DIED TO LIVE AGAIN

CHAPTER TWO: A SECOND CHANCE AT LIFE

~MIRA

I woke up drowning.

My lungs burned, desperate for air that wouldn't come. My hands clawed at my throat, searching for the truck's grill, the impact, the—

Nothing.

I gasped, and oxygen flooded in. Real oxygen. Not rain-soaked and tinged with blood, but clean and cool and impossible.

I wasn't on the road. I wasn't dying.

I was in my bed.

My chest heaved as I pushed myself upright, sheets tangling around my legs. The room spun. I gripped the mattress edge, knuckles white, waiting for reality to stop fracturing at the edges.

This was my room. The cream wallpaper with gold accents that Celeste had chosen when I turned sixteen. The mahogany dresser Victor bought at an estate sale in Connecticut. The window overlooking the east gardens where I used to watch Adrian practice lacrosse before everything went wrong.

Before Isla came home.

Before the wedding.

Before Adrian—

I looked down at my hands. No bruises. No split knuckles from where I'd tried to shield my face. My fingernails were intact, painted the pale pink Celeste insisted was appropriate for a Castellan woman.

I touched my ribs through my silk nightgown. No pain. No fractures. No belt marks carved into my skin like a roadmap of my failures.

What was happening?

The bedside clock read 6:47 AM. October 12th.

October 12th.

Six weeks before the wedding. Six weeks before I'd said yes to Adrian’s proposal and sealed my fate. Six weeks before the first time he'd hit me and I'd told myself it was a mistake, that he was stressed, that it would get better.

It never got better.

But this—this couldn't be real. I died. I felt it. The truck, the rain, the way everything inside me had shattered on impact. The tear sliding down my cheek as darkness swallowed me whole.

Unless...

"Mira?" Celeste's voice drifted through the door, syrupy sweet. The tone she used when she wanted something. "Are you awake, darling?"

My throat closed. Words strangled somewhere between my chest and my mouth, choking me. I opened my lips, but nothing came out.

The door opened anyway.

Celeste didn't wait for permission anymore. She'd stopped waiting the day Isla came home, the day her real daughter replaced me in every way that mattered. The day I became temporary.

She glided into the room like she owned it—which, technically, she did. Her strawberry blonde hair was swept into a perfect chignon. Her cream blazer probably cost more than Maria made in a month. And around her neck, those damned pearls.

She always wore her pearls when she was about to ask me to do something I didn't want to do.

My hands fisted in the sheets.

"Oh good, you're awake." She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. It never did. Not anymore. "We need to discuss the arrangements."

She was holding a small velvet box.

My stomach dropped.

I knew what was inside before she opened it. The ring. Adrian's ring. Two carats, emerald cut, set in platinum. It cost more than most people made in a year, and in my previous life—God, was that what I was calling it now?—it had sat on my finger like a shackle.

"I know you're nervous," Celeste said, crossing to sit beside me on the bed. The mattress dipped under her weight. She reached for my hand, but I pulled it back before she could touch me.

Her smile tightened.

"This is what's best for the family," she continued, placing the box on the nightstand instead. "You understand that, don't you?"

In my previous life, I'd nodded. I'd taken the ring. I'd said yes because I didn't see another option, because I thought if I just went along, if I just made myself small enough and quiet enough, they might let me stay.

They didn't.

They'd abused me. Broken me. Driven me to my death

My nails bit into my palms. "What if I need time to think about it?"

Celeste blinked. Once. Twice. Like I'd spoken a language she didn't understand.

"I'm sorry?"

"I said—" Bile rose in my throat, hot and acidic. I swallowed it down. "I need time…to think."

The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees.

"Think." Celeste's voice was flat now. No more sugar. No more pretense. "About what, exactly?"

"About marrying Adrian." The words felt like glass in my mouth. "About what that means. For me. For my future."

"Your future?" She laughed, sharp and brittle. "Mira, darling, your future is exactly what this family decides it is. You don't have the luxury of choice."

I met her eyes. They were blue, like Isla's. Like Adrian's. Not like mine.

"Why not?" My voice was soft. I could risk an argument.

Her jaw tightened. I watched a muscle jump beneath her perfectly applied foundation. "Because you have no money. No connections outside this family. No prospects." She leaned closer, and I smelled her perfume. Chanel No. 5. It used to make me feel safe. Now it made me nauseous. "If you refuse this marriage, Victor will disinherit you, immediately. You'll be thrown out with nothing but the clothes on your back."

