328 Book(s) Related to persephone: hades' torment read online

A bored demon out for a good time came after me and my worst enemy, and locked us in a room with no door.

The rules are simple. We each have to confess three secrets the other one has no idea about, for his amusement, and only then do we get out.

Weston raises an eyebrow, that lazy, punchable smirk on his face.

"After ten years of being at each other's throats, what could you possibly still be hiding from me?"

He doesn't know I never actually hated him.

He doesn't know that three months ago, at that masquerade, the woman he slept with was me.

And he definitely doesn't know the baby I'm carrying is his.

In my previous life, my younger sister, Lilith, married Arthur, the vampire prince.

I married Grant Taylor, a werewolf tycoon and the Empire’s richest man.

Everyone said I was the lucky one.

I traveled in luxury cars, wore custom-made designer clothes, and appeared to have a perfect marriage. The entire Empire admired us.

Lilith, however, was miserable in the vampire royal family.

The royal family’s rigid rules controlled every part of her life. She had to bow and curtsy at every turn while noblewomen looked down on her and humiliated her.

Arthur ignored her, yet one beautiful woman after another moved into his estate.

Lilith cried. She threw tantrums. In the end, she had an affair with a human royal guard.

When the affair came to light, she was stripped of her title and locked inside the dark, windowless Royal Tower.

The day Grant and I attended a banquet at the palace, she appeared before me with hatred burning in her eyes.

“Why do you get everything? Why am I the one who has to rot in here?”

A second later, she detonated the mana crystal hidden beneath her clothes.

The flames swallowed us both.

When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day we chose which marriage contract to sign.

Lilith moved first. She pointed at the marriage contract bearing the wolf emblem and announced that she would marry Grant.

I lowered my gaze, barely holding back a laugh.

She thought she had stolen a fortune from me.

She had no idea what kind of monster that man truly was.

Being born a Moretti daughter means one thing: the family owns you.

In my past life, Vivian thought she had what it took. She promised Dad she could handle it, swore up and down she'd make him proud. Six months later, she'd burned through three generations of work and left us with nothing but an empty shell. Our enemies found her eventually. Broke both her legs.

And me? I married Marco Rossi.

Everyone envied me for marrying into one of the most powerful families in the city. What they didn't know was that I was his prisoner. He used me, turned my family's connections into stepping stones for himself, spent my money on his mistresses, used my body as a bargaining chip at his deals.

In the end, Vivian killed me. Jealous of my "perfect life," she dragged herself over on those broken legs and put a bullet in me.

When I open my eyes again, I'm sitting in Dad's study.

The door slams open. Vivian bursts in, cutting me off before I can speak. "Dad! I'm marrying Marco Rossi! Give the family to Sienna!"

I look at her and smile.

This time, I'm going to survive. And I'm going to do a hell of a lot better than just survive.

My serpent mate has locked me in the castle, nine months pregnant. A dozen serpent guards watch me day and night. I can't even leave the room.

A month ago, his brother died in a hunting accident. He became the serpent clan leader. Then he brought back his brother's widow, the woman he grew up with. His first love.

He said he needed to take care of his brother's widow. He told me we'd all live together in the castle, nice and peaceful.

I said no.

I'm his mate. I'm a beastman. My pride won't let me accept that. And they grew up together, childhood sweethearts. How could I not think about it?

She came to him in tears, heavily pregnant. She said I poisoned her medicine, that I wanted to kill her and the baby.

He believed her.

He decided I was just some rogue beastman with no background, jealous and vicious, only after his title and money. So he locked me in this freezing castle while he camped outside her delivery room.

When labor hit, I screamed for a healer. I swore I never hurt her. I just couldn't live with her under the same roof. I only ever loved him.

He just laughed. "You're good at acting. I don't believe a word out of you. Once she delivers safely, I'll deal with you. Don't think you can trick me into coming back."

But when a trembling guard reported "Your mate and the child... they didn't make it," he lost it completely.

I helped him claw his way up from nothing—from the family's bastard to king of the underworld.

I saved him when he got jumped in the streets. Took bullets for him when his father beat him half dead. We fought our way up from nothing, survived assassination attempts, built an empire that made people fear our name.

I thought we'd always stand together.

Until the day I nearly died giving birth, and all I found in the bassinet was a stack of cash.

