Chapter 4

The recording came to an abrupt end.

Samuel's face drained to a ghostly white, and for the first time, I saw a crack in that unshakable sense of control he always carried. His eyes widened, betraying the panic beneath the surface. "Where... where did you get that?"

"If you don't want people to find out what you've done, then don't do it in the first place." I stepped toward him slowly, each click of my heels against the tile floor landing with deliberate weight, as if every step was pressing down directly on his heart.

I looked him straight in the eye and said, "Tell me, Samuel. If this recording somehow made its way to the board of directors or to the media, just how much do you think Hart Enterprises' stock would drop?

"Would your grandfather, the man who cares more about reputation than anything else, still let you sit comfortably in that seat as his heir? And that perfect, devoted image you've been so careful to craft? How long do you think that would hold up?"

This was the kind of strike that hits exactly where it hurts.

A man like Samuel has never truly loved anything but his own gain. Lily was nothing more than a fleeting diversion in his otherwise tedious game of power, a prop designed to sell the illusion of a man capable of deep feeling.

But threaten his core interests, and he becomes more practical than anyone.

Sure enough, the fury in his eyes began to fade, replaced by something far more measured: a calculating look, and with it, a wariness I had never seen from him before.

"What do you want?" He took a slow, steadying breath and slipped back into the cool, shrewd demeanor of a seasoned businessman. "If this is about money, we can talk. Don't do anything foolish, Nina. Walk away from me, and you're nothing."

"All the shares you stole from Grant Holdings," I said, closing the distance between us until I was standing close enough to see the cold sweat still beading on his forehead from the pain. "And..."

I raised my hand and brought it down with every ounce of strength I had accumulated over two lifetimes, striking him across the face so hard that the crack of the slap echoed through the room.

The slap landed with tremendous force, leaving my own palm tingling and numb, while Samuel's head whipped to the side as his cheek swelled into an angry red welt and a thin line of blood appeared at the corner of his lips.

A heavy silence fell over the room, so absolute that you could hear every breath drawn in that blood collection station, and even the nurse by the door had frozen with her hand pressed over her mouth in shock.

Samuel turned his head back slowly, his eyes dark with a murderous intensity as he ran his tongue along the inside of his cheek and tasted the blood. "Nina, did you just hit me?"

"That one was from the pathetic fool I used to be, the one you had completely fooled for years."

I pulled a wet wipe from my bag and began cleaning my fingers with unhurried precision, as though I had just touched something utterly revolting, then crumpled it into a ball and tossed it onto his face.

"I'll have my lawyer send you the settlement agreement. Don't push me on this, Samuel. I've got nothing left to lose, and if you force my hand, we can both go down in flames together."

With that, I turned and walked away.

"Nina!" His voice chased after me, raw with rage but carrying an undertone I had never heard from him before, something almost like fear.

"You walk out that door, and don't you ever think about coming back! If anything happens to Lily, I swear I will bury the entire Grant family right alongside her."

I didn't slow my pace or bother to look back. I simply raised one hand over my shoulder and gave him my middle finger. "Then let's find out who ends up burying whom."

The moment I stepped through the hospital gates, the sky opened up in a torrential downpour. The rain lashed against my face with a stinging intensity, but instead of pain, it brought me a clarity I had never known before.

I pulled out my phone and stared at the unfamiliar number on the screen, a contact I had only discovered at the very end of my previous life, in the moments before I died.

There was a short message: [If you want to win, come find me.]

The address led to Night Club, the most exclusive and notorious playground in Westwick.

It was Edward Pierce's territory.

In my past life, the only reason Samuel had managed to swallow up the Grant family's empire was that Edward had suddenly withdrawn from the game at the most crucial moment.

And as the saying goes, the enemy of my enemy has the potential to be a very useful ally.

I tightened my grip on the phone until my knuckles went white.

This was a reckless gamble, to say the least. If I won, I could use Edward's power to crush Samuel and Lily into dust. And if I lost...

I thought back to the cold, sterile sensation of lying on that operating table in my past life.

What does someone who has already died once really have to lose?