Chapter 1

The clock on the wall of the military hospital's maternity ward read 11:40 p.m.

In less than two hours, Mary Lynn, the head nurse, a woman my family's enemies had bought off, would slip into the locked delivery room and switch me with their daughter.

She didn't only steal my place as the heiress to a powerful military family.

She planted that false daughter inside my home like a ticking bomb, someone who would tear us apart from within until none of us drew another breath.

In my previous life, she succeeded.

I clawed my way up from the gutter for twenty-five years. By the time I uncovered the truth, my parents and brothers had already died brutal deaths, caught in the enemy's web.

I never had the chance to speak. They silenced me, weighed me down, and sent me to the cold, dark bottom of the river.

But I came back.

I stood guard at the gates of Wrathom, the underworld fortress, for thirty years. I burned every last bit of my soul's credit to buy this one chance to be reborn, to return.

I came back to protect my family. I came back to make every last one of them pay in blood.

*****

The delivery room lights blazed white. I hung upside down in someone's hands, and a sharp slap landed on my backside.

The crying was pure instinct, but my mind was razor-sharp.

The memory of those thirty years in Wrathom hadn't faded. In fact, the moment I returned to this body, everything came rushing back.

A round clock hung on the wall. The second hand ticked forward.

11:40 p.m. I remembered this exact time.

In my previous life, this was the moment I was born.

At 1:30 a.m., Mary would use a spare key to unlock the delivery room, which was locked from the inside, take me, and swap me for another newborn girl.

That baby was Hannah Quinn.

The Quinns were my father Richard Sinclair's sworn enemies. Their feud went back to the Aurorican War and had lasted thirty years.

George Quinn, the head of the family, had his conviction overturned in 1978 and returned to Centroval.

On the surface, he played nicely with my father. Behind the scenes, he was weaving a trap.

The baby swap was only the first move.

Hannah grew up as a Sinclair. At eighteen, she married the son of the deputy chief of military logistics.

At twenty-three, she got the combination to my father's safe. At twenty-five, she handed over my father's entire network of allies to George.

When Hannah was twenty-seven, my father died in a staged training accident. Three months later, my mother died of grief.

My oldest brother, James, was killed in a car crash while investigating our father's death.

My second brother, Alex, was framed for embezzlement, sentenced to fifteen years, and didn't survive his third year in prison.

I was the real daughter of the Sinclairs, but I spent my days in a shabby apartment in the slums, mending strangers' clothes for a few coins without knowing my own name.

It wasn't until I turned twenty-five that a drunken old nurse looked at me in the market and mumbled, "You look like Mrs. Sinclair when she was young."

I followed that thread for three months. I tracked down Mary, the Quinns, and the woman who had taken my place, Hannah.

And then I died.

George's men caught me at the mouth of my alley. One of them cracked my skull with a metal pipe, stuffed me in a sack, and threw me in the river.

I was still breathing when I sank. The feeling of river water flooding my lungs was something I would never forget.

The clock ticked to 11:41. I stopped crying and opened my eyes.

Three people were in the room. My mother, Margaret, lay pale and unconscious on the delivery bed, having endured six hours of hard labor.

The doctor was Zoe Carter, deputy director of the obstetrics department. She was the wife of one of my father's old subordinates, someone I could trust.

And there was a young nurse I didn't recognize.

Zoe cleaned me, wrapped me in a blanket, and placed me in the bassinet beside my mother. "Mother and baby are fine," she said. "Notify Mr. Sinclair."

The young nurse nodded and left. The door clicked shut.

Zoe checked on my mother, made a few notes on her chart, and turned to leave.

I couldn't let her go. I opened my mouth and screamed with everything I had.

Zoe stopped and looked back at me. "What's wrong? You were fine a second ago."

She walked over, felt my forehead, and listened to my chest. "Everything seems normal."

I wailed until my face turned purple.

Zoe frowned, picked me up, and gently patted my back.

I kept crying. It was 11:45. I had an hour and forty-five minutes left.

I had to make sure Zoe stayed in this delivery room at least until dawn.