Chapter 2

Clara POV

Everyone in New York knew I loved Liam Sterling.

For ten years.

When his family adopted me at seven, I started following him everywhere.

Everyone just assumed I'd be his wife.

But Liam, the very man I loved, killed me once.

"Quick, say hi to Stella."

His hot breath on my neck, his voice rasping close to my ear.

I opened my eyes.

In my vision, Liam's eyes were bloodshot, his desire fueled by drugs, spiraling out of control. He gripped my wrist so hard I thought my bones might shatter.

The familiar hotel room. The familiar man. The familiar opening line.

I was reborn.

Memories of my gruesome death flashed back instantly. The suffocatingly cold basement. The oxygen slowly draining. The searing pain in my lungs. My fingernails scraping against the walls in desperation.

Until finally, complete suffocation.

The icy grip of death crept from my spine to the top of my head, leaving me cold all over.

Liam pulled me harder into his embrace, his body scorching hot, muttering incoherently.

"I feel awful..."

In my past life, I pitied him. I cried and offered myself to him, becoming his desperate release.

In this life...

I looked at his dazed face, but I felt nothing.

With my other hand, I picked up my phone from the nightstand.

Stella was the first contact in my phone book.

I tapped "dial."

The call was answered almost instantly.

"Hello?"

There was a flicker of hidden tension in Stella's voice.

I wasted no words, directly stating the address.

"Cloud Nine Hotel, Room 1808."

With that, I hung up.

Liam seemed to sense my withdrawal. His grip tightened, trying to pin me completely beneath him.

I pulled away from his hand, rolled off the bed, and stood up.

I straightened my slightly disheveled collar, then turned to face the man on the bed, tormented by desire.

"Liam, your woman will be here in ten minutes."

I said, then walked towards the door.

"Clara!"

From behind me, his name ripped through his clenched teeth, filled with uncontrolled fury.

I didn't look back.

My hand found the doorknob, twisted it, and pulled the door open.

The door slammed shut, cutting off that consuming gaze.

I didn't leave. Instead, I leaned against the wall next to the door, waiting quietly.

Ten minutes, precisely.

The elevator doors opened, and Stella, dressed in a white dress, hurried out.

Seeing me standing at the door, she paused, then her eyes, like searchlights, scanned me from head to toe.

She stopped in front of the door, then turned her head to look at me.

It was the scrutiny of a woman claiming her territory, laced with contempt and dismissal.

"You can go now."

Stella's voice was soft, filled with disdain.

"You're not needed here."

She finished speaking and pushed open the door to Room 1808.

Inside, the man's heavy breathing and a woman's stifled gasp immediately reached my ears.

The door closed again.

I turned and walked to my own room.

Room 1809, right next door.

I didn't turn on the lights, sitting down in the darkness.

The muffled sounds from next door came intermittently, suppressed and unleashed, intertwined, announcing the start of their affair.

I listened quietly, my mind calmly replaying the events of my past life.

In my past life, I had become Liam's desperate release.

A month later, I was pregnant.

Liam gave me a grand wedding. But on our wedding day, he received news of Stella's death in a car accident.

From then on, I became a sinner in his eyes.

He believed I had used the child to drive Stella away and caused her death.

He started drinking heavily, staying out all night.

Each time he returned, reeking of alcohol and longing for another woman, he would look at me coldly, his eyes filled with a hatred that could kill me.

Even so, I endured.

I thought, once the baby was born, everything would get better.

But I never saw that day.

On the eve of giving birth, Liam locked me in the basement of the Liam family's old estate.

That place I feared most since childhood - dark, damp, windowless.

Through the door, he said to me in a sinister tone.

"Clara, Stella is terrified of the dark. Go keep her company."

Then, he drained the oxygen from the basement.

I suffocated to death in endless darkness, along with the unborn child.

The sounds from next door had stopped at some point.

Footsteps echoed in the hallway, the click of heels, then the opening and closing of the elevator doors.

Everything returned to silence.

I let out a long breath. The suffocating tightness in my chest finally eased.

I knew that in this life, everything would be different.