Rewriting Our Tragic Fate

"Go to hell!" my husband and I screamed, our toxic hatred filling the car while our fiveyearold autistic son sat dead silent in the back.

Ten years of marriage, completely shredded by the agonizing toll of his illness. We went from perfect soulmates to bitter enemies. Then came the blinding headlights.

A massive, outofcontrol semitruck barreled straight into our lane.

Going against every human survival instinct, Victor yanked the steering wheel hard right, throwing his side of the car directly into the path of destruction.

The deafening crunch of shattering metal swallowed our final curses. I gasped, my eyes snapping open. No blood. No twisted steel. Only the deafening roar of a cheering crowd.

I was standing on the champion's podium at our college debate tournament.

In my previous life, today was the exact day Victor and I shared a passionate, public kiss right on this very stage. But now, I turned my head. My eyes locked onto his.

The violent flinch of his shoulders and the dark, haunted shock in his pupils told me everything. He had been reborn, too.

Without a single word, we both took a definitive step back, putting cold space between us. In this life, stay the hell away from me.

Chapter 1 Before the car crash, Victor and I had been screaming at each other for miles. It was our son's birthday.

We took him to Universal Studios, and just like always, it was an absolute disaster. Victor and I gritted our teeth, trying to guide him.

We just wanted him to show a single ounce of interest in this vibrant world, like normal kids did.

Instead, he spent the entire trip either staring blankly into space or trapped in endless, earpiercing shrieks. We were already numb to the stares.

The judgmental whispers of strangers meant nothing anymore. Then came lunch. I stood at the counter to order while Victor went to grab a table.

We both assumed Theo was with the other. When I carried the food over, the reality hit us—he was gone. We scrambled, alerting park security and tearing the place apart.

The sun had almost set when we finally found him locked inside a cramped stall in a nursing room. He was clutching a stray puppy against his chest, refusing to let go.

Exhaustion and despair shattered my remaining sanity. Ignoring my son's frantic screams, I roughly tore the puppy from his grip.

Losing my grip on reality, I slammed my designer bag onto the hard floor. The sound of shattering makeup and cracking plastic echoed through the small room.

It was the first time my fiveyearold had ever seen me snap like a maniac. Even though his illness trapped him in another world, he still understood fear.

He stared blankly at the shattered mess at my feet, his voice completely dying in his throat. He never made another sound. On the drive back, Theo was unnervingly quiet.

He didn't shriek. But Victor started tearing into me.

He kept his eyes fixed on the road. "You shouldn't have lost it like that." I turned to him, my voice completely dead. "The thing I shouldn't have done was give birth to him." The fight exploded.

We weaponized our sharpest words, viciously stabbing at each other's deepest insecurities. Every sacrifice, every failure.

We ripped open a decade of regrets, proving exactly how much we wished this marriage had never happened. Eventually, Victor fell into his usual, suffocating silence.

I stared at the boy in the rearview mirror, my nails digging deeply into my palms. "Sometimes, I really wish he was just a dog." So, standing on this tournament podium again, one look at Victor was all it took.

The rigid tension in his jaw. The way his pupils dilated before he violently averted his gaze. We were both back.

Acting purely on instinct, we stepped away from each other, severing the invisible tie. In this life, no romance. No marriage.

And absolutely no bringing a sick child into this world.

But nearly everyone at the university knew the unspoken rule: Juliette and Victor from the law school were a match made in heaven. It started on freshman movein day.

A scammer had sneaked onto campus posing as a telecom rep, hustling students into signing fake phone contracts. Victor and I both got caught in the crossfire.

He immediately stepped up, dismantling the guy's pitch, and I didn't hesitate to back him up. Victor brought the raw power and flawless logic.

I brought the sass, hitting the scammer with sharp, relentless comebacks from every angle. The crowd of freshmen watched in absolute awe.

That was the very first time we ever crossed paths. Later, we both joined the varsity debate team. He was the opener; I was the third speaker.

We were so terrifyingly good at arguing that the shady food vendors just outside campus would automatically reset their rigged scales the second they saw us walking up.

Junior year, we practically lived together preparing for the national tournament.

We drafted speeches side by side, mercilessly crossexamined each other, and pulled endless allnighters in the student union.

Once, I was so dead on my feet that I shoved three plastic chairs together and passed out. Victor sat next to me the entire night, quietly swatting away mosquitoes so I could sleep.

Our teammates started laying down bets on who would confess first. Victor and I just exchanged knowing looks. We had already planned the ultimate prank.

Win or lose, the second the final buzzer rang, we were going to reach right past Connor—our second speaker—and kiss each other in front of the entire auditorium.

But in this second life, standing under the bright stage lights, we were nothing but strangers.

Chapter 2 Facing the roaring crowd demanding our planned kiss, I leaned into the microphone.

A perfect, icy smile stretched across my face. "I really want to thank Victor for his support and help along the way.

Here's to a longlasting friendship!" A wave of disappointed groans washed over the auditorium. After a beat, Victor nodded rigidly, his hands coming together in a slow, stiff clap.

The tension finally broke. The tournament ended. Life snapped back to its rigid tracks.

The bar exam, prepping for grad school abroad… In our last life, Victor and I even applied to the exact same overseas law program.