I asked him where our baby was. He couldn't look me in the eye. His stepmother walked out holding my son. Smiled and said she deserved this, a child of her own, since she couldn't have one herself. He'd given my baby to another woman.

Turns out he'd been sleeping with her the whole time.

I threw the money in his face. I spent the next six years trying to get my son back.

Last week, when some small-time gang grabbed him, I went in alone with a gun. Bullets flew past my ears, kicked up concrete dust. I fought my way to the back and pulled him out. At the hospital, he pushed me away, crying, "Why'd you have to come?! We could've been a real family by now! Just leave! Leave me alone!"

I stared at his small face for a long time.

Finally, I said, "Call me mom one last time. Then I'll let you go."

A hundred years ago, old Duke Rowland saved me with a bowl of hot soup when I was dying. To repay him, I swore myself, as the Silver Wolf Goddess, to a hundred-year covenant protecting House Rowland.

I taught Garrett how to hold a sword. I turned Caleb into a prodigy at the Mages' Guild. I saved Preston's family from ruin.

But Lillian took a potion to fake being sick, and all it took was her claiming only my heart could save her to turn three men's knives on me.

In my last life, I begged them to listen, told them that cutting out my heart would tear down the foundation of House Rowland itself. They finally backed off.

Then Lillian, trying to keep the lie going, secretly upped her dose and poisoned herself to death in her own bed.

The three of them lost their minds and blamed me for her death.

"A beast doesn't get to call itself the guardian of House Rowland. Die."

They cut my heart out. I died on that altar.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day they took my heart.

This time, I didn't waste my breath. I handed it over myself and let them have what they wanted.

The goddess's heart fell. The covenant ended.

They just didn't know yet how badly House Rowland would fall apart without me.

First day back after the long weekend. I get a few artisan gift baskets shipped in from my family's farm: maple syrup, raw honey, smoked beef jerky, handmade jams. Top-shelf stuff, every single one. Shipping alone runs me a few hundred dollars.

After the morning meeting, I hand them out one by one. The team crowds around me, all smiles, falling over themselves saying things like "You're literally the best, Ms. Bennett" and "Oh my god, you're such an amazing boss."

They're barely out the door when I notice the conference room projector is still mirroring someone's phone. Up on the screen: a private group chat. Fifteen members.

Everyone on the team is in it.

Everyone except me.

A new message pops up: [Farm junk? Really? Preston Vance's team got $200 gift cards AND black truffle. Sloane's such a cheap ass lol]

Replies flood in. Someone photoshops a picture of me. Someone else hopes I drop dead at my desk.

To them, I'm just another boss squeezing her people dry.

Last quarter, I handed every single one of them a three-thousand-dollar cash bonus out of my own pocket. Plus a brand-new phone. Each.

Fine. If they think I'm not giving enough, I'll give them exactly what they're asking for.

Though later, when they come crawling back one by one, I find myself wondering what exactly they think begging is going to get them.

I spent seven years being Preston Maddox's personal errand girl.

Did his homework, took his father's belt for him, cut off every friend I had because he said he didn't like me talking to other guys.

I told myself that if I was good enough, patient enough, he'd eventually see me.

Then came the school's centennial gala. In front of everyone, he locked me, a girl with severe aquaphobia, inside a water tank filled to the brim with ice-cold water, so Vanessa Sinclair could have a pretty backdrop for her ballet number.

The audience roared. He watched Vanessa take her bow with this soft, adoring smile on his face. The only time he glanced at me was when he noticed I'd made a mess, and all he did was wrinkle his nose.

The water rose over my head, and something in me finally understood.

To Preston Maddox, I wasn't even worth as much as a dog.

If a dog was drowning, its owner would at least care.

Me? I just disgusted him.

On my birthday, my husband hands me a snow-white hamster with a smile and says keeping it in the house will bring us good luck.

My seven-year-old son names it Snow.

But the second I see its red eyes, my blood runs cold.

Because in my last life, I got the exact same gift on this exact same day.

Back then I treated it like something precious. I fed it the best food, bought it the biggest cage, cleaned out the shavings every single day.

And every night it burrowed into my blankets, bit through the skin at my wrist and my throat, and drank my blood a little at a time until there was almost none left.

I begged my husband to get rid of it. All he said was that I was paranoid, that I was faking being sick to get attention.

My son planted himself in front of the cage and screamed that Snow was better behaved than me.

Then, on our wedding anniversary, I collapsed in the bathroom and never woke up.

