MY VENGEFUL REBIRTH

I froze to death. Not metaphorically. Not "my heart froze." I mean my eyelashes turned to ice and my blood turned to slush while my husband, Damian Locke, raised a crystal flute to his mistress at our 10th anniversary party. He toasted her. “To the woman who actually knows how to f*****g warm a bed,” he said, grinning, while I was locked on the balcony in nothing but silk and spite. The snow took me slow. Last thing I heard before my lungs quit: her laugh. Her name is Celeste. She moaned his name like a prayer every time she rode him in our house. I died hating them. I woke up to organ music. “Do you take this man—” I open my eyes and it’s our wedding day. Again. My hands are shaking around lilies and gardenias. Damian stands at the altar in his custom Tom Ford, looking like sin dipped in money. He smiles at me the same way he smiled when he turned the balcony lock. Celeste is in the second row. Front and center, the b***h. Already wearing his collar, even if no one else knows it yet. The priest clears his throat. “Miss Vivienne?” Two hundred people watching. My father’s business partners. His family’s empire. All the knives I didn’t see the first time. Fuck it. I drop the bouquet. It hits the white runner with a wet thud. Gasps ripple through the church like I just pissed on the bible. “Vivienne, what are you—” Damian starts, but I’m already turning. Turning from the altar. Turning from him. And stepping straight into the arms of the man in the back row who’s been staring at me like he wants to ruin me. Adrian Graves. Damian’s deadliest rival. The man my husband called “a f*****g psychopath with a god complex” at dinner last week. Six-four, scar across his left brow, hands that look like they’ve choked men and f****d women raw. His smirk is wicked. Devil-knows-your-sins wicked. “Well, well, Mrs. Locke,” he murmurs, low enough that only I hear, his breath hot against my ear. “Or not.” His arms lock around my waist like a claim. Like a f*****g promise. I tilt my chin up. My voice carries to every shocked, hungry face in this church. “Change of plans,” I say, loud. Clear. “I don’t do vows with men who toast their mistress while their wife turns to ice.” Damian goes white. Celeste chokes on nothing. Adrian’s laugh is dark and filthy against my neck. “Christ, princess. You’ve got a mouth on you.” “You have no idea,” I whisper back. My nails dig into his suit jacket. “Take me out of here and I’ll show you exactly how dirty it gets.” His eyes go black. Possession. Obsession. The kind of look that ends in blood or orgasms, and I want both. This time I’m not the frozen girl on the balcony. This time I’m dealing the fatal blow. And I’m going to make Damian Locke bleed for every degree I lost.