We navigated a foreign country together, relying on each other, falling deeper into a suffocatingly tight bond. But in this life, I slammed the brakes.

The connection was completely severed. Our friends practically cornered us every other day on campus. "What's the deal with you two?

A lovers' spat?" "Come on, there's nothing you guys can't talk out!" "With your history, if you don't end up together, no one at the university will even dare to date either of you.

They'd feel like a total homewrecker!" "Seriously, I literally dreamt about your wedding last week!" "A wedding? Please, I dreamt they had a baby and I was the godmother!

Haha, I bet their kid would be a total genius and insanely gorgeous. With those genes?

Untouchable!" Victor and I stood there, forcing polite smiles while our nails dug mercilessly into our palms. Because we did get married. We did have that kid.

He was a beautiful baby. He had my face shape, but his features were an exact, carbon copy of Victor's.

Whenever we bumped into old college friends on the street, they instantly knew he was ours without us saying a word. We named him Theo.

A name that meant a divine gift, meant to understand the world. But we eventually learned the crushing truth. He understood absolutely nothing.

Victor and I had both graduated at the absolute top of our high schools. We dominated the rankings at the country's most elite law school.

Naturally, we just assumed our child would inherit that same untouchable intellect. At first, he delivered. He started talking at ten months.

By his first birthday, he was walking and babbling in two languages. No matter the milestone, he crushed it faster than any kid his age. We thought we had bred a prodigy.

Then came his second birthday. The words stopped. Eventually, he wouldn't even call out for mom or dad.

At the playground, while the other toddlers ran around screaming and playing, he sat completely isolated in the dirt.

His vacant eyes locked obsessively onto the spinning wheels of passing cars. Victor and I dragged him to every top specialist across the country and overseas.

We sat in sterile white rooms until a doctor handed us the final, suffocating sentence. Autism Spectrum Disorder. Regressive autism.

The flawless, highspeed trajectory of our lives slammed into a concrete wall. For him, I was forced to box up my office at the law firm. I became a stayathome mom.

My life plunged from the sharp, adrenalinefueled battleground of the courtroom straight into the sterile, padded rooms of therapy centers.

Every morning, I opened my eyes to a child who couldn't communicate, followed by endless, draining behavioral interventions. My identity was stripped away.

I went from being Juliette the lawyer to just Theo's mom. Victor, crushed by the mounting medical bills, had to quit his comfortable, laidback job as a university professor.

He pivoted to becoming a fulltime corporate litigator, working until he was a ghost in his own house. But as a man in the corporate world, he thrived.

Armed with his ruthless competence and aggressive networking, it only took him three years to make partner at a toptier firm.

For years, I stood at the front door and watched his tailored suits disappear into the elevator. I watched him conquer the very career I bled for.

I watched him effortlessly snatch up my lifelong dream. While I was chained to a massive, empty house, guarding a child who didn't even know my face. Chapter 3 The love rotted.

It curdled into bitter envy, twisted jealousy, and finally, pure hatred. Right after the diagnosis, we clung to each other. We swore we would survive the nightmare together.

But the exhaustion set in, and the relentless fingerpointing began. His grandfather had suffered from severe Alzheimer's in his final years. I latched onto that.

I screamed that our son's broken brain was a direct product of his family's defective genes.

Victor would just stand there, staring down at me with absolutely zero emotion. "Juliette, you look like a total maniac right now." He wore flawlessly tailored, expensive suits.

Untouchable. High above it all. Meanwhile, I stood shivering in pajamas crusted with dried baby vomit, screaming like a desperate, raving lunatic.

It took less than a year for the cracks to shatter into a total, irreversible rupture. We took our elite, debatechampion argument skills and weaponized them against each other.

Every vow we ever made to share the burden turned into a razorsharp blade aimed right at the throat. So the exact second I woke up in this second life, I locked my decision in.

This time, no more playing the devoted wife. No more suffocating as a mother. I was going to secure my own empire. I executed the plan with mechanical precision.

I went abroad, secured toptier internships, and flew back with a flawless, bulletproof resume.

I didn't join the massive corporate giants, but I landed a brutal, highpaying spot as a legal counsel at an elite boutique firm. But Victor took a completely different path.

A godtier, cheatcode trajectory. Right after graduation, he launched a startup. By thirtythree, his tech company had exploded into a multibilliondollar unicorn.

He had ripped himself out of our social class and ascended to the top of the food chain. Everyone thought he just got lucky catching the right industry wave.

But I knew the exact truth. He weaponized his memories from our past life, sniping every single market opportunity with surgical precision.

Plus, a man without the dragging weight of a wife and a sick child can conquer the world without a second thought.

Since Victor ghosted the college reunion every single year, the table buzzed with gossip. "The guy's a tech titan now.

We're practically peasants to him." "Still blows my mind, though. Wasn't Victor the ultimate academic snob back then? Thought he was gunning for a PhD." "Exactly.

The guy basically lived in the law library. Read every dusty textbook they had." "He was so damn principled. The ultimate brooding genius." "I roomed with him!

We used to joke he fed on air and ethics.

Who knew he'd graduate and turn into a ruthless cashgrabbing machine?" "When he first started the company, he actually hit me up for a loan. I almost dropped my phone." "Victor?

