Chapter 1

Claire’s POV

For seven years, Claire Sutton played the perfect daughter, sister, and fiancée—because a voice in her head promised her $100 million and a ticket home if she could make her family love her.

She cooked. She apologized. She sanded down every edge they hated. She got all three of them to 99%.

Then Vanessa—the girl the Suttons raised in her place—came home. Three days later, every score was zero.

So Claire took the only other way out: die in this world, wake up in her own.

Simple. Except now that she’s done begging for their love, her mother, her brother, and her fiancé suddenly can’t let her go. They lock the windows. They cry at her bedside. They swear they’ll do better.

Claire doesn’t want better. She wants out.

And they’re about to learn that some apologies arrive too late to matter.

——

The third time someone threatened me that morning, I took it as constructive feedback.

My mother, Margaret Sutton, had accused me of stealing Vanessa's diamond necklace. In the old days, I would've shown her the security footage, emptied my pockets, and apologized for making her suspicious. Seven years with the Suttons had trained me into a world-class emotional concierge.

That morning, I admitted everything.

"I stole it," I said. "Terrible crime. Unforgivable daughter. Let's make the punishment memorable."

I marched toward the kitchen to grab a knife and hack myself to death.

Margaret caught up with me before I I got there. She wrapped both arms around mine and screamed for Ethan while one slipper went flying across the marble. For a woman who had spent years telling me to behave with dignity, she tackled remarkably well.

My older brother arrived to remind me that Vanessa needed a kidney, and that I was the only one in the house whose tissue type matched hers.

Vanessa wasn't our biological sister. The Suttons had raised her after I was taken as a toddler. By the time the Suttons found me at fifteen, she had their habits, their memories, and a bedroom bigger than any apartment I’d ever lived in.

"You're healthy," Ethan said. "Vanessa isn't. Why are you making this so difficult?"

So I demonstrated the flaw in his inventory plan. I grabbed the nearest sharp object, made one fast, reckless move, and collapsed before anyone could finish telling me what a good sister should do.

Instead, Ethan called an ambulance.

By the time Adrian Cole kicked open the front door, Margaret was sobbing over me, Ethan was shouting into his phone, and Vanessa was crying on the staircase as if my blood had personally injured her.

Adrian was my fiancé. Technically.

Our families had agreed on the match the year I came home and made it official on my eighteenth birthday. He’d spent seven years correcting how I dressed, spoke, laughed, and existed near wealthy people.

Now he pointed at me as if I were the embarrassment in the room.

"Pull one more stunt," he said, "and you won’t be able to show your face anywhere in this city."

Behind him, his black sedan idled in the driveway.

"Why wait?" I asked. "The car’s right there. Let's be efficient."

I got away from Margaret, staggered through the open door, and crawled under the front bumper of Adrian’s car.

Then Adrian made a sound I'd never heard from him before, the noise a man makes when his soul tries to leave through his throat.

"Claire!"

I looked up at him from the driveway. "Foot on the gas. One second of courage, and I never embarrass you again."

"We can talk about this."

"I don't want to talk." I rested my head on my arm. "I want to die."

That finally made everyone quiet. For the first time, they suspected I meant it.

Margaret came outside on Ethan’s arm, took one look at me, and fainted.

Vanessa appeared at the top of the front steps in a pale dress, one hand over her mouth. "This is all my fault! I took Mom and Ethan and Adrian away from Claire. I’ll leave."

She turned as though she meant to run into the road wearing slippers.

Ethan dropped my mother into Adrian's arms and raced after Vanessa.

"Don't say that. This is your home."

Adrian, currently holding his unconscious future mother-in-law, added, "Vanessa, you're not well. Let us handle Claire."

It was a moving tableau. The fragile adopted daughter, the protective brother, the devoted man, the unconscious mother.

And me, bleeding under a car that nobody had the decency to start.

I closed my eyes and hoped they would argue long enough for blood loss to finish the job.

I hadn't always been Claire Sutton.

Seven years earlier, I’d been a twenty-three-year-old account coordinator in the real world, living on office coffee, instant noodles, and unpaid overtime in a studio with a radiator that hissed like it had opinions.

Then a voice in my head introduced itself as the Fate Revision System. It told me I’d been selected. I said no. It informed me that consent was not part of the selection process.

I woke up fifteen again, inside a trashy billionaire romance, as its long-lost heiress: the girl the plot existed to humiliate. Her memories came with the body. The original Claire had grown up in foster care, too blunt, too angry, too poor for the Suttons’ world. In the original story, her family’s cruelty destroyed her, and Vanessa inherited everything worth having.

The system offered me a deal: get Margaret, Ethan, and Adrian to one hundred affection points each, and I could go home with one hundred million dollars.

I had swallowed worse for less.

I made Margaret’s wellness soups before dawn. I cooked around Ethan’s bad stomach. I studied etiquette, wine, and art until Adrian stopped wincing every time I opened my mouth.

I filed off every edge they disliked.

MARGARET SUTTON: +2.

ETHAN SUTTON: +1.

ADRIAN COLE: +3.

Smile here. Apologize there. Don’t mention foster care at the country club.

After seven years, all three scores sat at ninety-nine.

Then Vanessa came home from her school in Switzerland.

On the first night, she said my cooking tasted strange. Margaret sent the dishes away. “Claire, you knew Vanessa had a sensitive stomach.”

Ninety-nine became zero.

On the second day, Vanessa played a few bars on my piano and said she missed hers. Ethan had it moved to her room by evening and called me selfish when I objected.

Ninety-nine became zero.

On the third night, I was burning with fever, waiting for Adrian to bring my medicine, when Vanessa called him from the guest wing, terrified of thunder.

"She needs me," he said.

"I need the medicine."

"Don't turn everything into a competition."

His score hit zero at 2:17 a.m.

I remember the exact time because I stared at the red number until the digits blurred.

The numbers had never been evidence of love. They were weather reports from three people who changed climates whenever Vanessa entered the room.

Seven years, gone in three days.

The system asked if I wanted to abandon the mission.

"Yes."

"Abandonment requires the host's death within the mission world. You will forfeit the reward and return to your point of origin."

I didn't hesitate.

No more soup. No more lessons. No more begging three people to believe I deserved the space I occupied.

I had spent seven years being agreeable. I could spend one afternoon being dead.