Chapter 1Serena was still crying.
"Nora, I swear I didn't mean it," she sobbed, her voice trembling between broken breaths. "I only had too much to drink. I don't even know how Lucas and I…"
Before she could finish, she grabbed the small fruit knife from the room-service tray.
A few people gasped.
"I'm sorry," she cried, pressing the dull edge near her wrist. "I betrayed my own sister. I don't deserve to live."
I had barely come back to myself when Lucas Arden crossed the suite.
"I'll marry you."
His voice was calm.
Serena froze.
I turned to look at him.
His eyes were different from the last time.
In my previous life, Lucas had stood in the corner for a long time, silent and reluctant, before finally giving in. This time, he did not hesitate at all.
My heart sank.
He remembered too.
"Lucas…" Serena stared at him, stunned.
"You don't have to do this." Lucas gently took the knife from her hand and set it on the table. "I'll marry you. I owe you that much."
For two seconds, the hotel suite went silent.
Then a cold voice came from the hallway.
"You owe her?"
Graham West stepped out from around the corner, his expression dark. He walked to Serena's other side and looked straight at Lucas.
"I'm the one engaged to Serena," he said. "If you want to marry her, shouldn't you ask me first?"
Lucas frowned. "Graham, this has nothing to do with you."
"Nothing to do with me?" Graham gave a short laugh. "Our engagement was announced to half of New York last month. You show up in her suite this morning, and now you're offering to marry her. How exactly is that none of my business?"
Lucas's face hardened.
"The engagement can be called off."
"That isn't your decision."
The two men stood facing each other with Serena between them, pale and trembling as if she were the only victim in the room.
That was when I understood.
Graham remembered too.
In my last life, he had married me after the engagement switch. We spent five years under the same roof, cold and resentful, barely more than strangers.
He rarely looked at me unless he was drunk.
Whenever he was, he would sit alone in his study, staring at Serena's photograph like a man mourning the life he should have had.
After Serena died, he lost control and went after Lucas. Later, when I fell from the rooftop at my own birthday party, both of them stood at my grave and cried about making it up to me in the next life.
Now the next life had come.
And here they were, fighting over Serena again.
"Serena," Graham said, lowering his voice as he looked at her. "Our engagement is still in place. You choose."
Lucas looked at her too, his tone just as firm.
"Serena, I'll marry you. I mean it."
---
Chapter 2
Serena hesitated for a long time.
Lucas stood on her left, heir to Arden Media, a man raised among studio lots, streaming deals, and red-carpet scandals.
Graham stood on her right, a partner at one of New York's most aggressive healthcare investment funds, the kind of man who could make or bury a biotech startup with a single term sheet.
Either one of them was powerful enough to turn a scandal into a marriage arrangement.
Serena lowered her eyes first.
"I'm sorry, Graham," she whispered, her voice shaking. "Lucas and I… we already crossed that line."
Tears slid down her face.
"I can only choose Lucas."
Graham did not speak.
His expression looked as if someone had slapped him in public.
"I'm sorry," Serena said again. "I'm truly sorry."
As she spoke, she backed toward me. Before I could move, she grabbed my wrist and forced my hand into Graham's.
"Graham," she said quickly, "Nora is wonderful. Marry her instead. Let that be my way of making this right."
My hand was pressed into Graham's palm.
The next second, he pulled away as if I had burned him.
He frowned, rubbing his fingers against his trousers, the disgust in his eyes too obvious to hide.
I yanked my hand free.
"Why?"
My voice was not loud, but everyone in the suite went quiet.
I looked at Serena and asked slowly, "Why do you get to choose, while I'm supposed to accept whoever you hand me to?"
Serena froze.
"Nora, I'm doing this for you—"
"No. You're doing it for yourself."
Her face went pale.
I turned to Graham.
"Mr. West, you don't have to look like someone just dumped a bad investment into your portfolio. I'm not marrying you."
Then I turned and walked out.
I did not stop until I reached the stairwell.
The air inside was cold and smelled faintly of cleaning supplies. I leaned against the wall and forced myself to breathe.
About ten minutes later, the door opened.
Lucas walked in.
"Nora," he said. "You remember too, don't you?"
I did not deny it.
He was silent for a moment.
Then he said, "Marry Graham."