Begging for startup cash? No way." "Wait, scratch that. He actually flipped a switch junior year. Don't you guys remember?" "Yeah!

Senior year he completely ditched campus to grind at that corporate internship." "Right!

Wasn't his original plan to go to grad school overseas?" Every single pair of eyes at the massive round table suddenly snapped directly to me. I let out a dry, internal scoff.

We got a second chance at life. Who the hell would say no to billions of dollars? Connor, our old second speaker, furrowed his thick brows.

He leaned across the table. "Juliette, seriously. What the hell actually happened between you two after nationals? Did you completely shatter the guy's heart?

Is that why he went full psychobillionaire on us?" I forced a stiff, awkward laugh. "You're delusional.

We were literally just friends." A collective, deafening groan echoed through the private dining room. Connor let out a sharp, mocking snort. "Wow.

Your definition of 'friends' is wild." He pointed his chopsticks directly at my face. "Because I definitely don't drag my 'friends' to that sketchy motel offcampus on Valentine's Day to spend the night.

And my 'friends' definitely don't sit alone in the dark dorm room, grinning like a psycho at my photos!" The entire room erupted into chaotic whistling and tableslapping.

Chapter 4 Today wasn't just our college reunion; it was my official welcomehome dinner.

In my last life, Victor and I moved back stateside after finishing our law degrees at twentyeight. We got married and had a kid right off the bat.

But this time, I stayed grinding in New York until I was thirtythree. In the dating market, I was practically a relic.

It was rare for the old crew to get together, and they were all starving for drama. Someone practically yelled from across the table, "Hey, Juliette, be honest.

You missed out on the ultimate jackpot with Victor. Any regrets?

Word is he's about to marry that Alist actress." A dozen pairs of eyes locked onto me, everyone stifling malicious smirks.

At this point, denying it would just throw gasoline on the fire. So I grabbed the bottle, poured myself a full shot of tequila, and downed it in one go.

I threw my hands up in mock surrender. "Regrets?

I'm dying of them!" I declared dramatically. "If I had known he was going to be a billionaire, I would have ducttaped myself to his leg!

If I did, none of you peasants could just invite me out to dinner. You'd have to call my estate manager: Excuse me, does the CEO's wife have an opening in her schedule?

And then I'd have to go bat my eyelashes at Victor: Hubby, pwease let me—" I was midsentence when the loud, chaotic private room abruptly flatlined into total silence.

I followed their frozen, wideeyed stares toward the door. Victor was wearing a devastatingly expensive, pitchblack bespoke suit, one hand casually slipped into his pocket.

The icy glare of a Patek Philippe watch caught the chandelier's light. He didn't need a security detail or an entourage of assistants trailing behind him.

Just his physical presence—the suffocating aura of an apex predator—choked the life out of the room. My jaw literally snapped shut. Eleven years.

Aside from the hardened, ruthless maturity bleeding off him, his physique had completely transformed.

The lean, lanky college debater was gone, replaced by a towering, broadshouldered wall of muscle.

I remembered perfectly well that the old Victor despised exercising anywhere outside of a bed.

Whenever he accompanied me to the campus track, he'd jog exactly one lap before bailing to read on the bleachers. I guess a few billion dollars really was the ultimate glowup.

Since he had ghosted every single reunion, Connor and the guys hadn't even bothered texting him an invite this year. His sudden ambush left everyone paralyzed.

The air was thick with agonizing awkwardness, but I forcefully snapped myself out of it. In this life, we were nothing but random classmates.

For eleven years, we had executed a flawless, mutual blackout. Zero contact. He probably barely even remembered my face. My pulse leveled out.

I stood up, pasting on a flawless, impenetrable smile. "Well, if it isn't the CEO! We didn't roll out the red carpet, but please, grab a seat!" Victor gave me a curt, polite nod.

His face was an absolute mask of stone. The rest of the table finally snapped out of their coma.

Chairs scraped violently against the floor as they scrambled to clear the head seat for him.

I stepped out of the way, giving the golden boy a wide berth, my heart rate remaining dead flat. It had been years, but almost the entire Law Class 6 was here.

Technically, this was my welcomehome dinner, but Victor instantly hijacked the spotlight.

He owned the room effortlessly, holding court while somehow still projecting that same sharp, untouchable college arrogance.

Seeing that he wasn't demanding VIP treatment, the table's tension melted. The old frathouse energy roared back to life.

A few rounds of drinks later, his old core group of guys started running their mouths, ruthlessly dragging up everyone's most embarrassing college stories.

The problem was, aside from burying his face in textbooks, Victor's entire college existence had revolved around me.

Connor was desperately trying to navigate the minefield. "Damn, Victor, remember freshman year?

We tried scaling the fence at 2 AM to hit the karaoke bar, and half of us ripped our pants on the barbed wire.

And your ass just bribed the security guard with a pack of Marlboros to open the main gate…" Connor suddenly snapped his mouth shut, realizing exactly where the story went.

But one of the guys was completely wasted and bulldozed right through the silence. "Yeah, because he brought Juliette that night!" the drunk guy hollered, slamming his hand on the table. "I was hiding in the bushes and heard the whole thing!

He literally told the guard, 'This is my girlfriend!' Hahaha!" Chapter 5 The atmosphere stiffened.