My spirit drifted near the ceiling, and only then did I finally see it.

That hamster climbed down off my body and turned into a woman in a white dress, and threw herself into my husband's arms.

His eyes went red and he said now that she'd drained me dry, she could finally take her real shape again.

My son ran to her and sweetly called her "Hamster Mommy."

It turned out the thing was my husband's old love, the one who'd died young. He'd used black magic to hide her inside a pet's body.

And I was nothing but a container. A blood supply.

Now my eyes are open again, and the cut on my finger is still warm.

This time, I won't let a single one of them get away.

I died. At my sister's eighteenth birthday party, the moment the champagne tower came crashing down.

While she stood under the crystal chandelier in her gown, soaking up congratulations from three hundred guests, I was tied up in an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of town. The wound in my stomach was still bleeding.

I called my family. Only my brother picked up, sounding pissed off and disgusted. "What's your problem now? This is her big day. You better not ruin it."

I tried to explain. He hung up.

That was the ninety-ninth time they'd hung up on me.

Also the last.

They thought I was throwing a tantrum, deliberately skipping my sister's special moment. Called me ungrateful, said they regretted bringing me back from that backwater town two years ago.

Well, now they're off the hook.

Problem solved.

To save enough for a summer trip with my boyfriend, Tripp, and his friends, I worked late every night after school as a food runner at the upscale French restaurant in town.

Tripp told me his family didn't have much money. He wore old thrift-store T-shirts and always ordered the cheapest lunch in the cafeteria.

I felt bad for him. During the year we were together, I quietly paid for most of our dates.

Until one night, when I carried a bottle of wine to a private dining room and heard voices coming from inside.

"Tripp, how long are you going to keep pretending you're broke?" It was Chase, Tripp's best friend.

Then I heard Bitsy's sugary-sweet voice. She and Tripp had grown up together. "Thanks for the limited-edition bag, Tripp. Eighty grand, and it's absolutely gorgeous. I love it!"

I froze. An eighty-thousand-dollar bag? He wouldn't even spend twelve dollars on a burger.

Then Tripp spoke in a lazy drawl. "Girls like Nora are low-maintenance. She's easy to fool. Buy her an iced latte, and she'll act like it means the world to her. She barely costs me anything."

He had never really cared about me.

My best friend Bella had a cluster of mushrooms growing on her back, every color you could imagine.

They throbbed like something alive, and the smell coming off them was like nothing I'd ever smelled.

She called it Moonlight Bloom, a gift straight from Viscount Lucas himself.

If she kept that thing on her body for forty days, not one more, not one less, until it bloomed its brightest spores, the viscount would marry her and take her into his estate.

So she refused to shower. Wouldn't let a drop of water touch her.

Everyone in the pack knew me as the one who always looked out for people, and I figured she'd been cursed with dark magic. So one night while she slept, I grabbed a bucket of soapy water and a stiff brush and scrubbed that thing clean off her back.

The next morning, she ran her hand over the raw patch of skin where it used to be, grabbed a silver dagger, and drove it straight through my heart.

"You jealous bitch! You just ruined my whole future!"

Bleeding out on the floor, that's when it hit me. She never cared how disgusting that thing was, or what it was doing to her body. All she cared about was marrying into money and status.

When I opened my eyes again, I'd gone back in time.

This time around, I decided I wasn't going to stick my nose where it didn't belong. I was going to sit back and watch that mushroom grow.

Beau and I have been together for three years. I paid for the entire yacht charter out of my own pocket, and he shows up with his childhood best friend Sadie in tow, then goes around telling everyone it was his idea, his grand gesture.

Out on the water, Sadie spots a small octopus drifting near the surface and decides she has to have it. The thing pulses with glowing blue rings.

I'm a certified expert diver. I know exactly what it is the second I see it. I try to stop her.

She bursts into tears and tells Beau I'm going after her.

So Beau, ever the hero where Sadie's concerned, jumps in himself and fishes the thing out.

Sadie plays with it. It bites her. She's on the deck before she even knows what hit her.

Beau grabs me, screaming at me to suck out the venom. I refuse. He calls me a cold, heartless bitch, and in the chaos, shoves me overboard into shark-infested water.

I die out there. Nothing left of me.

They use my phone to fake a suicide note. Depression, they say. Jumped on her own. Then they take my company, my assets, everything.

They post online hinting I tried to push Sadie in and slipped.

