Chapter Three

I struggled hard. I wanted to ask why, but the tape over my mouth turned every word into a muffled whimper.

Vivian was tied up the same way a few feet away. But her knots were loose and sloppy, and there was no tape on her mouth.

She seemed to read the question in my eyes, and smiled coldly. "Lila, I didn't want it to come to this."

"But I can't forget what Sebastian said that day. He's going to take care of you for the rest of your life? Then what am I? I just want to prove, once and for all, which one of us matters more to him."

Something inside me went cold and bleak.

Did that even need proving? The answer had been written into my last life long ago.

Soon a black Range Rover tore up to the top of the cliff in a cloud of dust. Sebastian threw open the door and hurled two silver briefcases onto the ground.

"Five million dollars in cash. Every cent. Let them go."

But the kidnapper, who'd already been paid off by Vivian, didn't move. "Mr. Cross," he drawled, "I didn't take them for the money."

Sebastian's voice dropped a degree. "Then what do you want?"

The kidnapper rested a hand on each of our shoulders and grinned nastily. "Word is, one of these is your old friend's daughter and the other's your fiancée. You only get to save one. The other one, I drop in the water for the sharks. Pick."

The moment he finished, he let the ropes slip, and Vivian and I dropped half a foot.

Vivian's face went white at once. Her voice shook so hard it barely held together. "Sebastian, save me! I'm scared of the water—you know I'm scared of the water!"

The words went into Sebastian's oldest wound like a nail, dead center.

I knew the story. The winter he was fifteen, Vivian had been skating on the lake at the Cross estate when the ice broke. He dove into that black water and pushed her up to the surface, then ran a fever for three days and almost didn't make it. Ever since, he'd thought of Vivian as the one person he was meant to protect for the rest of his life. There weren't many things in his life he was that certain of.

"Don't touch Vivian!"

It came out of him almost on instinct.

So there was the answer.

The kidnapper smiled, satisfied. And behind her terrified expression, Vivian let out a quiet breath of relief.

But the moment he'd shouted it, Sebastian's eyes went to me.

He probably expected to see me fall apart—screaming, crying, staring at him in despair. But I didn't. I didn't even look at him. I just gazed at the horizon out over the water, like I was waiting for an ending I'd known all along.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his face change, like something inside him had suddenly gone hollow.

He opened his mouth. Before any sound came out, his arms were full. Vivian, freed from her ropes, had thrown herself sobbing against his chest.

He held her tight without thinking. "Vivian…"

The next second, someone sliced through my rope.

I fell straight down the cliff like a white feather.

"Lila—!"

Splash.

The freezing water swallowed me whole. The currents grabbed at me like countless hands, dragging me down into the dark.

I fought to swim up, but my hands were still tied behind my back. A familiar exhaustion slowly wrapped around me—exactly how I'd felt lying on that operating table in my last life.

No…

Not this time. I didn't want to die this time.

I hadn't gone to London yet. I hadn't hugged my father. I hadn't shown my designs to a single teacher.

I kicked once with the very last of my strength. Then everything went black.

…

When I woke up in a hospital on Long Island, the first thing I saw was Sebastian sitting by my bed.

His eyes were bloodshot. Dark stubble shadowed his jaw, and he was still wearing the suit from that day, soaked and dried stiff. A nurse told me later he'd been there for three days and three nights.

But I didn't need him watching over me anymore.

We looked at each other for a long time. Neither of us spoke.

In the end, I was the one who broke the silence. "Uncle Sebastian, you don't have to stay with me. Go check on Vivian. She had a bad scare. She needs you more."

I paused, then added, "I can take care of myself."

I can take care of myself. It came out so naturally—so naturally, it was as if he'd never been anything more than optional.

Sebastian sat there stunned for a long time, looking at me with an expression I couldn't read. In the end, he didn't say anything. He got up and left.

The day I was discharged happened to be Vivian's birthday.

It was her first birthday since they'd gotten together, and Sebastian went all out. He booked the rooftop ballroom of a hotel on Fifth Avenue.

A hundred thousand roses flown in from the South of France covered every surface. Expensive gifts were piled carelessly in the corners. Photos of the two of them lined the way from the entrance all the way to the edge of the dance floor.

Outside the windows, fireworks burst over the Hudson. When the party reached its peak, Sebastian put his arm around Vivian's waist and waltzed her across the center of the floor. On the giant screen behind them, a slideshow of the two of them growing up played on a loop.

I stood at the very back of the crowd, holding a glass of champagne I hadn't touched. I hadn't wanted to come, but Mrs. Cross said that if I didn't, people would say I had something to hide.

Just as the guests, moved by the beautiful couple, were raising their glasses, the screen went black.

The next second, love letters full of a girl's secret feelings and sketch after sketch of the same man began to fill the screen, one frame at a time.

Every letter was signed with the same name at the bottom: Lila Hart.

The whole room erupted.