Victor offered a faint, detached smile, as if he were listening to a total stranger's story. Connor pushed harder. "Sophomore year! We were sneaking fish out of the campus lake.

We basically pulled it off, but on the rowboat back, someone's damn phone went off.

Security shined a massive flashlight right at us, and we panicked and flipped the entire boat!" The table exploded into chaotic laughter.

Even Victor genuinely laughed, his face lighting up. Then my old roommate, Zoe, suddenly shot her hand up, flashing a massive, toothy grin. "I know exactly what happened that night!

Juliette called Victor. She was ordering him to grab her a breakfast burrito from the East Campus dining hall before morning study hall!

You guys were so aggressively sickening back then! Hahaha!" The words dropped. You could visibly see Connor's brain shortcircuit.

Beside him, the warmth instantly drained from Victor's face.

He kept the mechanical, threedegree curve of a polite smile pinned to his lips, but through the roaring noise of the table, I caught the absolute chill radiating from him.

Given his current billionaire status, he was probably terrified that his old flame would use these dusty college memories to leech onto his empire. Exactly as expected.

When Connor dragged the conversation toward careers, Victor generously threw out massive olive branches to our old classmates—completely ignoring me.

Everyone at this table was a toptier law grad, but at this age, we were all hitting our professional ceilings. Either fighting for a promotion or trying to jump ship.

Victor held nothing back, dissecting market trends and economic forecasts with brutal, surgical precision.

Finally, he dropped the ultimate lifeline: if anyone needed backing or a way out, they could call him.

After all, his tech empire was sitting on a tenbilliondollar valuation, monopolizing cuttingedge patents. An absolute juggernaut.

Honestly, with a second chance at life, his trajectory was something I couldn't even hallucinate. In our last life, Victor didn't give a damn about money.

He lived and breathed legal academia.

If it wasn't for our son's illness forcing him to pay crushing medical bills, he would have stayed a humble, poorlypaid law professor until he died.

Who would have thought that in just eleven years of his reborn life, he'd violently hijack his own fate?

A normal person grabbing his coattails now was basically strapping themselves to a rocket. Tonight was the turning point for half this room.

As a careerobsessed workaholic, sitting completely boxed out of this golden opportunity kind of stung. The dinner finally wrapped up.

The crowd escorted Victor out to his waiting car.

Unbidden, a memory flashed—when he first started at the corporate firm in our past life, I used to drive out to pick him up from his brutal networking dinners.

Even completely trashed, he would always fumble with the radio, making sure to play my favorite song. We had genuinely, deeply loved each other.

And that was exactly why the suffocating pain that followed had been so utterly lethal. I was staring blankly into space when the tinted window of his Maybach smoothly rolled down.

His slightly buzzed gaze landed squarely on me. His tone was perfectly distant, cold, and professional. "Counselor Juliette. Do you need a ride?" I froze.

That was the very first sentence he had spoken directly to me all night. Instantly, the crowd of bootlickers parted like the Red Sea, practically shoving me toward his car door.

Absolute sellouts. I caught my balance and flashed him a flawless, polite smile. "No thank you, Mr. CEO.

My boyfriend is picking me up." Chapter 6 Behind me, a collective gasp swept through the crowd. Victor's lips twitched upward into a faint, dismissive smirk.

He didn't say a single word. He just turned and walked away. When Quentin pulled up to pick me up, he brought a massive, eyecatching bouquet of bright red roses.

He flashed a cocky, shiteating grin. "Damn.

It's a real tragedy the great billionaire CEO didn't get to see my face when I handed you these." I snatched the flowers and rolled my eyes. "You're delusional.

The guy barely even recognized me tonight." Quentin scoffed, steering the car into traffic. "True. He's not just rich now; he's in a completely different stratosphere.

We're peasants to him. Get this—last month, I tried to leverage the old college connection to pitch him some legal services." "Booked several appointments.

Got stonewalled every single time. I mean, sure, I'm just his old debate captain, but I'm also a senior partner at Sterling Partners.

You'd think that title would at least get me a fiveminute coffee, right?" I blinked, genuinely caught off guard. In our past life, the two of them were basically blood brothers.

They shared everything. I couldn't resist twisting the knife. "No way. Because tonight? He was practically handing out golden tickets to the alumni." "You remember Natalie?

Victor barely spoke to her in college, didn't even know her name tonight. But he casually tossed a massive tech contract straight into her lap.

She just got back from maternity leave and was terrified of getting laid off. Now?

With Victor's backing, she's probably getting promoted to director next week." Quentin violently slapped his hand against the steering wheel. "Bullshit!

That is absolutely brutal." I smirked, leaning back in the passenger seat. "You better rack your brain.

What exactly did you do to piss him off?" Quentin stared at the road, completely baffled. "I didn't do a damn thing!

The second you two joined the varsity squad, I basically babysat you guys.

If I absolutely had to guess… maybe it was when I asked you out after graduation?" "But you two were completely ignoring each other by then!

I even went to Victor first to test the waters.

The guy literally didn't blink and just said, 'I don't care.' That's why I made my move!" When Victor and I made varsity debate, Quentin was a junior and the team captain.

The three of us practically formed an unbreakable trio.

