Anita George died on a Thursday.
Not metaphorically. Not symbolically.
Her heart stopped. Her breath ceased. Her powerful body, the same one that had commanded boardrooms and broken glass ceilings, lay still on the cold marble floor of her office.
Poison. Slow, elegant. The kind only someone close could slip past her defenses.
Marcus had made sure of that.
She had felt it in the final seconds—the weight of truth pressing on her chest harder than death itself. The betrayal. The manipulation. The way he looked at her, not with grief, but with satisfaction.
The empire she built.
The love she thought she had.
All of it—shattered.
Then came the dark.
Not pain.
Not fear.
Just… silence.
And then, a voice. Gentle. Final.
"You were given power. You forgot to guard your soul."
She wanted to speak. To scream. To beg.
But the voice offered no judgment.
Only one question:
"Do you want to live again?"
She didn't answer with words. Only will.
And then—
Light.
**
She gasped.
The air smelled of champagne and ambition.
She blinked.
She wasn't on a hospital bed. She was standing—in heels—on plush hotel carpet.
Music drifted in. Ice clinked in glasses. Laughter echoed across a marble ballroom.
She looked down at herself. The same black dress. The same earrings.
The Langham.
The mixer.
Her fingers trembled as she lifted a flute of untouched champagne from the tray of a passing waiter.
She turned—and there he was.
Marcus Delaney.
In the corner, brows furrowed over a dossier, tie askew.
Exactly as he had been.
Exactly as she remembered.
Except now, she saw it all differently.
Not a meet-cute.
Not fate.
The beginning of the end.
Anita George didn't blink. Didn't flinch.