Chapter 3

Margot's POV

I ignore her and drag my suitcase to the door.

Tiffany glares at me, her eyes full of venom. "Margot, if you walk out that door today, you're done in this city. And don't you dare come crying to me later."

I stop and glance back at her.

"Don't worry. You could drop dead in the street and I wouldn't even look twice."

I walk out, leaving them staring after me.

I don't check into a hotel. I go straight to a broker and rent a high-security luxury apartment, three times what I was paying before. I don't even blink before handing over six months' rent in full.

What's the point of holding on to money if I'm not even alive to spend it?

The first day I move in, I get the developer's fingerprint lock swapped out for my own deadbolt, and I have a few hidden cameras installed at the door, in the living room, and in the bedroom. Only after all that do I let myself lie down on the bed and finally breathe.

Over the next two weeks, I disappear completely from Tiffany's world. I get a new number, quit my old sales job that put me in front of people every day, and pick up remote translation work I can do from home instead.

But I don't stop watching from a distance.

Through an alt account I left logged in on an old phone, I keep tabs on Danielle and the others. Sure enough, Tiffany posts a whole tearful rant on Instagram, saying I'm so jealous of her rich boyfriend that I've lost my mind, that I even stole from her before skipping town in the middle of the night. A bunch of classmates who have no idea what really happened flood the comments, comforting her and calling me shameless.

I look at the screenshots, laugh coldly, and save every single one into a folder named Evidence.

The days pass, and the date I died in my last life creeps closer.

One night, the local news cuts in with breaking coverage. A brawl broke out at a club on the south side, several people hurt, and police are hunting for the head of a crime outfit, a man named Marcus Doyle, known as Reaper.

Reaper.

My hand tightens around my glass. Last time, it was Reaper's men who cut me down in the rain. He and Vincent hate each other's guts, two crews at war over the same turf for years.

The violence under the surface finally tears through the fantasy Tiffany's been living in.

I thought I'd put enough distance between us. I thought cutting contact would be enough to change everything.

Then, at two in the morning, I hear a faint metallic click at the door.

I jolt awake from a shallow sleep, my whole body freezing over. I grab my phone from under the pillow and pull up the camera feed.

The hallway light's been knocked out, the corridor pitch black. On the night-vision feed, three men in baseball caps crouch outside my door, long knives in hand, working a hydraulic cutter against the lock.

"Damn, she upgraded the lock," one of them mutters.

"Reaper says Vincent's gone into hiding, so if we can't get him, we get his girl's friend. Tiffany posted this bitch's new address on Instagram, said she's tangled up with Vincent too. Bring her in and Vincent's got no choice but to show his face."

Tiffany.

Cold dread floods through me.

She found my new address? No. It's the moving company. She must have peeked at my order history the day I moved.

She didn't just expose where I live. She fed my location straight to Vincent's enemies to cover herself.

She's using me as bait.

I force myself to stay calm and back into the bedroom, pressing against the door with a can of pepper spray in one hand and a folding knife in the other. My palms are soaked with sweat.

I thought I was prepared. But listening to the lock give way outside, I realize how thin that preparation really is against men who have nothing left to lose.

A sharp crack, and the lock breaks completely.

The front door swings open. Three shadows slip inside, trailing smoke and the smell of blood.

"Search the place. Doesn't matter if she's alive or dead," the one in front mutters, stepping closer to the bedroom.

I hold my breath, my heart pounding in my ears. The memory of my death flashes through my mind, the dull sound of a blade cutting through flesh, Tiffany screaming into some man's chest with her hands over her eyes, and me, choking on my own voice as I went down in the mud.

The bedroom door bursts open.

A flashlight beam cuts across my eyes. The man in front spots me curled against the wall and grins, raising his blade.

"Run. Go on, you little bitch, run."

The blade arcs through the dark, coming straight for my face.

Is this really how it ends?

I lived through it once already. Changed the locks, moved apartments, cut every tie, prepared for everything I could think of. Is fate still going to drag me back to that rainy night and kill me all over again?

Anger, fear, and a bone-deep refusal to accept it all rise up in my throat at once. My eyes go wide, locked on the blade coming down at me, and I don't even have time to scream.

Right as the knife starts to fall—

"Police! Don't move! Drop the knife!"