Later, after my relationship with Victor flatlined and I was heading off to grad school in New York, Quentin drove me to the airport.

Right at the terminal, he looked at me and asked, "Juliette, when you finally get Victor out of your system, is there any chance for us?" I shook my head. "Sorry.

You're not my type." But over the years, we stayed tight. The only reason I landed my highpaying gig at Sterling Partners when I moved back was because he pulled strings for me.

He used to be my team captain. Now, technically, he was my boss. But off the clock, we were just ruthless best friends.

Listening to Quentin aggressively vent, I decided to throw him a bone. "He's not freezing you out because of me. Victor and I are ancient history.

Honestly, his schedule is probably just a nightmare right now." Quentin finally shut up, letting out a frustrated breath. A few blocks later, the playful banter vanished.

He slipped right back into business mode. "Have you heard the rumors about Matrix Tech planning an IPO? It's just whispers right now, nothing on paper. But reading the room?

I'd bet my bonus it's happening." I gave a slow nod, staring out the window. "Yeah.

I've heard." Chapter 7 Quentin's tone dropped, losing all its usual sarcastic edge. "Juliette, you just got back stateside.

I don't want to crush you with pressure right out of the gate. I personally hired you as our legal counsel.

I trust your brain and your skills completely." "But you know how this brutal industry works. It’s all about the kill.

It doesn't matter how blindingly shiny your Ivy League degrees are.

You need to win a massive, bloody war to actually secure your throne at this firm." He turned to me, flashing that cocky, massive grin again. "Of course, if you want to just marry me and play the perfect little housewife, then pretend I didn't say a damn thing!" I almost choked. "Are you seriously telling me to go hunt down the Matrix Tech IPO case?" Quentin killed the smile.

He gave a deadserious nod. I rolled my eyes so hard I practically saw my own brain.

But, remembering he actually signed my paychecks, I shifted into pure professional mode and laid out the brutal reality. "Look at Matrix's valuation. It's a leviathan.

Even the absolute toptier Magic Circle firms would blow out their backs trying to swallow an IPO that massive. Sure, Sterling Partners has been aggressive these past few years.

But our kill zone is strictly traditional corporate law." "When it comes to cuttingedge tech, our track record is completely blank.

What exactly are we supposed to leverage at the negotiating table?

Yeah, my dissertation was literally on 'Intellectual Property in Artificial Intelligence.' It aligns perfectly with Matrix." "But Victor built a multibilliondollar empire.

Do you honestly think he’d hand over the absolute lifeblood of his company to a rookie counsel who barely even qualifies as his exgirlfriend? Besides, a monster case like this?

The second the wind shifted, the most vicious legal sharks in the world were already circling.

We don't even have a seat at the table." Quentin's brow clamped into a deep, tight knot.

He stared at the dashboard for a long time before letting out a heavy, defeated exhale, finally suffocating his own delusional fantasy.

He had inherited Sterling Partners from one of our university’s legendary alumni. While it wasn't the apex predator of the legal world, it was still a highly elite boutique firm.

In my past life, a massive economic collapse ripped through the industry a few years from now. The traditional corporate cases completely dried up.

Sterling Partners was forced to amputate its own limbs just to survive on life support. But then Victor resigned from his cushy academic post. Quentin begged him to join the firm.

Victor weaponized his terrifying mastery of legal theory, violently carving out a completely new tech IP empire for Sterling.

In this life, Victor had accelerated the entire AI boom by a decade. Because of that, Quentin was smelling the blood in the water way earlier.

And through some twisted, inevitable joke of fate, I ended up stepping into Victor's exact shoes, sitting in the legal counsel chair at Sterling.

In our last life, the suffocating grip of our romance completely blinded me.

After getting my master's, I trashed my corporate ambitions and foolishly followed him into a PhD program. But I was never meant for the dusty silence of academia.

So, when we finally moved back to the States, my resume was completely hollow. I had zero battlefield experience.

I slammed into brick walls at every single interview, too overqualified for entrylevel garbage but utterly useless for the heavyweight jobs.

By the time I miraculously clawed my way into a position I actually liked, I barely survived a week before our son’s diagnosis shattered everything.

Because of that, a venomous, suffocating rage had always festered deep in my chest. A bitter resentment for the empire I never got to build.

That was exactly why, the second I woke up in this life, I locked in my own master plan. I graduated, skipped the PhD, and threw myself straight into the corporate meat grinder.

But the reality wasn't some glamorous, cinematic victory. It was brutal.

Crushing mountains of sterile paperwork, a relentless, sleepdeprived grind, and the endless, toxic cage match of firm politics.

Leaning my head against the cold car window, a sudden, dark thought crept into my mind. Was this really my dream?

Chapter 8 In my past life, I was absolutely convinced that if I just avoided marriage, dodged the suffocating trap of having kids, and stayed far away from domestic life, I would automatically become a godtier corporate lawyer.

But when fate actually handed me a reset button, I just slammed facefirst into a completely different kind of hell. It took me a while, but I finally realized the brutal truth.

A job is just a job. I had massively romanticized the corporate grind simply because I was desperately trying to escape the nightmare of my broken family.

The second the family was gone, the job itself became the torture. But life does not give you unlimited respawns.

I could not just casually testdrive every single career path until I found the absolute perfect fit. So I ripped the bandaid off.

