Chapter 1

My husband, Mark Reynolds, was dead.

The funeral home director spoke to me in a low, respectful voice, but the words just floated around my head. All I could focus on was the document in my hand, a notice from a collections agency.

It said Mark owed five million dollars.

Five million.

We were always broke, always struggling. Mark worked odd jobs, I worked a soul-crushing office job, and we could barely make rent on our tiny two-bedroom apartment. Now he was dead, and he had left me with a debt that was impossible to pay.

My best friend, Jessica Miller, put her arm around my shoulder.

"Liv, you can' t do this," she said, her voice full of concern. "You have to renounce the inheritance. You can' t take on this debt. Think about Leo."

I looked at my five-year-old son, Leo, who was holding my hand, his big eyes confused and sad.

This was the moment. The exact moment it all went wrong before.

In my previous life, I listened to her.

I was terrified, overwhelmed, and Jessica was my rock, my only friend in the world. I trusted her completely when she guided me through the legal process, helping me sign the papers that renounced everything connected to Mark-his name, his assets, and his debt.

It was the biggest mistake of my life.

Three weeks later, the debt collectors came for me anyway. They didn't care about the law. They said if I couldn't pay the money, I would pay with my son.

I can still feel the cold terror of that day, the way my heart stopped when they dragged a screaming Leo out of my arms.

A week after that, a small, bloody box arrived at my doorstep. Inside was a single, tiny finger bone. They told me it was a down payment.

I lost my mind. I screamed until my throat was raw, but it didn't bring him back.

The police found his small body a month later.

After that, my life ended too. The same men who killed my son sold me. I was drugged, shipped across the world, and ended up in a hellhole in Myanmar, a place where hope went to die.

It was there, years later, while cleaning the room of a wealthy client, that I saw a financial news report on a small television.

The screen showed a picture of Mark. Not the Mark I knew, the man in worn-out jeans who claimed he couldn't afford a new pair of shoes. This was a different Mark, dressed in a tailored suit, smiling confidently. The headline identified him as the mysterious, low-profile founder of the Reynolds Group, a multi-billion-dollar global conglomerate.

The report was about the settlement of his estate.

The reporter said his vast fortune, estimated in the tens of billions, was being passed on to his sole heir.

My heart pounded in my chest, a sick, frantic rhythm. My heir? Leo was dead. Was it me?

Then they showed the heir. A young boy, standing next to his mother.

The mother was Jessica Miller.

The boy was her son, Ethan.

They were a family. Mark, my best friend, and their son. My entire life, my poverty, my husband's "debt," it was all a lie. A sick game they played. Jessica had convinced me to renounce the inheritance so that her son, Mark's illegitimate child, could claim everything. The debt was a tool to scare me away, and the ruthless collectors were just part of her plan. She had sacrificed my son for money.

The rage and grief consumed me. It was a fire that burned away everything until there was nothing left. I found a way to end my own life in that filthy, humid room, my last thought filled with a burning, impotent hatred for the woman who destroyed me.

I would give anything, my soul, an eternity in hell, for a chance to do it over.

To make her pay.

And then, I opened my eyes.

The sterile, floral scent of the funeral home filled my nose. The low hum of quiet grief was all around me. My son, Leo, was alive, his small, warm hand clutching mine tightly.

And Jessica was standing right in front of me, her face a perfect mask of concern.

"Liv, you can' t do this," she said. "You have to renounce the inheritance. Think about Leo."

It was the same day. The same moment.

This time, I would not make the same mistake. This time, I would claim what was mine and my son's.

I would burn her world to the ground.