Chapter 1

The moment I opened my eyes, I tasted blood.

I was alive. I was twenty-three again. And my husband was in bed with my sister.

I lay on the cold bathroom floor of the Carter mansion, staring at the pregnancy test in my hand — two pink lines, still fresh.

In my last life, this was the moment I'd stumbled out, crying, to tell Dominic Carter the good news. I thought a baby would finally make him love me.

Instead, he'd looked at me with disgust and said, "Get rid of it. You think I'd want a child with a substitute?"

That word — substitute — had defined my entire marriage.

I was never supposed to marry Dominic. He wanted my older sister, Vivienne. Beautiful, elegant, refined Vivienne, the golden daughter of the Thornton family.

But on the wedding day, Vivienne disappeared. My mother shoved me into the dress, pinned the veil over my tear-streaked face, and pushed me down the aisle.

"You should be grateful," she hissed. "This is the only useful thing you'll ever do for this family."

Dominic didn't even lift my veil during the ceremony. He found out the truth that night and nearly broke the bedroom door off its hinges.

"You're not Vivienne."

"I — I know. I'm sorry. I didn't have a choice —"

"You'll never be her. Remember that."

For two years, I tried everything. I cooked his meals. I ran his household. I smiled at every insult his mother threw at me. I swallowed my pride so many times that I forgot I ever had any.

And the whole time, Vivienne was right there.

She came back three months after the wedding, draped in apologies and crocodile tears. She moved into the mansion's guest wing, and Dominic lit up in a way I'd never seen.

She called me "little sis" in that sweet voice of hers, always touching Dominic's arm, always laughing at his jokes, always making sure I saw.

The servants whispered behind my back.

"The wrong satisfactionister married him. Poor Mr. Carter."

"Vivienne is so much more graceful. No wonder he can't forget her."

"That one's just a placeholder. Everyone knows it."

In my last life, I endured it all — until the day Vivienne told Dominic I'd pushed her down the stairs.

I hadn't. She threw herself down those steps while I watched in horror, then screamed my name as she fell.

Dominic didn't ask me a single question. He grabbed my arm so hard that it bruised and threw me out of the house in the rain.

"If anything happens to Vivienne," he said, his voice colder than I'd ever heard, "I'll destroy you and your entire family."

I lost the baby that night. Alone, bleeding, on the steps of a free clinic because I had no money and no one to call.

And still — still — I went back to him. Because I had nowhere else to go, and some pathetic part of me believed he'd change.

He didn't.

Six months later, Vivienne handed Dominic falsified evidence that I'd been cheating on him. He didn't even read it carefully before signing the divorce papers and stripping me of everything.

I was thrown out with nothing. No money. No family. No medical license — because Vivienne had reported me to the board with forged misconduct charges, and the Thorntons' connections made sure no one investigated.

The night I died, I was standing on the rooftop of a parking garage, not because I wanted to jump, but because I had nowhere left to stand.

Vivienne's final text glowed on my cracked phone screen: Thanks for keeping my seat warm, little sis. 💋

A truck horn. Blinding lights. Then nothing.

But now I was here. Sitting on this bathroom floor, alive, with the pregnancy test in my hand and the sound of my husband moaning my sister's name through the wall.

I looked down at the two pink lines.

Then I dropped the test into the trash.

This time, I wasn't keeping the baby. I wasn't telling Dominic. And I wasn't staying in this house one second longer than I had to.

I stood up, wiped the blood from my lip, and stared at my reflection.

In my last life, I was Dominic Carter's invisible wife.

In this one, I'd be the nightmare satisfactionhe never saw coming.

But first, I needed to get back what Vivienne stole from me — starting with my medical license.

I pulled out my phone and scrolled to a contact I hadn't dared to use in years. The name read: Dr. Elena Voss — Chief of Surgery, St. Albans Hospital.

My mentor. The woman who'd trained me in secret since I was sixteen. The one person who knew that behind the Thornton family's "useless younger daughter" was a surgical prodigy who'd published three papers in top medical journals under a pen name.

Vivienne took my husband. She took my family. She took my name.

But she never knew about my real skills. And that was going to be her biggest mistake.

I pressed call.