I already knew this. She'd said almost the exact same words in my previous life, standing in this exact spot, wearing this exact expression.

But she wasn't finished.

"And we both know you won't last a day out there alone." Her smile returned, colder than before. "Not poor little Mira, who's never worked a real job or paid a bill. Who wouldn't even know how to survive without the Castellan name protecting her."

My fingernails drew blood where they pressed into my palms.

"We'll also make sure no one hires you," she added, almost as an afterthought. "We have contacts everywhere, darling. One word from Victor, and you'll be unemployable. Unmarriageable. Worthless."

In my previous life, those words had worked. They'd terrified me into submission, into thinking I had no way out.

But I'd already lived through the alternative. I'd already felt what it was like to be Adrian's wife, his punching bag, his toy. I'd already walked through the rain with broken bones and shattered hope.

Death had been kinder.

"I still need time," I said quietly.

Celeste stood abruptly, smoothing her blazer. "You have until the end of the week." Her voice was like ice. "But don't make this difficult, Mira. You won't like the alternative."

She left the ring box on the nightstand and walked out without another word. The door clicked shut behind her.

I sat there, in the silence, staring at that velvet box like it was poison.

Six weeks.

I had six weeks before the wedding. Six weeks to change everything. Six weeks to rewrite a future that had already killed me once.

But how?

I couldn't just refuse the marriage. Celeste had made the consequences clear. And even if I could survive being disinherited—which I barely believed—I had no plan, no resources, no safety net.

Except...

My phone sat on the nightstand beside the ring box. I picked it up with trembling hands and scrolled through my messages. Past Celeste's passive-aggressive texts about wedding preparations. Past Adrian's cold, one-word responses. Past the dozens of unanswered emails from executives who'd already started treating me like I didn't matter.

Until I found it.

The message I'd deleted in my previous life. The one I'd ignored because I was too proud, too scared, too convinced I could handle the Castellans on my own.

If you need help, I can provide it. Discreetly. No strings. —DR

Dominic Raines.

Self-made billionaire. Private equity king. The man Victor had rejected two years ago with barely concealed contempt, calling him "new money trash" at a board meeting I wasn't supposed to overhear.

The man who'd sent me this message the day after my engagement was announced, offering help I'd been too afraid to accept.

In my previous life, I'd blocked his number and tried to forget he existed.

But this wasn't my previous life anymore.

My fingers hovered over the keyboard. What would I even say? Hi, I'm being forced to marry my adoptive brother and I need you to save me? That sounded insane. Desperate.

I was desperate.

But I was also smart. I'd spent years in boardrooms, learning how deals were made and broken. I knew leverage when I saw it. And Dominic Raines didn't offer help out of kindness—no one in our world did.

He wanted something.

Fine. So did I.

I typed out a message before I could second-guess myself.

Your offer. Is it still open?

My thumb hovered over the send button.

In my previous life, I'd been too weak to ask for help. Too conditioned to believe that suffering in silence was noble, that endurance was love, that I owed the Castellans my loyalty even as they destroyed me piece by piece.

I'd died because of that weakness.

Not this time.

I hit send.

The message delivered. Three dots appeared almost immediately. Then:

Always. When can we meet?

My heart pounded so hard I felt it in my throat. I stared at those words, at the lifeline Dominic was offering, and something inside me shifted.

This was my second chance. My do-over. My opportunity to rewrite everything.

And I wasn't going to waste it playing nice with the family that had broken me.

I was going to burn their world down.

I typed back quickly.

Tomorrow. Your office. Noon.

His response came instantly.

I'll be waiting.

I set the phone down and looked at the velvet ring box one more time. Then I picked it up, walked to my dresser, and shoved it into the bottom drawer beneath scarves I never wore.

Out of sight.

Where it belonged.

I caught my reflection in the mirror. Same blonde hair. Same green eyes. Same face I'd worn for twenty-four years.

But something was different now.

I wasn't the woman who'd died on that road.

I was the woman who'd come back.

And this time, I wasn't going to let them break me.

This time, I was going to fight.

The Castellans thought they owned me.

They were wrong.

I wasn't going to let this second chance go to waste.

I was going to rebuild my life from the ashes.

And if they tried to stop me, I'd take them down with me