I quit my firm, threw myself back into a PhD program, and completely recalibrated my trajectory. Victor's godlike ascent in my previous life was the ultimate cheat sheet.

There was zero chance I was not going to rip a page straight out of his playbook.

So, for my doctorate, I aggressively pivoted my focus entirely to Artificial Intelligence Intellectual Property.

It was wildly cuttingedge, completely niche at the time, but absolutely guaranteed to be the future.

When I moved back stateside, sliding right into the legal counsel spot at Sterling Partners was the natural next step.

Victor and I were existing on this twisted, invisible parallel track that only the two of us could see.

But even after a decade, Quentin was still completely obsessing over our sudden, unexplained breakup. He brought it up like clockwork every time I saw him.

Quentin aggressively shook his head, keeping his eyes on the road. "I swear to God, I will never understand you two.

You guys used to be permanently superglued to each other, and then boom, radio silence. Juliette, look, I adore you, but right now?

I would literally sacrifice my firstborn if it meant you and Victor got back together and popped out some kids." "Honestly, make me the godfather.

Then Victor could pull my firm out of the gutter. Do not look at me like that, I am a capitalist before I am a friend.

Sterling Partners desperately needs to pivot, or in a few years, we will all be eating out of dumpsters." The night had settled in deep.

I stared blankly out the window at the blurred, neon city lights.

A bitter, dry chuckle forced its way up my throat. "We actually did have a kid once." The sleek car kept gliding smoothly down the empty avenue.

Quentin gripped the leather steering wheel, clicking his tongue. "I freaking knew it. Junior year, you were always sneaking off to the clinic. You got an abortion, didn't you?

Victor is an absolute piece of trash." I let out a breathless, helpless laugh.

Riding the slight buzz of the alcohol, I finally cracked open the vault I had kept buried deep inside my skull. "In my past life, we had a son. Theo.

When he was born, he barely weighed six pounds. By his hundredday milestone, he had ballooned up to eighteen." "My arms would cramp just holding him.

He had Victor's exact eyes, but my obnoxious personality. He never shut up. He was beautiful." I took a slow, shallow breath. "Then, when he turned two, he got diagnosed.

Severe regressive autism. It hit him fast. By three, he completely stopped talking." "He could only cry. Only scream.

In a way, he completely eradicated both my life and Victor's." "When he was five, he almost got lost at a theme park.

We were in the car afterward, ripping each other's throats out, ready to just end it all.

I guess God was feeling generous that day, because a massive semitruck smashed into us on the spot." The car instantly, violently decelerated.

Quentin leaned so far forward he was practically eating the steering wheel. He had that classic, rapidfire sarcastic timing wired into his DNA.

So, instead of calling me a clinically insane psycho, he leaned right into the delusion without missing a beat. Quentin tapped the brakes. "Alright, I'll bite.

How did my story end in this past life of yours?" I turned my head, flashing him a slow, wicked grin. "A week before our fatal crash, you randomly asked me out to dinner." Quentin's eyes practically popped out of his skull. "Wait.

Dinner? Were we having a torrid, illicit affair? Oh my god. No wonder Victor wants to obliterate me." Chapter 9 I shrugged casually. "It wasn't that tragic.

You just told me you were planning to publicly come out of the closet on your thirtyseventh birthday.

You were terrified Victor was going to murder you, so you begged me to soften the blow beforehand." The car violently swerved across the lane.

Quentin fought the steering wheel, his eyes wide with panic. "Holy shit! Why did that sound so real? You better tell me I was the top!" I just smiled, keeping my mouth shut.

In my past life, it took Quentin over thirty years to finally face his own sexuality. He and Victor were both senior partners at Sterling, sharing all the financial liabilities.

So, after agonizing over it, he sent me in to act as the human shield. Too bad we got obliterated by a truck before I could even bring it up.

The next morning, I woke up with a massive, skullsplitting hangover. I forced my eyes open and grabbed my phone.

Buried in a flood of unread work emails was a profile picture that absolutely did not belong. My eyes focused.

When my brain finally processed the image, my heart violently skipped a beat. It wasn't exactly unfamiliar. It just hadn't popped up on my screen in over a decade.

We had been so meticulously polite about our breakup that blocking each other would তৎকালীন felt too petty, too intentional. So the contact info just sat there, gathering dust.

I had swapped phones half a dozen times since then. The chat history was completely empty. I tapped into the thread.

Against the blank white background, there was a single missed audio call. What the hell? Why is he calling me? At seven in the morning, no less. It had to be a pocket dial.

We hadn't spoken a single private word to each other in eleven years. Still, after staring at the ceiling for a solid minute, I typed out a perfectly sterile, corporate reply.

Good morning, Mr. CEO. Barely three seconds later, my screen aggressively lit up again. An incoming call. I stared at the name, a sudden, cold knot tightening in my stomach.

The phone vibrated violently against my palm for three full rings before I finally swiped to answer. "Hello? Mr.

CEO?" His voice hit my ear—low, authoritative, and utterly devoid of any pleasantries. He cut straight to the bone. "Counselor Juliette.

Are you interested in taking the Matrix Tech case?" I literally stopped breathing. The ambush was so perfectly calculated.

