Chapter 1

Introduction:

To save Lucas, I destroyed my right hand, my career, and eventually, my life.

It wasn't until the moment I died that I realized his so-called "love" was nothing more than an excuse to keep me locked in a cage—and the mistress he spoiled was the very person who ruined me.

Given a second chance at life, I woke up on the exact day this tragedy began.

This time, I tore up his prenup on the spot and set a trap with my original design files before they could make a move.

My hand, my career, and everything they stole from me—I'm taking it all back myself.

As for Lucas and Chloe? What they owe me, they will repay a hundredfold!

Scarlett's POV

I snapped my eyes open, gasping for air.

My vision slowly brought the world into focus. Harsh, fluorescent lights glared overhead, almost blinding me.

Instinctively, I moved to shield my eyes, but the moment my right arm shifted, an agonizing spike of pain shot through my body like an electric shock.

"Hiss—" I sucked in a sharp breath. Cold sweat instantly drenched my hospital gown.

I stiffly turned my head. My gaze fell on my right hand, wrapped tightly in layers of gauze and a thick plaster cast.

A striking, crimson patch of blood seeped through the white bandage.

The pain felt too real.

My brain went completely blank for an entire minute. Then, memories rushed back into my mind like a tidal wave.

I wasn't dead. To be exact, I was back three years in the past.

Back to the day I shoved Lucas out of the way of a falling stage light, only for the heavy equipment to crush my right hand into a shattered fracture.

Back then, Lucas was my entire universe. A rising megastar, adored by millions.

For him, I had willingly put my own jewelry design career on the backburner.

For him, I threw myself in harm's way at that split second, permanently crippling my right hand and losing the fine motor skills required to hold a design pencil.

And what did I get in return?

Lucas standing over me, delivering his emotionless verdict: "Scarlett, your hand can't be fixed. Just stay home from now on. The world out there is too messy, and I don't want you getting involved. You're too reckless, so this is best for both of us."

Under the guise of "love" and "protection," he snapped my wings and locked me away in his penthouse.

I became his caged bird. Any sign of struggle only brought harsher restrictions.

And once Chloe entered the picture, my entire existence turned into a cruel joke!

Lucas used all his connections to push her to stardom. That woman walked right up to me, smiling with sweet, dripping venom: "Scarlett, Lucas said you're nothing but a nuisance now. Those unfinished drafts of yours? I already published them under my name. Oh, right, just to make sure you keep your mouth shut..."

That day, Chloe's bodyguards pinned down my already ruined right hand. One by one, they snapped my fingers, grinding them beneath the soles of their designer shoes.

The sickening crunch of shattering bone, Chloe's delicate laughter, and Lucas's cold voice through the phone speaker—"Let her do what she wants, just don't kill her"—finally broke my mind.

On a freezing winter night, I swallowed an entire bottle of sleeping pills.

*Beep... beep... beep...* The rhythmic chime of the heart monitor yanked me violently back from those suffocating memories.

I stared at the ceiling, raw, bone-deep hatred screaming inside my chest.

Fighting through the dizzy spell, I pushed myself up and ripped the IV needle out of the back of my hand.

Blood welled up and dripped onto the snow-white sheets, but I didn't even flinch.

Stumbling into the private en-suite bathroom, I looked up into the mirror.

A pale face, bloodless lips, swallowed up by an oversized hospital gown. I looked so fragile a single touch might shatter me. But my eyes burned with a terrifying, untamed fire.

This wasn't the broken woman waiting to die in a dark basement. This was me at twenty-three: the prodigy hailed as a once-in-a-century jewelry design genius, newly nominated for a prestigious international emerging artist award.

And a woman whose hand had just been crushed, but who hadn't yet become anyone's trophy wife.

"Lucas..." I stared at my reflection, letting a cold, humorless smile curve my lips. "You want to keep me as a pet? Keep dreaming."

A fresh wave of agony throbbed through my right hand.

I lost this hand saving him.

In my past life, I fell for his lies and didn't go abroad for nerve reconstruction surgery in time, missing the golden recovery window and permanently crippling myself.

This time, there was still time to fix it.

I closed my eyes and drew a long, steady breath.

From the second I died and woke back up, there was zero chance I'd ever play the fool for the same man twice.

I was going to call off the engagement. I was going to take back every single design draft I bled over during sleepless nights. And I was going to make Lucas and Chloe taste what it felt like to be completely destroyed!

I twisted the tap, cupped a handful of freezing water with my left hand, and splashed it onto my face. Drops of water trailed down my pale cheeks, soaking into my collar.

When I looked up, the last trace of weakness and lingering attachment to the past had been wiped clean. Only razor-sharp resolve remained.

I turned, walked back into the room, and grabbed my phone off the nightstand.

The screen lit up with missed calls from "Lucas." More than a dozen of them.

According to how things played out last time, Lucas was about to walk through that door with his so-called "prenup." On paper, it was a promise to take care of me forever; in reality, it was a gilded deed of ownership designed to strip away my career, my voice, and my freedom.

With a scoff, I muted the phone and tossed it onto the mattress.

Using my left hand, I awkwardly tugged open the nightstand drawer and pulled out my tablet.

I unlocked it, typed in a complex passcode, and brought up a hidden cloud drive.

Inside lay the fruit of six months of grueling labor: the rough sketches, revision history, and final blueprints for my "Awakening" jewelry collection.

In my previous life, during the days I spent doped up in this hospital bed, Chloe used Lucas's corporate IT team to quietly hack my files, steal the entire collection, and release it ahead of me, turning around to frame me for plagiarism.

Back then, trapped under the haze of physical trauma and Lucas's controlling grip, I had no way to fight back. I was nailed to the wall as a fraud.

My left hand tapped away at the screen. Clumsy, but driven by absolute focus.

I encrypted all the raw, high-resolution source files with timestamped metadata and transferred them straight to an offshore, independent private server.

Then, in the original folder, I left a set of "bait" files. On the surface, they looked complete, but several crucial rendering parameters and foundational line arts had been subtly doctored.

On top of that, I embedded a lightweight tracking script directly into the archive.

The second someone tried to download or extract the files, the script would run silently in the background, screen-recording their desktop activity and capturing their real IP address.

Once the trap was set, I let out a long breath and leaned back against the pillows.

The pain in my right arm flared relentlessly, but my mind was eerily quiet.

The net was cast. Now I just had to wait for the prey to walk straight into it.

Heavy, familiar footsteps echoed out in the hallway.

My eyes hardened into ice.

The man who drove me into the abyss had arrived.