Chapter 1
Reborn, I ignored my mafia king husband’s calls and texts. I spent days drinking with pretty boys. On the eighth morning, I found Kaelen at my door.
“Which part of you did that man touch?” he growled.
“My hand,” I giggled. “How else would we roll dice?”
“Cut off his hands,” he ordered his men.
I pushed past him. “Do whatever.”
In my past life, I was his queen for eight years. I won him the city’s underworld casino and stood by him as he rose to power. But he became obsessed with Stella, a fragile shuffler girl he protected.
I discovered he’d changed my marital status to “Divorced” to shield her. When I confronted him, he coldly said, “You’re the queen. Why sweat the small stuff?”
I slapped Stella publicly. That night, Kaelen had my brother Leo’s legs shattered before my eyes. “This is your lesson for touching what’s mine,” he sneered.
I begged until Leo bled out. Then I collapsed.
I woke back on the day I found my status changed. This time, I sold my jewelry, bought a ticket, and plannec to escape with my brother-away from Kaelen’s gilded cage.
1
After seeing my status online, I took my papers to the city clerk’s office for confirmation.
“Ms. Galler,” the clerk said, not looking up from her screen. “Our system shows your marriage was officially dissolved.”
Hearing her voice, I knew my past life had been terrifyingly real.
The date of the dissolution was my birthday.
That day, thinking Kaelen was just busy, I had booked out the highest rotating restaurant in the Canaan distr- ict, complete with a private fireworks display. I waited from sunset to sunrise. He never showed.
He was busy, all right. Busy signing a different piece of paper, erasing my existence from his.
I shook off the memory. When I got back to the casino, Kaelen’s black Maybach was parked at the curb.
In my last life, I had run up to the car, screaming questions at him. He, afraid Stella would see, had kicked me into a dark corner before she could even get out.
This time, I melted into the shadows of a nearby pillar.
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The driver’s door opened and Kaelen emerged. He walked around to the passenger side and opened the door himself, an act of patience and care I had never witnessed before.
A girl in a pale blue dress stepped out, looking timid and out of place beside the gleaming, opulent car.
It was Stella.
Kaelen shrugged off his suit jacket and draped it over her thin shoulders, his arm circling her waist as he guided her toward the casino’s grand entrance.
“Kael…” she hesitated, stopping. “I have nothing left but you… I can’t afford to lose this bet…”
He turned and pulled her into a tight embrace, his voice holding a gentle certainty I had never heard directed at me. “What are you afraid of? From now on, you’re the mistress of this place. No one else deserves that itle.” His voice dropped lower. “And if you don’t like it here, I’ll find you a quiet place, build you a resort of your own to play in…”
The same men who used to bow and respectfully call me their queen now bent at the waist for Stella, thei voices loud and fawning.
Welcome, Ma’am!”
They escorted the terrified, fawn-like girl into the glittering hellhole.
pressed a hand to my stomach, a sharp pain lancing through me. Only after they had all disappeared inside did I stumble out of the shadows. I wiped away a tear, my eyes hardening into chips of ice.
went to the hospital alone and scheduled an abortion.
The doctor frowned, looking at the ultrasound screen. “Ms. Galler, you have a complicated medical history You haven’t been able to conceive for seven years. If you go through with this, you may never be able to ge
regnant again.”
A bitter laugh escaped my lips. “I’m divorced. I don’t want my child to be born without a father.”
As the cold liquid entered my veins, my consciousness began to drift. In the haze, I saw the old Kaelen, his
ar pressed to my belly, laughing and saying our son would be a master of the tables, that he’d have to teach
im to read cards from the cradle. I saw him calling a fortune teller to pick the most auspicious name. I saw im holding me, promising that as soon as he found a successor, he’d take me and our child away from the
casino, and we’d travel the world…
Then, all of it shattered into dust with the memory of his voice: “Only you deserve to be the mistress of this casino.”
When I came to, I dragged my hollowed-out body to my brother’s hospital room. This time, Leo had only suffered minor injuries on his last job. He would recover quickly. I wasn’t going to be a fool again.
I contacted a black market broker and paid a premium for two tickets to a third-world country, leaving in three days. Going through official channels was too risky; Kaelen would know instantly. I then called my one
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trusted subordinate, gave him a stack of cash, and told him to arrange for Leo’s discharge, secretly.
With everything in place, I finally allowed myself to relax. I hailed a cab, giving an address a few blocks away from our villa. It was a habit born of paranoia-in our world, you never let anyone know exactly where you
lived.
I had just stepped out of the cab when a hand clamped over my mouth from behind, dragging me backward. | fought, kicking and twisting, breaking free for a split second before another man swung something hard and sharp into my back.
An explosion of pain. The warmth of blood soaking through my shirt.
didn’t have to guess. It was one of Kaelen’s rivals. He had conquered so much territory, the line of people who wanted him and his dead was long enough to stretch from the casino to the docks.
tried to reach for the knife in my purse, but my arm was twisted behind my back, and my phone was ripper rom my hand and smashed on the pavement.
Stay still, bitch!” the man holding me snarled, dragging me toward a waiting van.
Just as despair began to set in, a familiar black Maybach turned the corner from the main road.
t was Kaelen’s car.
With my last ounce of strength, I screamed, thrashing wildly to get his attention.
The car hesitated, slowing down.
He saw me. He had to have seen me.
But in the next second, the Maybach accelerated, speeding past the intersection without a second thought.
Through the window, I saw him pull Stella into his arms, turning her face away from the scene, shielding he
eyes.
As if I wasn’t his wife being dragged away to be tortured and killed, but just some ugly street brawl, unworthy of staining her innocent gaze.
All the fight, all the hope, drained out of me.
The pain and the cold washed over me in a final, crushing wave as darkness consumed me.