If it wasn't for the absolute, freezing detachment in his tone, I would have thought he was trying to reignite our dead romance. My brain violently rebooted.

I instantly matched his icy, corporate energy. "Oh? And what exactly does that case entail, Mr.

CEO?" "The Matrix IPO." At exactly 10:00 AM, I was escorted into the Matrix Tech executive suite on the top floor of the skyscraper.

Victor was leaning back behind a massive leather desk.

The sleeves of his crisp white shirt were casually rolled up to his forearms, and his tie was aggressively yanked loose, exposing the strong, sharp lines of his neck.

His predatory gaze cut right past his monitor and locked directly onto me.

As I took a seat on the sleek leather sofa across from him, the harsh daylight exposed a faint, bruised shadow beneath his eyes. He hadn't slept at all last night.

We exchanged a few sterile, hollow pleasantries. Neither of us dared to drag the actual past out into the open.

But before we officially dove into the blood and guts of the contract, I had to drop the pretense. I looked him dead in the eye.

He had a million toptier legal assassins at his disposal. Why me? Given our toxic history, the question hung in the air, heavy with unspoken tension. Victor didn't even flinch.

A dark, knowing smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth as he utterly shattered the glass between us. "Juliette.

If we're talking pure legal qualifications, you aren't even close to being a toptier lawyer." He leaned forward, his voice dropping into a low, lethal register. "But just like me, you got a second life.

Your memory of the future is your absolute advantage. So… don't disappoint me." Brutal. Surgical. Zero room for sentimentality.

He truly had evolved into a flawless, coldblooded capitalist. Chapter 10 It was true.

In our past life, Victor had handled a mountain of tech cases exactly like this, and I had been the one grinding behind the scenes—reviewing case files, drafting the agonizing paperwork, and structuring his arguments.

Back then, AI was still in its chaotic infancy. It was the Wild West. Every vulture in the corporate world was desperately trying to carve out a slice of the pie.

But now, in just a few short years, Victor had completely monopolized the board. He singlehandedly forced the entire industry into brutal maturity. It was a sick, twisted joke.

I had spent all my energy desperately trying to scrub my brain of my past life, praying for a clean slate.

And yet, here I was, entirely dependent on those exact memories just to secure my paycheck.

Fate had handed me a reset button, only to forcefully drag me right back down the exact same bloody path. I shoved the existential dread down.

I had to lock down this kill. "Thank you, Mr. CEO. I won't let you down." An IPO of this monstrous scale, locked down in less than thirty minutes.

When I stood up to walk toward the door, I couldn't even feel my legs. "Juliette." His voice sliced through the silence.

I stopped, glancing back over my shoulder. "Yes?" He was staring intently at a dossier on his massive desk, casually flipping a page. "Are you and Quentin together?" My brain stalled.

Not wanting to deal with the interrogation, I gave a stiff, noncommittal nod. His gaze snapped up. The temperature in the room instantly plummeted.

His voice was a rapid, razorsharp whip of pure authority. "I demand absolute focus from my legal counsel. I do not tolerate internal office romances contaminating my team.

If you cannot guarantee that, I will replace you right now." He was actively threatening my position. I immediately dropped the bluff. "Relax, Mr. CEO.

Quentin and I are strictly boss and employee. I'm completely single. The 'boyfriend' line last night was just to get your alumni off my back." Victor didn't even blink.

He gave a cold, mechanical nod, his face an impenetrable fortress of billionaire arrogance. I reached the heavy door handle, but I just couldn't help myself.

I paused and looked back. "By the way, Mr. CEO. Your file is upside down." I stepped out and pulled the heavy oak door shut.

Before the latch even clicked, a loud, violent smack of a thick binder being hurled onto a desk echoed through the wood.

The Matrix Tech IPO was the most massive kill Sterling Partners had ever landed since its inception.

As the lead partner, Quentin was the project director—and my absolute strongest shield. This was my very first time sitting in the lead counsel chair since returning stateside.

Even with the godtier cheat codes of my past life, the crushing pressure was almost lethal. Luckily, Quentin understood the stakes even better than I did.

If we nailed this, Sterling ascended. If we choked, Sterling died. It was that brutally simple. He didn't waste a single second.

He violently gutted the firm, pulling every elite shark we had into my dedicated task force.

On top of that, he burned through his heavyhitter network, dragging in veteran mercenaries from the toptier firms just to guarantee flawless execution.

A unicorn IPO of this magnitude had a global target on its back. The legal gauntlet was an absolute meat grinder.

Restructuring corporate architecture, endless brutal rounds of due diligence… all the way to hostile regulatory interrogations and the final bell.

The bloodbath would take a year or two at minimum. Three or four if things got ugly. It was basically tearing a leviathan down to its skeleton and rebuilding it in solid gold.

The sheer volume of paperwork was drowning us. Thank God Quentin's hit squad was ruthlessly efficient.

Combined with my hyperniche academic background and the exact roadmap burned into my brain from my previous life, we aggressively wrestled the chaos into submission.

Everything locked into a punishing but flawless rhythm. While I was gutting Matrix's internal structure during discovery, I stumbled onto something completely unexpected.

Victor hadn't just monopolized AI. He had violently expanded his empire deep into the biotech and pharmaceutical sectors.