I opened my eyes.
Lucas looked at me with the calm cruelty of a man who had already made his choice.
"Stop waiting for me," he said. "In my last life, I married Serena, and those five years were the happiest years I ever had."
His voice did not waver.
"I don't regret choosing her."
For a second, I thought it would hurt.
It didn't.
Something in me had already gone cold.
"I understand."
He reached for my shoulder, but I stepped back before his hand could settle.
"Lucas Arden," I said, looking at him clearly, "I came back once. I'm not wasting this life loving you again."
His expression stiffened.
I opened the stairwell door, then glanced back at him.
"Congratulations to you and my sister. I hope you get exactly what you want."
---
Chapter 3
After that day, I stopped looking back.
Lucas and Serena could have their love story. Graham could keep his disgust. I had wasted one lifetime being chosen, traded, and ignored. I would not waste another.
In my last life, I had nearly finished a clinical-data platform for early cancer detection before the marriage swap forced me out of the lab. Later, another team built on my work and took the credit.
Not this time.
I sold what I could, cashed out a small family investment account, and founded AsterDx, a diagnostics startup no one took seriously at first.
I hired people the big companies had overlooked: a computational biologist, a medical-AI engineer, and a clinical coordinator who knew how hospital systems really worked. I gave them good pay, equity, and one promise.
No one's work would be stolen here.
Within a year, our validation data drew investors. Within eighteen months, three major hospitals signed pilot agreements. When AsterDx received FDA Breakthrough Device designation, the health-tech world finally paid attention.
The launch was streamed from a medical innovation summit in Boston.
I stood onstage in a white suit and explained the platform: biopsy images, genetic markers, lab results, and family history, all used to identify high-risk patients earlier than standard screening.
When I finished, applause filled the room.
A reporter asked why I had chosen this field.
I smiled.
"Because in my last life, someone told me to give it up. I decided to correct that mistake."
The audience laughed, thinking I was joking.
I wasn't.
By that night, AsterDx was everywhere.
Someone later told me Graham watched the livestream from his office and sat staring at the screen long after it ended.
Less than a week later, his assistant came to see me.
"Mr. West would like to discuss a strategic partnership."
I did not look up from my report.
"I'm not available."
The next day, she returned with a folder.
The offer was generous: funding, hospital-network access, regulatory support, distribution channels, and international expansion.
Then I reached the last page.
Under Strategic Family Alliance, there was a marriage proposal.
I almost laughed.
Of course.
Men like Graham did not apologize with words. They apologized with contracts, leverage, and terms that still benefited them.
Still, I agreed to meet him.
When Graham entered my office, he looked nothing like the man in the hotel suite. Back then, he had looked at me with disgust. In my last life, he had mostly looked through me.
Now he looked at me with interest.
"Nora," he said. "You've changed."
I understood him then.
Graham West had not suddenly fallen for me.
He had finally seen my value.
"Mr. West," I said, tapping the folder. "Did you bring the revised contract?"
He set the documents on my desk.
I read every page.
Halfway through, Graham said, "I was wrong about you."
I kept reading.
"In our last life, I shouldn't have ignored you. This time, I'd like to know you properly."
I looked up.
"This meeting is about business."
"I know."
"No, Graham. I need you to understand." I turned to the final page and picked up a pen. "I'm not marrying you because I believe in second chances."
His expression tightened.
I wrote a new clause beneath the alliance terms.
"First, we sign a prenup."
Graham glanced down.
"My patents stay mine. AsterDx equity goes into my private trust. You can invest and receive returns, but you don't control my board, my data, my team, or my product roadmap."
"You're protecting yourself from me."
"I'm protecting myself from anyone who thinks marrying me gives them ownership of my life."
He fell silent.
I added one final line.
"If you interfere with operations or pressure my team, the penalty clause activates immediately: full divestment, damages, and public disclosure."
Graham looked at the contract for a long moment.
Then he signed.
So did I.
When I held out my hand, he took it. His grip was warm and controlled, lingering a second too long.
"Fiancée," he said, voice low. "I suppose we'll be working closely from now on."
For one breath, I saw the man from my last life—the one I had shared a house with for five years and never truly known.
Then I pulled my hand back.
"Investor," I corrected. "Don't forget your place."
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