Chapter 1

The system overload alarm shrieked, a high-pitched sound that cut through the sterile air of the lab. Sparks flew from the console in front of Ava Reed, the light from the monitors flickering wildly across her pale face. Her own algorithm, the one she called a miracle cure, was dying.

And it was taking her with it.

Across the room, Liam Thorne watched, his face a mask of cold fury. He didn't care that her system was crashing, that her life was tied to it. All he cared about was the corrupted data of his lost love, Chloe Davies.

"Bring her back, Ava! You said your algorithm could heal anything!" he had screamed just moments before.

"It can fix systems, Liam, not resurrect data that's been corrupted for a year!" she had cried, tears streaming down her face as she fought to stabilize the cascading failure. Her head pounded, and a sharp pain shot through her chest.

"You ruined everything," Liam's voice was a low growl, devoid of any human warmth. "If it weren't for you, Chloe would have finished her AI, and we would have built an empire. You owe me this."

He had forced her to do this, to push her unique healing algorithm past its limits, to try and retrieve the ghost of a project Chloe had sabotaged herself out of jealous rage. A rage sparked by a stupid, archaic Thorne family tradition: whoever fixed Liam's paralyzed system had to marry him. Ava had fixed it. She had been naive, so desperate for validation, so eager to prove her genius. She thought it would be her big break. Instead, it became her prison.

The final alarm blared, a long, flat tone. The screens went black. The pain in Ava' s chest exploded, and darkness consumed her. It was a cold, empty void.

Then, she gasped.

Her eyes shot open.

She wasn't in her lab. She was in a lavish, opulent room, all white leather and chrome. Sunlight streamed through a floor-to-ceiling window, overlooking a sprawling, manicured garden. The air smelled of expensive cleaner and fresh-cut flowers.

And sitting in a high-tech wheelchair in the center of the room was Liam Thorne. He looked younger, his face etched with frustration and gloom, but not yet twisted by the obsessive grief that would later define him.

Ava knew this day. She knew this room. This was the day it all began. The day the Thorne family had brought her here, the brilliant but reclusive tech genius, to fix the system that controlled Liam' s mobility, a system that had been critically damaged.

His mother, the elegant and desperate Mrs. Thorne, stood beside him, her hands clasped tightly.

"Miss Reed," Mrs. Thorne said, her voice strained with forced politeness. "We are so glad you could come. As we discussed, my son Liam's... condition is a matter of a complex system malfunction. We've been told you are the only one who can help."

In her past life, Ava had looked at the powerful, arrogant man in the wheelchair and felt a thrill of challenge, a desire to prove herself. She had poured her heart and soul into fixing his system.

This time, Ava looked at Liam Thorne, at the man who would watch her die without a flicker of remorse, and a faint, knowing smile touched her lips. It was a smile that didn't reach her eyes.

"Mr. Thorne," she said, her voice clear and steady.

She took a step closer, circling the wheelchair as if inspecting a piece of broken hardware. She didn't even glance at the diagnostic readouts displayed on a nearby screen. She already knew them by heart.

"I've reviewed the preliminary data."

She stopped directly in front of him, meeting his dark, impatient gaze.

"Your system is beyond repair."

Liam' s jaw tightened. "What did you say?"

"I said," Ava repeated, enunciating each word with chilling precision, "it's a catastrophic failure. The core matrix is fractured. No one can fix it."

Liam' s hand shot out and he swept a stack of data pads off a nearby table. They clattered to the floor with a loud crash.

"Incompetent! They told me you were a genius! Are you telling me you can't do what you're famous for?" he roared, his face turning a dark shade of red. His powerlessness made him lash out, a trapped animal in a gilded cage.

Ava didn't flinch. She simply watched him, her expression calm, almost pitying.

"I am a genius, Mr. Thorne. Which is how I know an unsalvageable wreck when I see one. You can hire every tech in the world. They will all tell you the same thing, if they' re being honest."

She turned to leave.

"Miss Reed, wait!" Mrs. Thorne rushed after her, grabbing her arm. Her carefully composed face was cracking, revealing the raw desperation beneath. "Please. Name your price. Anything. My son... he can't stay like this."

Ava gently removed Mrs. Thorne's hand from her arm. She looked at the woman who, in another life, would stand by and let her son destroy Ava for the ghost of another woman.

"Some things, Mrs. Thorne, are not about money," Ava said softly.

As she walked out of the grand mansion and into the bright sunlight, Ava felt a weight lift from her soul. She could hear Liam's muffled shouts of fury behind her. Let him shout.

She knew the truth. His system could be fixed. Her algorithm could do it. But she also knew what would happen if she did. She knew about the family tradition, the forced marriage, the jealousy of Chloe Davies.

And she knew Chloe was already working on her own "cure" for Liam-a dangerous, untested AI that she believed would not only fix his system but also cement her place by his side forever. In the last life, Chloe had abandoned it out of jealousy. In this life, without Ava in the picture, she would surely try to use it.

Liam, in his arrogance, would let her. He would believe in his childhood sweetheart's "love" over sound science. He would let her plug that unstable code into his already-damaged system. And it would destroy him completely.

Ava smiled. It was a genuine smile this time.

Just as she reached her car, her phone buzzed. It was an unknown number. She answered.

"Is this Ava Reed?" a man's voice asked. It was calm, deep, and carried an undercurrent of authority.

"It is."

"My name is Noah Hayes. I was told you might be able to help me. My system was damaged in the same incident as Liam Thorne's."

Ava froze for a second. Noah Hayes. Liam's biggest rival. A tech innovator known for his integrity and sharp mind. In her past life, he had faded into the background after the accident, his company slowly losing ground to the Thorne empire she had helped build.

The path of her past life was a dead end. But now, a new path was opening up right in front of her.