My parents, worn down by the online harassment and the grief of losing me, both die of heart attacks.

Then I open my eyes. And I'm back. The morning of the trip.

Three years ago, on a night when it wouldn't stop raining, I carried Victor Caster out of a pile of bodies.

He'd taken two bullets. He grabbed my ankle and said: when I get back, I'll give you the world.

But when he came back, it was my sister Sabrina on his arm.

After that she was the woman who ran the Caster house, and I was the crazy one they locked away upstate.

Three years later, at the engagement party, Sabrina opened up her own wrist and screamed that I did it.

I tried to explain.

But the man I'd given half my life to save wouldn't even look at me. He just flicked his hand.

"Her hands don't know their place. Take them. And I don't want that face in front of me."

He never once looked up.

So why is it that the next time he sees me, the moment he really looks at my face, he goes down on his knees?

My parents raised me for twenty-four years. Then they found out I wasn't their biological daughter.

Their real daughter came home. She'd only been back two years. That's all it took to erase twenty-four.

When kidnappers grabbed us, I used my body as a shield. They beat me until something inside me ruptured. I was dying from internal bleeding, but no one could tell.

My parents wouldn't even look at me. "This is your fault! None of this would've happened if it weren't for you!"

"Get downstairs and apologize to your sister. If you can't, pack your things and get out."

They threw her a party at a downtown hotel while I died alone in my room.

I thought they'd be relieved. Maybe even glad. I thought they'd just move on like I never existed.

But when they finally learned the truth, they fell apart.

Everyone says I married an iceberg.

Three years of contract marriage. He's never touched me once.

On our wedding night, I tried to move into his bedroom. He refused. I stood in front of him wearing lingerie. He just said, calm as ever, "You should get some rest."

I'm a healthy woman with a normal sex drive. Every day I'm burning up with my own desire.

I thought he didn't love me. So for both our sakes, I signed the divorce papers. Today, I'm telling him.

Then that afternoon, I suddenly heard his thoughts.

When I walked up to him in just a towel, he looked calm, staring at his laptop. But his mind was screaming: Holy shit. She's not wearing anything under that. Look at that skin. Her tits are huge. I can't take this anymore... no, I'll scare her. Fuck. I'm hard again.

Turns out under the ice, there's a volcano that's been buried for just as long.

I slip the divorce papers back into hiding and pour him a coffee.

New plan: make that volcano blow.

I don't realize how badly I've been wronged until they're strapping me to the gurney.

My name is Camille Brooks. I'm one of the best cardiothoracic surgeons in the city, and I have never lost a patient on my table.

My fiancé, Adrian Vance, is the golden boy of the entire hospital. We're supposed to get married next month.

It's a stormy night when he calls, telling me to get to the hospital right now. There's a patient bleeding out, and only I can save them.

I race through the rain, but I get stuck in traffic halfway there. By the time I push through the OR doors, the patient has no pulse.

The family points at me. They say I botched the procedure and killed him. And Adrian Vance, my own fiancé, takes the stand and shows up with "ironclad evidence" against me.

I have nothing to fight back with. I go to prison. My parents can't handle it. It destroys them both. They take their own lives.

It's only after I die that I learn who really held the scalpel that night: Daisy Whitman, the woman Adrian never got over.

I was just the fall guy.

Then I open my eyes.

I'm back. One hour before everything falls apart, riding through the rain toward the hospital.

This time, I'm going to survive.

And I'm going to watch both of you burn.

The second the avalanche came down, I called my mate. Karl. Captain of the Pack Guard's First Squad.

He dug me out, carried me onto the helicopter, and told the pilot to take off before the second rescue team even got there.

He didn't know Delilah was buried in the same slide. The girl he'd never gotten over.

By the time they reached her, she'd been under the snow for three hours in twenty below.

Karl stood in the morgue all night.

He came back the next day and just gave me a small smile. "It wasn't your fault. You were carrying our pup. Of course you came first."

For a month after that, he was gentler than he'd ever been. He cleared his schedule to take me to every checkup. Cooked for me himself. Put the crib together, the dresser too. Every single thing in the nursery lined up exactly right.

I thought that avalanche had finally buried Delilah. That it had given him back to me.

Until the day I went into labor.

He sent every doctor and nurse out of the delivery room. There was a silver scalpel in his hand.

The moment he cut me open, I saw the red in his eyes.

