Chapter 3

My father had never mentioned a second formula to me. Not once.

I spent the entire morning going through every file, every notebook scan, every archived email in his records. My eyes burned, but I couldn't stop.

Then I found it—buried inside a folder labeled "Personal/Misc," disguised as a family photo album.

It was a research document, heavily encrypted, dated two weeks before my father's death. The file name was simply: NX-8.

My hands went cold.

NX-7 was already revolutionary—a treatment that could manage Meridian Syndrome and dramatically improve patients' quality of life. But NX-8... from what I could piece together from my father's preliminary notes, NX-8 wasn't just a treatment.

It was a cure.

A complete, permanent cure for Meridian Syndrome.

And someone had tried to access this file exactly six times in the past year. Every attempt was blocked by my father's encryption, but the IP logs showed they all came from the same source.

Ashford & Cross Pharmaceuticals.

My blood ran cold. Dominic's company had been trying to break into my father's private files. That meant he didn't just want my money or my NX-7 research.

He wanted NX-8. The formula worth billions.

Suddenly, everything about my last life made sickening sense.

Dominic hadn't married me for love or even for convenience. He married me to get access to my father's server. Serena wasn't just his mistress—she was his partner in this scheme from the very beginning.

And when they couldn't crack NX-8's encryption, they settled for stealing NX-7 instead. Then they killed me to make sure I'd never come looking for the rest.

I leaned back in my chair, my vision blurring.

My father's final note echoed in my head: Don't trust the Ashfords.

"I'm sorry, Dad," I whispered. "I didn't listen. But I'm listening now."

I spent the rest of the day working on the NX-8 encryption. My father had designed it with a biometric lock—it required not just a password but also a DNA-verified fingerprint scan. Since I was his only living heir, I was the only person in the world who could open it.

But I still couldn't access it. The encryption had a secondary layer I didn't recognize—some kind of additional verification step that I'd never seen before.

I hit a wall.

That evening, I stepped out of the hotel for air. The city buzzed around me—traffic, laughter, the distant wail of an ambulance. Normal life, happening to normal people who'd never had their husbands try to murder them.

My phone—which I'd turned back on with a new SIM card—lit up with a news alert.

"Dominic Ashford Hospitalized After Wedding-Day Collapse."

I clicked the article.

Apparently, after I left him at the altar, Dominic had gone on a drinking binge and collapsed at the reception venue. The article described it as "acute stress and exhaustion," but the photo told a different story.

Dominic looked terrible. His face was gray, his eyes hollow, and there were dark marks on his neck that the article didn't explain.

I zoomed in on the photo, and my stomach turned.

The marks on his neck were the same pattern as the ones I'd seen on my own body in my last life—the ones that appeared in my final weeks, when I was wasting away in the hospital.

Serena's poison.

Was it possible that Serena wasn't just poisoning me in my last life? Was she poisoning Dominic, too?

I scrolled further down the article and found a quote from Serena herself.

"I'm devastated for Dominic. He's been through so much. I'll be by his side through this, no matter what. That's what real love looks like."

Her words made my skin crawl.

I knew that voice. I knew that playbook. She was positioning herself as the devoted caretaker while her victim wasted away.

In my last life, she'd done the exact same thing to me.

But here was the difference: in my last life, I didn't know what she was. Now I did.

I put my phone away and walked back to the hotel, my mind racing.

Dominic was a monster who'd married me to steal my father's work. But Serena was something worse—a predator who attached herself to powerful people, drained them dry, and moved on.

And right now, she thought I was out of the picture.

Good.

Let her think that.

I sat down at my laptop and opened a new document.

If I was going to take them both down, I needed a plan. And this time, I wasn't going to make a single move without proof.

I started typing.

Step 1: Crack NX-8.

Step 2: Publish under Lane Biotech—my father's name, my company.

Step 3: Expose Serena's theft of NX-7 using the tracker I planted.

Step 4: Destroy Ashford & Cross Pharmaceuticals.

I stared at the list for a long time.

Then I added one more line.

Step 5: Find out how my father really died.

Because if the Ashfords knew about NX-8 before I even found it... then maybe my father's "heart attack" wasn't natural after all.