Chapter 3

I was taken to the police station again.

With a grim expression, an officer placed several horrific accident photos on the table.

“Harper! You drove drunk last night, hit a black sedan carrying a family of three, and fled the scene. None of them survived!”

“The medical examiner has already examined the bodies. Other than the youngest child, the two adults might have survived if you had called for help and gotten them to a hospital. Instead, they lay there bleeding until they died!”

Everyone erupted in shock.

My mother nearly fainted when she heard that.

She looked at me through her tears and kept asking what had happened.

Adrian stepped forward and pulled her away from me.

“Ma’am, don’t you understand? Harper spent the night drinking and sleeping around with some random man at a bar. She got drunk, didn’t call a rideshare, hit someone, and ran!”

“I warned her not to go to places like that, but she never listened. And now look what happened!”

In an instant, he painted me as promiscuous, reckless, and completely heartless.

Everyone else began accusing me of being a murderer.

“That was an entire family! How could you just leave them there and run?”

“Do rich people really have no compassion? Do you think other people’s lives don’t matter just because you have money?”

“I didn’t.” I tried to defend myself, but tears kept spilling down my face.

“If you hadn’t fled the scene, those two adults wouldn’t have died!”

I shook my head desperately, praying someone would believe me.

“I really didn’t do it! I never went to a bar, and I never drove anywhere. You keep saying I did it, but where’s the evidence? Where is it?”

Bianca jumped in with the same answer as before.

“You burned the evidence!”

Everyone suddenly looked at me as if they had figured everything out.

“No wonder she livestreamed herself acting crazy and burned down her million-dollar mansion. She was destroying the evidence!”

“She’ll do anything to escape justice!”

“What a monster! She should pay for three lives with her own!”

“What are the police waiting for? Two adults are dead. Arrest her and sentence her to death!”

Every accusation and insult sounded painfully familiar.

Everything had happened exactly this way in my previous life.

My heart began to pound in panic.

Adrian looked at me with disgust.

“Harper, that house was supposed to be the home you gave me for our marriage. You burned it down just to cover up your crime!”

“If that’s how things are, then I don’t see any reason for us to stay engaged.”

“Adrian! You’re lying! You were the one who hit them!”

I screamed at him.

Two officers pinned my shoulders down and kept me from moving.

“Harper, I’m going to ask you one more time. Why did you really burn down the house?”

“You kept insisting last night that you were mentally ill, but this morning your mother said you had suffered an emotional breakdown. Which story is the truth?”

I frowned and gave them a completely different answer.

“I burned down the house to prove that I’m innocent.”

The male officer gave me a strange look.

Then they brought out an evidence bag containing a lipstick and a bracelet.

“Harper, these were found at the accident scene. The lipstick and bracelet both belong to you, and we found your DNA on them. They must have been left behind during the collision.”

Yes.

These pieces of evidence were exactly the same as in my previous life.

After that, they would find the getaway car in my garage, with only my fingerprints on it.

Then there would be bloodstained clothing and a dashcam destroyed inside the mansion.

Every piece of evidence would point to me.

But now the house and garage had both burned down. Could things really still follow the same path?

I forced myself to calm down and began thinking through every possibility.

I looked up and asked, “Did the surveillance cameras around the accident capture me?”

“You really won’t stop until you see yourself in a coffin.”

The male officer impatiently pulled up the surveillance footage.

“The window tint kept us from seeing the driver’s face, but the red sports car was confirmed to be registered to you.”

“Even though you burned the vehicle, we’ll do everything we can—”

I stared at the timestamp on the screen and suddenly shouted, “Stop!”

The crucial evidence that could prove my innocence had appeared.

At last, I smiled.

I knew I had a chance to turn everything around.