Our pup was still crying, small and weak, and he never even looked. He threw us both into the incinerator.

"If it weren't for you, Delilah would still be alive. Your life for hers."

Then I opened my eyes, and I was back at the moment the avalanche hit.

It's fall break, and Mom and my sister Della Sinclair are visiting me at St. Julian's Academy.

The South Campus Arctic Biome is a landmark the Sinclair family funded years ago. It's filled with the rare arctic flowers Mom and Della have always loved. Every single time they visit, they have to go in.

That's when Kiley Croft, the girl Fletcher Waverly grew up with, pulls what she calls "a little prank." While no one's paying attention, she locks the door from the outside panel and pushes the temperature controls to maximum.

The people inside are trapped. They burn to death.

Kiley runs to Fletcher in tears, and instead of calling 911, he pulls her close and tells her:

"Hey. It's okay. It was an accident. This isn't on you."

He doesn't call me until the fire trucks show up.

"Blythe, the biome caught fire. Your mom and your sister are trapped inside."

I spin around.

Della is right next to me, sniffling and complaining about her cold. Mom is passing her tissues.

They're both completely fine.

Then who the hell is in there?

A hormonal condition pushed my weight to two hundred pounds, and for three years, this boarding school made sure I never forgot it.

The ringleader was the guy every girl worshipped.

And beside him stood his girlfriend, the one who always stepped in at my worst moments with a soft voice and a sympathetic look, like she was doing me a favor.

Everyone called her an angel. Only I knew the truth: every time she "helped," things got worse.

One day, she handed me a candy in front of everyone. "Here. Something sweet always helps."

I didn't feel like I had a choice.

That night, a demon showed up at the foot of my bed.

"Congratulations. You ate the pact candy. I'll grant you three wishes — money, beauty, lifespan. You name it, I'll make it happen."

My whole body shook. Three years of humiliation, and finally there was a way out. Wealth, beauty, revenge. All I had to do was ask.

Then the demon's expression shifted, eyes full of cruel amusement.

"There's a catch, though. The real pact-holder is someone else. Whatever you wish for, the one who gave you that candy gets double."

The words I was about to say died in my throat.

Then, slowly, I smiled.

Double?

That's way more interesting than three wishes.

The day before spring break, Cole Bennett asks me, red in the face, if he can borrow my empty place up in the hills for one night.

I figure he's planning a birthday party for me, so I don't think twice about handing over the code to the estate.

I've already decided that night is when I'll tell him who I really am.

Eight o'clock on my birthday, I push open the brass doors of the estate, worth millions by themselves.

Music blasts through the great room. The place is packed with people from school, all of them craning their necks, gushing about how gorgeous the house is.

I hold back a grin, ready to go find him and see what he's got planned.

Then I see her in the middle of the crowd, everyone crowding around her, glasses raised.

Sloane Bishop.

I promised Ethan Caldwell, the boy I grew up with, I'd give up the top schools to attend some mediocre college with him.

On the final day of application submission, I brought homemade soup to his studio.

Outside the door, I heard him bragging to his friends: "Claire Bennett's like a damn puppy. I tell her to come to NYU with me, and boom, she changes her whole application to NYU. Lily's grades are shit. If Claire doesn't go for that full scholarship, Lily's got it in the bag. And Claire's so whipped, even when she finds out, she'll just suck it up like always."

The thermos in my hands feels cold now.

One of my employees went online and dragged me, claiming I'm making them sacrifice their health for a paycheck and forcing everyone to work over Thanksgiving.

Here's what actually happened. My company gives nine days off for Thanksgiving. Volunteer to work overtime, get triple pay, with a $500 daily meal stipend and a $5,000 bonus. No one gets penalized for not working.

The whole internet's tearing into me for making employees sell their lives for cash. So I give her exactly what she wants and send out a company-wide notice:

To protect employee mental health, the building gets locked and the power gets cut over Thanksgiving. No one is allowed to work for any reason. Anyone who does gets fired.

The minute that email goes out, the employees who were counting on overtime to pay their mortgages lose it. Now they're all crowded outside the building, begging me to open the doors.

As a regular student, I never expected to fit into the world of trust fund kids. But this real estate heiress reached out to me, said she'd show me how the other half lives, even promised to introduce me to New England's most powerful heir.

I thought she'd be my friend. Thought she actually cared. I even fell for him.