And one specific subsidiary buried in the paperwork instantly made the hair on my arms stand up. Cyber Medical.

Chapter 11 Cyber Medical was the most massive subsidiary under the Matrix Tech umbrella. To say it was burning cash would be the understatement of the century.

Last year alone, it incinerated four billion dollars. Matrix's total net profit for the entire year was barely seven billion.

This single offshoot was bleeding out more than half of the entire corporate empire's pure profit! And its budget was aggressively ballooning year after year.

An absolute financial black hole. If this kept up, the upcoming IPO audit would be a bloodbath.

When we consolidated the financial statements, Cyber Medical would completely cannibalize Matrix’s flawless balance sheet.

My immediate instinct was surgical: amputate the subsidiary before the auditors even saw it.

I dug into Cyber Medical's business plan, hunting for hard data to force Victor into a spinoff.

The executive summary claimed they were developing AIassisted treatments for neurological diseases. It sounded cuttingedge. Visionary, even.

But I made my living tearing words apart. My gut screamed that this massive, flowery business plan was actively hiding something.

I knew exactly how Victor weaponized corporate jargon. It was his signature move.

In our past life, if I asked him why he hadn't brought the laundry in before it rained, he would casually pivot the conversation to debate the existential subtext of a Hemingway novel.

We had clashed over this exact tactic countless times. Actually, Victor himself had taught me the ultimate countermeasure.

If you want to gut a company and see what it actually does, skip the mission statements. Look straight at the core HR files. Look at the poaches. Paper lies. Resumes don't.

The elite talent they hire, their exact academic backgrounds and battlefield experience—that is the undeniable truth. I pulled Cyber Medical's executive roster.

It was stacked with toptier algorithm engineers and worldclass neurological specialists. An insanely expensive, godtier lineup. No wonder it was burning billions!

I was scrolling through the profiles when my mouse suddenly froze. A horribly familiar name jumped off the screen. Corinne. Clinical Trial Director. My chest seized.

The air vanished from my lungs. Dr. Corinne. In my past life, she was Theo's attending physician.

After his diagnosis, Victor and I dragged him to every elite specialist and legendary medical professor on the continent. Nothing worked. It was all a dead end. Dr.

Corinne had just been a completely unknown pediatric specialist at the time, but her behavioral interventions actually triggered a physical response in him.

Her face was burned permanently into my memory. Every alarm bell in my head started screaming.

I immediately drafted an aggressive legal discovery request, forcing Cyber Medical to surrender their raw R&D patent drafts and FDA regulatory filings.

They dragged their feet for three agonizing days. They definitely had to run it up the chain to Victor before finally coughing up the files.

I started tearing through the dense, suffocating blocks of patent text. Then, I hit a single paragraph that made my blood run icecold.

Surgically implanted electrodes… precision decoding of neural signals controlling the lips and tongue when a patient "attempts to speak"… translating directly into onscreen text or synthetic audio… I violently sucked in a breath.

Cyber Medical's flagship initiative… Project Nexus. They weren't just building medical AI. They were building a BrainComputer Interface.

Chapter 12 This technology was a lightning rod for controversy in our past life, and it was even more volatile now. Victor was rubbing it in my face.

The files he sent were packed with evidence I hadn’t even asked for—mountainous stacks of clinical data on autistic children and records of hundreds of families participating in trials.

Looking at the sheer scale of it, my blood turned to slush. He was trying to use BrainComputer Interface technology to treat autism. This was pure insanity.

In our previous life, Victor and I had burned through every possible resource to save our son. When AI first started booming, there were similar concepts floating around.

But those "smart medical" breakthroughs were just predatory scams designed to bleed desperate parents dry. They never actually worked.

Like so many other families, we fell for every single one. We didn’t just lose the money; we lost precious time, and our hope was systematically gutted by frauds.

Victor hadn't forgotten a single second of that nightmare. But whether he was doing this for his business empire or to settle a score with fate, his ambition was out of control.

BCI technology was a legal and ethical abyss. It was usually reserved for the most extreme cases of physical paralysis, yet he wanted to drill into the skulls of autistic children.

If he actually went through with this, it would be a social cataclysm. The second you plant electrodes in a child’s brain, how do you prove that their words are their own?

Is it the boy speaking, or is it the "digital ghost" inside his head? If it’s the latter, AI hasn't saved the child—it has executed their soul and moved into their body.

The theoretical and technical labyrinth here was terrifyingly complex.

There were only a handful of people on the planet who could truly navigate this territory, and I was one of them. Even then, I wouldn't bet my life on the outcome.

Cyber Medical wasn't a company; it was a suitcase nuke. One wrong move, and everyone was going to burn. I collapsed into my chair, my vision blurring with a mix of fury and regret.

I took this case thinking it was my ticket to the top. Instead, this son of a bitch was planning to use me as a human sacrifice.

Right on cue, as if he was monitoring my heart rate, Victor called. "Counselor Juliette," his voice was smooth, cool, and mocking. "It's not too late to back out if you're getting cold feet." I let out a sharp, jagged laugh. "The legal fee just went up by twenty percent." There was a low, dangerous chuckle on the other end of the line, vibrating with an undeniable sense of dominance: "You're still just as ambitious as before, Juliette.

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