Chapter 3

Dominic didn't say yes.

He didn't say no, either.

He just studied me for a long moment, then set his glass down and said, "You have my number."

He left the reception without another word.

I watched him go—tall, deliberate, every step measured. The kind of man who never wasted a movement.

In my last life, Dominic Cavanaugh had been a ghost on the periphery. I knew his name, his reputation, his threat level to the Ashfords. Nothing more.

But after my rebirth, I spent the first week piecing together everything I could remember about him.

Dominic had built Cavanaugh Capital from nothing. No family money, no connections—just a ruthless mind and an iron will. By thirty, he controlled one of the largest private equity firms on the East Coast.

He'd gone after Ashford Group not out of greed, but because Ethan's father had destroyed his mother's business twenty years ago. She'd died in debt, alone.

Dominic had been fifteen.

So when I said he was Ethan's enemy, I meant it in the oldest sense of the word.

What I also remembered—barely, like a dream within a dream—was a single moment from my last life.

Year six. I'd been at a charity gala, already hollowed out, already aware that Ethan and Luna had a child together. I'd stepped outside for air, and Dominic had been standing on the terrace.

He'd looked at me—really looked at me—and said, "You deserve better than this."

I'd been too broken to respond.

He'd left, and I never saw him again before I died.

Now, standing at my wedding reception, I wondered: had he known? Had he seen what was happening to me before I could see it myself?

It didn't matter. Sentiment was a luxury I couldn't afford.

What mattered was that Dominic had the resources, the intelligence, and the motivation to help me dismantle Ethan Ashford's empire.

And I had something he needed: seven years of insider knowledge about every weakness, every secret, every lie the Ashfords had ever buried.

The honeymoon was in the Maldives. Ethan was attentive—performatively so.

He held my hand for photos. He kissed my forehead at sunset. He ordered my favorite wine at dinner without asking.

In my last life, I'd melted.

Now, I catalogued.

On the third night, Ethan's phone buzzed at 2 AM. He slipped out of bed, thinking I was asleep.

I wasn't.

I heard fragments through the bathroom door.

"…not now. I just got married… I know, Luna. I know… Give me time…"

In my last life, I hadn't woken up. I'd slept peacefully, dreaming of the children we'd have, the life we'd build.

What a fool I'd been.

When he came back to bed, I kept my breathing steady.

He lay beside me, and after a moment, his hand found mine under the sheets.

"I'm going to make this work, Viv," he whispered to himself.

The tragedy was, I think he meant it.

He just didn't mean it enough.

We returned to New York, and married life began.

The Ashford estate was a limestone mansion on the Upper East Side—old money elegance with modern surveillance. Ethan's mother had passed two years before the wedding, and his father was in a care facility with advanced dementia.

That left Ethan as the sole decision-maker, with one caveat: the inheritance clause.

Sixty percent of Ashford Group shares were held in a family trust. To access them, Ethan needed a legitimate heir, confirmed by DNA, before his thirty-fifth birthday.

He was twenty-eight. He had seven years.

But Luna had already started the clock.

I knew from my last life that within six months, Luna would suggest the surrogate plan. Within a year, she'd have an embryo. Within two years, a child.

This time, I wasn't going to wait.

Three weeks after the wedding, I called the number on the card Dominic had left at the bar.

He picked up on the second ring.

"Mrs. Ashford."

"Dinner. Friday. Somewhere your people can sweep for bugs."

A pause. Then: "I'll send a car."

I hung up and looked at the calendar on my desk.

In my last life, it had taken Luna six months to make her first move.

I was going to make mine in six days.