Until she framed me for stealing confidential school files. Until he said, "Just a scholarship kid. No one's gonna miss her." That's when I understood. I was never more than their toy.

They tore up my textbooks, stuffed dead rats in my locker, spent six months tormenting me online and off. My mother couldn't take the vicious comments. Her heart gave out. And me? After I completely broke down, they drove me to the coastal cliffs.

Ice-cold water flooded my nose and mouth. Suffocation dragged me down into despair. I hate myself for being weak. Hate them for their arrogance. Hate this rotten system that treats people like me as disposable.

But when I opened my eyes again, I was back. Back to the night she pushed me toward him.

This time, I won't be fooled.

Connor Mitchell and I are the golden couple of our industry. Everyone sees him as the devoted husband, always bringing me soup when I work late into the night.

On our fifth wedding anniversary, he gave me an expensive diamond necklace and posted something sweet on Instagram. The comments were all variations of the same thing: jealousy.

I used to believe it too.

Until I cut my trip to Europe short and got into that SUV. The passenger seat was set at the wrong angle, too far forward for my height. A contact lens case fell out of the sun visor, and neither of us wears contacts.

When I had my cousin pull the dashcam footage and saw him with his arm around some petite girl getting into the car, the truth hit me. My attentive husband, the one who called me every night I was away, had been using my connections and resources to play successful mentor to a twenty-two-year-old intern.

The irony is, he thinks he's gotten away with it. He has no idea I can see right through every move he makes.

Once rot sets into a perfect marriage, no amount of perfume can hide the stench.

Three years ago, I was in a car crash that killed both my parents and shattered my legs beyond repair. The doctors said I'd never walk again.

When I had nothing left, he appeared like some kind of savior. He paid for everything, brought me to his private research facility, took care of me.

He told me he loved me, broken body and all. We got married. He was perfect to me.

There was just one catch. His sister. Not even blood related, just some girl he grew up with. She had some rare blood disease, and turns out I had the exact blood type she needed. So I gave blood. Bone marrow too. Over and over.

I thought I owed him my life. For three years, I let them stick needles in me, drain whatever they needed. I thought that was love.

Until today, when I found a video on his phone from three years ago.

In the footage, one of his men reports back: "The crash was clean. Her parents are dead. Her legs are destroyed, just like you wanted."

His voice, cold as ice: "Good. As long as her blood keeps Cora alive, that's all that matters. She's got no one and nowhere to go. She'll have to stay."

The accident that killed my parents and destroyed my legs wasn't an accident at all. He planned it.

So I planned my own death. And when he saw my body, the man who dragged me into hell finally lost his mind.

That admissions season, Lily — a poor student who couldn't even clear the state university cutoff — insisted on dragging my two childhood friends off to the worst community college in the state, just so she wouldn't have to go alone.

Ethan held an offer from Yale. Ryan had been accepted to Stanford. Yet the two of them, as if under a spell, were ready to throw away those schools just to follow her.

I wore myself out trying to talk them down. All I got back was: You look down on Lily. You're just jealous.

Behind their backs, I contacted counselors, admissions offices, and their parents, and clawed their spots back one by one just before the deadline.

Lily went to that community college alone. Six months later, she jumped from the roof of her dorm.

Ethan and Ryan handled her funeral, then came back and tied me to the roof of a thirty-six-story building.

"If you hadn't stopped us from going with Lily, she never would have been bullied there."

"You're so capable, aren't you? Then go down and keep her company."

They pushed me over the edge without a flicker of hesitation.

When I opened my eyes, I was back at the start of college application season.

This time, I won't save them.

The day college applications were due, Fern Whitmore wouldn't stop crying — and my two childhood best friends were completely wrapped around her finger.

They actually threatened to give up their Ivy League spots to follow her to community college.

I tried everything to talk them out of it. Nothing worked. So I went behind their backs and called both their parents.

Their parents showed up that same night and put a stop to it. Applications corrected, crisis averted, everyone back on track.

Or so I thought.

Fern lost her two personal ATMs, and one night she posted a goodbye message on social media and swallowed a bottle of pills.

Nash and Declan didn't blame her for it. They blamed me.

They lured me up to the roof. Both of them shoved their hands against my chest.

"Maren." Declan's voice was ice. "You ruined Fern's future. Go apologize to her in hell."

I fell twelve stories.

When I opened my eyes, I was back at the beginning.

This time, I'm not saving anyone.