Chapter 1

The stale smell of burnt coffee and dread hung in the air. I knew this smell. I knew this moment.

I was reborn on the worst night of my life.

The final, all-night document review for the Thompson-Sterling merger. A billion-dollar deal hanging by the thread of a midnight filing deadline.

Last time, this night destroyed me.

My husband, Mark, the senior partner leading the case, abandoned his post. He ran to his intern mistress, Chloe, after I scolded her for spilling coffee near the original signed agreements.

Their negligence, their affair, made us miss the deadline. The merger collapsed. Mr. Thompson, our biggest client, was ruined.

They pinned it all on me.

They said I maliciously hid the key documents. I was disbarred. I was sued into nothing. I died poor and alone.

Mark and Chloe, protected by her powerful family, took over the firm and thrived.

Now, I was back. The clock on the wall showed 8:00 PM. Four hours until the deadline. Four hours to change everything.

"Oh my god, I am so, so sorry!"

Chloe' s shrill voice cut through the tense silence of the conference room. A dark stain was spreading across the priceless, irreplaceable signature page of the merger agreement.

I stood up slowly, my heart a cold, hard stone in my chest.

I looked at Chloe, the entitled intern who was barely qualified to fetch coffee, let alone work on a case this big.

"Chloe, these are original documents. You cannot be this careless."

My voice was low and steady, a stark contrast to the chaos of my previous life.

Chloe's face crumpled. "I didn't mean to! It was an accident!"

"An accident with billion-dollar consequences," I said, my eyes locking with hers. "You need to be more professional."

Tears welled up in her eyes. She threw the now-empty coffee mug onto the table with a clatter and stormed out of the room.

Mark immediately shot up from his chair, his face a mask of fury directed at me. "Sarah! What the hell was that for? You made her cry!"

"She almost destroyed the signature page, Mark. We have a deadline."

"It's just a piece of paper!" he hissed. "She's upset. I need to go to her."

He started for the door, abandoning the piles of documents, the anxious junior associates, and me.

Just like last time.

But this time, I wouldn't let it happen. I stepped in front of him, blocking his path.

"You can't leave," I stated, my voice firm. "The filing is in less than four hours. Mr. Thompson's entire company, his legacy, is on the line. This is your responsibility."

Mark sneered, his handsome face twisted with arrogance. "My responsibility is to my team. Chloe is part of my team, and she's distressed."

"She's an intern who can't handle a simple task without causing a disaster. I am your senior paralegal and your wife. And this is your case. You stay here and finish it."

He looked at me as if I were a stranger, a nuisance. The love we once shared was a distant, faded memory, replaced by his ambition and his infatuation with a girl half his age.

"Get out of my way, Sarah."

As he spoke, his phone buzzed. It was Chloe. He answered it instantly, his voice softening into a concerned murmur.

"Chloe, baby, what's wrong? I'm coming right now."

I could hear her hysterical sobbing through the phone, even from a few feet away. Then, her voice rose, sharp and manipulative.

"If you don't come to me this second, Mark, I'm going to the clinic. I'll get rid of it. I swear I will!"

Mark' s face went pale. He looked from his phone back to me, his eyes filled with a terrifying mix of panic and rage.

He shoved me. Hard.

I stumbled backward, hitting the edge of the heavy conference table. A sharp pain shot through my hip. The junior associates gasped.

Mark didn't even glance back.

"The firm has malpractice insurance for a reason," he spat out, his voice dripping with venom. "Chloe needs me."

Then he was gone, leaving a stunned silence and the wreckage of his duties behind him.

I took a deep breath, pushing the pain in my hip and my heart aside. I looked at the shocked faces of the junior team members. They were looking at me, lost and scared.

This was my chance.

"He's not coming back," I said, my voice ringing with an authority they had never heard from me before. "But we are not going to fail. I'm taking the lead. We are going to get this done."

I walked to the head of the table, to the seat Mark had abandoned.

"Let's get to work."