back out.

I watched my own life slip through my fingers like water. I understood, in that final moment, exactly how small and meaningless it had all been. I closed my eyes, and the last thing I felt was regret.

Then I saw myself floating, above my own body, listening to Samson and the woman murmur to each other that I had deserved it, that this,I should have seen coming, that I was a nobody and no one would ever know I was gone.

I reached for his collar in anger. But my hand passed straight through him.

I felt hollowed out. My soul, seemed to had dimed and shriveled visibly, with every second that passed.

Out of pure resentment, I wandered around the edges of Country H for a week and visiting my parents grave. And then I saw him.

Edward.

He tore Samson's life apart—his reputation, his fortune, everything the man valued—and saw to it that my brother and I were buried properly, in our family's grave.

But why?

END FLASHBACK

I closed that page of memory in my mind the way I would close a door I never wanted to open again..

Whatever had happened before, this life was mine to write differently.

I sat there a long while after the thought settled, turning the ring I still wore, the one Samson had given me as a token—around and around on my finger. In my old life I would never have taken it off, not even after everything. I'd have told myself he was simply stressed, simply cornered by circumstances outside his control, simply anything other than what he actually was.

I slid it off now and set it on the dresser like it was nothing at all.

"Three years," I whispered to the empty room. "I have three years to build something he can't touch this time."

Enough to watch him rise, exactly as he had before, exactly as smug and untouchable as I remembered—so that when It finally brought all down around him, he would understand precisely who had done it.

I climbed into bed that night more exhausted than I'd been in longer than I could remember, and yet sleep refused to come easily. Every time I closed my eyes I saw the woman wrapped in that hotel bedsheet, heard Samson's voice telling her I'd deserved it, felt the cold tile against my back as the last of my past life drained out of me.

I pressed a hand against my chest, feeling my heart beat steady and strong beneath my palm, and let that simple, ordinary fact anchor me back into the present.

I am alive. I am here. And this time, I intend to stay that way.

Somewhere outside my window, the city hummed along exactly as it always had, indifferent to the fact that one of its residents had just been given something no one else in the world could claim: a second chance to get it right. I didn't know yet how much that second chance would cost me, or how it would rearrange every plan I thought I had already made. I only knew, lying there in the dark, that I would take it, gladly, completely—no matter what it demanded of me before the end.