Chapter 1

Prologue

In my past life, I loved Nicholas Vance for four years.

To stay by his side, I gave up my acceptance letter to the Vienna Conservatory, abandoned my beloved piano, and even willingly played the shadow in the dark—a stand-in for his first love.

Yet for the sake of his first love, Elena Miller, he locked me inside his mansion and clipped my wings.

In the end, Elena pushed me down the stairs from the piano room.

I crashed onto the ground, covered in blood, but Nicholas didn’t spare me a single glance. He strode straight past my dying body and swept the woman who murdered me into his arms.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back to being nineteen years old.

There were still three months left before the nightmare that destroyed my life was supposed to happen.

This time, I accepted the offer from the Vienna Conservatory.

I don’t want him anymore.

Stella's POV

I died at twenty-three.

Elena Miller shoved me off the stairs outside the piano room.

In the final moments of my life, I strained to shift my eyes. Through a blur stained red with blood, I caught sight of a familiar figure sprinting out of the building.

It was Nicholas Vance.

The man I had loved with every fiber of my being for four whole years.

He was running fast, wearing an expression of pure, unbridled terror—a panic I had never seen on his face before.

Was he afraid? Was he terrified that I was going to die?

A second later, Nicholas’s long legs stepped right over my body as I lay in a pooling puddle of blood. Without a shred of hesitation, he rushed straight toward Elena, who was slumped on the ground just past me.

"Elena!" Nicholas’s voice choked with tension.

He dropped to one knee, pulling Elena tightly against his chest, cradling the back of her head with desperate tenderness.

Leaning into his embrace, Elena peered over Nicholas’s shoulder. Her gaze locked onto mine as I lay bleeding out on the cold floor.

In those gorgeous eyes, there wasn't an ounce of fear. There was only the smug, cruel triumph of a winner.

Watching that, my throat tightened, and a fresh wave of blood welled up. I wanted to laugh, but tears spilled over first, blending with the crimson pool beneath me.

So this was it. This was what I got for giving up my dream of going abroad, abandoning the piano, throwing away my dignity and my sense of self, all just to stay by his side!

At the tender age of twenty-three, my life ended in a calculated murder, while the man I loved held my killer in his arms.

Nicholas turned with Elena in his arms, his broad, commanding back swiftly disappearing down the end of the hallway.

My vision slowly drifted apart, finally dissolving into total, pitch-black darkness.

"Stella, get up. I’m driving you to school."

A low, deep baritone broke through the dark.

I snapped my eyes open, gasping frantically for air, my chest heaving violently up and down.

Cold sweat instantly soaked through my pajamas. Instinctively, I curled into a ball, clutching the edge of the blanket as uncontrollable tremors wracked my body.

The air carried a familiar scent of sandalwood and cedarwood diffuser.

I slowly turned my head.

Sunlight filtered through the white sheer curtains, casting soft geometric patterns across the wooden floor. A plush teddy bear sat on the nightstand, and thick music theory textbooks and sheet music notebooks were stacked neatly on the desk.

This was Nicholas's mansion. This was the bedroom I had lived in for five years.

Yet the decor in this room was unmistakably how it looked when I was nineteen! When I turned twenty, Nicholas had declared these plush toys childish and ordered the maids to throw every single one of them away.

Trembling, I reached out and grabbed the phone off the nightstand.

The screen lit up. The harsh glare made me squint on instinct.

The display read clearly: October 12, 2023.

Wait… wasn’t that three years ago?!

I hadn’t died. I had actually gone back to being nineteen years old.

The footsteps outside hadn’t gone far. Nicholas seemed irritated by my sluggishness, his long fingers rapping against the wooden door once more.

*Knock, knock.*

"You have ten minutes. I’ll be waiting in the car downstairs."

Through the closed door, his voice carried the same familiar chill, aloof and haughty.

I bit down hard on my lower lip.

It was this very voice that had become an inescapable nightmare over the past four years.

Nineteen was the turning point of my entire life.

Three months from now, Nicholas would be drugged at a high-society gala. That night, with bloodshot eyes, he would break into my bedroom, using me as a stand-in for that woman—treating me as the only antidote to save him.

From then on, everything changed.

He was no longer the aloof guardian who kept me at a distance while still looking after me. He turned into an overbearing, paranoid tyrant ruled by an obsessive need for control.

He clipped my wings, tore up my passport, and locked me in a cage like a pet.

And right now, there were still three full months before that descent into hell.

I let go of the blanket and looked down at my hands. They were whole, undamaged.

These hands hadn't yet been crushed in a car door during one of Nicholas’s violent outbursts. These hands could still play the most intricate passages of Chopin and Liszt.

Images from my past life flashed through my mind like a horror film.

The sheer despair of being locked in that bedroom, used night after night.

Nicholas’s cold cruelty when Elena returned, abandoning me in the pouring rain.

And the utter indifference he showed as he stepped right over my dying body after I fell.

The phantom agony seemed to slice through time and space, carving into my nerves all over again.

No.

I will never accept that fate again!

In this life, I don't want Nicholas Vance. Even if he was once the only light in my dark, miserable life, even if I once loved him more than my own breath.

I don’t want any of it anymore!

I threw off the covers and swung my legs out of bed. My knees were weak, and I stumbled, nearly crashing to the floor. But I caught myself on the bed frame, steadying my posture.

I walked over to the desk and flipped open my laptop.

Sitting quietly in my inbox was an acceptance email from the Vienna Conservatory. In my past life, desperate to stay by Nicholas’s side, I had clicked "decline" the very day after receiving it.

Staring at the formal text on the screen, my eyes stung, blurring my vision, but my fingers were entirely steady.

I guided the mouse, clicked "Accept Offer," and swiftly typed out a reply stating that I would arrive for registration on time.

Click. Send.

Looking at the prompt confirming the email was successfully sent, I finally let out a long, shuddering breath.

Three months.

During these three months, I just needed to become invisible, attract zero attention from Nicholas, and then walk away completely clean.

I walked into the bathroom, turned on the tap, and splashed freezing water over my face.

The girl in the mirror was pale, with lingering panic in the corners of her eyes. But in those clear irises, there was no longer a trace of that blind, desperate devotion to that man.

I washed up and changed.

I pulled on a plain white hoodie and a pair of faded blue jeans, slung my backpack over my shoulder, opened the door, and walked down the stairs step by step.