Chapter 2

The disgust on Matthew's face hardened into something uglier. He crossed the space between us in two long strides, bringing with him that suffocating weight of his presence, and reached for my throat without the slightest care for whether he might crush it.

"That belongs to Yvonne. Give it back!"

But just before his fingers touched my skin, I stepped back and caught his wrist with my left hand, locking his thumb in my grip. With my right hand, I grabbed the high collar of my gown and yanked it downward with one brutal pull.

"You think this belongs to her?" The words tore out of me, raw and vicious, carrying the same desperate edge I had felt in the moment of my death in my last life.

The fabric fell away, and there it was, just below my left collarbone, exposed for everyone to see. A scar, black and twisted, coiled against my skin like a centipede.

This was no ordinary burn, but the permanent mark left by something heavy pressed into flesh and then seared by fire.

Matthew's hand stopped in mid-air, his expression shifting to one of pure shock as his breathing turned ragged and uneven.

"That scar," he whispered, his voice shaking in a way he clearly couldn't control.

He did remember it. Buried somewhere deep in his memory of that collapsed building, there had been a girl covered in blood who used her own body to keep him alive.

And across her chest was a scar just like this one, black and burned from a steel bar that should have gone through him instead.

"So tell me, Matthew," I said, advancing on him step by step, my voice crawling out like something dragged up from the underworld, "you keep claiming Yvonne is the one who saved you. So ask her. Ask her how I got this scar."

But before Matthew could even register what I was saying and before Yvonne's frantic sobs could reach his ears, the heavy rosewood doors at the banquet hall burst open.

Dozens of men in black suits poured inside, their faces cold and lethal, and fanned out across the room in a practiced formation that cleared the space with brutal efficiency.

The lively chatter that had filled the hall just moments ago vanished completely, crushed beneath an oppressive silence that fell over the entire room.

Matthew instinctively stepped in front of Yvonne, bracing himself for what he assumed was a business rival coming to pick a fight, and was already squaring his shoulders to pull rank as the president of Lane Holdings when the crowd parted.

A man walked through the opening, nearly sixty years old, but carrying himself like an unyielding mountain, his presence immense and commanding. It was Richard Reed, the richest man in Riverdale.

Matthew's composure cracked slightly as he moved forward to greet him. "Mr. Reed, I didn't expect you to..."

But Richard didn't even glance in his direction. In full view of everyone gathered there, the man who held Riverdale's entire economy in his iron grip turned to me with tears welling in his eyes, bent his spine, and lowered his head into a deep bow.

"Ms. Reed," he said. "I came too late. Please, let me take you home."

The hall fell completely silent, the only sound the crinkling of paper as Matthew crushed the annulment letter in his grip while he stood frozen in place like some ridiculous statue.

I reached out and let my fingers brush lightly across Richard's weathered hand, feeling the tremor that ran through him, that deep, instinctive vibration of blood recognizing blood.

"Let's go, Richard," I said, my voice flat and calm, as if none of the drama that had just unfolded had anything to do with me. "This place is filthy."

I took Richard's arm, and with dozens of bodyguards closing in around us, I walked slowly toward the doors. Every step I took against the carpet landed like a hammer blow against Matthew's already frayed nerves.

He just stood there, frozen, the annulment letter trembling in his hand as the cold air from the vents swept over it.

He had always seen me as nothing more than an orphan who clung to the Lane family, someone who breathed only by his permission. And in my past life, that belief had led him to use me as nothing but a source of blood and medicine for Yvonne.

But he had forgotten something.

He had forgotten who stood at the Reed Manor gates on that rainy night when Lane Holdings was on the verge of bankruptcy, and he had forgotten who spent six months pouring in one anonymous infusion of cash after another, pulling him back from the edge of ruin.

He had told himself it was just luck and some miracle had fallen out of the sky to save him.

Yvonne, watching the mood of the room shift against her, panicked. She reached for Matthew's sleeve. "Matthew, she must have hired an actor. There's no way Richard would actually..."

"Shut up." Matthew shoved her away so hard that she slammed into the corner of the dining table.

He didn't help her up. He didn't even look at her. Because right now, his mind was consumed entirely by that twisted black scar he had seen beneath my collar.

He had seen that scar countless times in his dreams. He had seen it when he was nothing more than a pitiful creature buried under rubble, listening to a girl groan in pain as she shielded him, feeling her warm blood drip onto his face.

Yvonne had shown him a scar once too, but hers had been nothing more than a thin scratch on sun-kissed skin, something she explained away with the passage of time and a bottle of scar cream.

Now the suspicion took root inside him like poison ivy, spreading through his mind with every passing second.

I settled into the back of that luxury car, and just as the window began to glide down, Matthew came charging toward me like a madman and grabbed the edge of the frame with both hands.

Through the glass, I could see the frantic red veins bleeding across his eyes and the first cracks forming in that unshakable confidence of his.

"Samantha," he growled, his voice hoarse and raw, "who the hell are you?"

I looked at him with no love left in my eyes, only the cold indifference of someone gazing down at an insect.

"Mr. Lane," I said, "this is only the beginning. Every bone you took from me, I'm going to make you pull out with your own hands and give back."

The window rolled up and sealed his pale face behind the glass. As the lights of Lane Tower blurred into the distance behind me, I knew that my revenge had only just turned its first page.