Chapter 1

Last time, she chased the “true love” a corporate spy sold her—publicly branded me controlling, stole my core tech, and helped him shove me off a rooftop.  

When I opened my eyes again, I was back before it all began.  

This time I didn’t expose her, didn’t confront her, and didn’t beg her to stay. I set the trap—watched her come close again, test my limits, and steal the “core technology”…  

Until the stolen code blew up the rival company, until she was unmasked in front of the cameras and taken away in handcuffs.  

Through tears, she demanded, “Why didn’t you tell me sooner he was a corporate spy?”  

I answered only, “I did. Last life.”

————

The moment my body tipped over the rooftop railing, all I managed to see was Luke’s hand pulling back from my back, clean and efficient.

The windows of the building flashed past my eyes. A second later, I slammed into the ground. It felt like a sledgehammer had crushed my chest, and the pain made my vision go black.

A loud ringing filled my ears. Something hot and metallic surged up my throat. I tried to take a breath, but all that came out was a ragged gasp.

I wasn’t dead yet.

But I couldn’t move.

I knew I was going to die there, because I couldn’t even lift a finger.

My name is Noah Black, founder of Obsidian Tech.

The man who shoved me off that roof was Luke Harper. My wife, Claire Hayes, was standing right there beside him. She didn’t try to stop him. She didn’t even say no.

Half a year earlier, I had been in the final sprint before my company’s next-generation AI launch.

That core algorithm had taken my team and me four years to build. With only a few months left before the launch, partners were lining up to sign contracts, investors were waiting on performance data, and I was sleeping three or four hours a night.

That was when Luke appeared.

Claire had brought him into the company as a strategic consultant. He looked polished, spoke gently, and always seemed composed.

I knew there was something off about him, because he had a gift for showing up at exactly the right moment. He never touched the technical work directly, but every conversation somehow drifted toward the core: where the training data came from, what was innovative about the model architecture, when we planned to go live, how the demo would be presented.

I was wary. I warned Claire.

I told her, “There’s something wrong with this guy. He’s trying to dig into our secrets.”

Claire frowned at me then. “Noah, your need to control everything is getting ridiculous. You even want to interfere with who I’m friends with?”

What really ruined me began at a company banquet three months earlier.

It was a pre-launch event I had organized to build momentum for the AI release. Our partners, investors, distribution heads, and several media outlets were all there. I had personally overseen the agenda. I was supposed to present the progress on our next-generation AI and finalize pilot deals with several key clients.

Instead, Claire took the stage.

She wore a white gown, flawless makeup, and held a microphone in one hand. She started by praising me—successful, capable, accomplished—raising the room into the mood of admiring a model couple.

Then she stopped.

Her eyes reddened. Her voice trembled.

“But I’m suffocating,” she said to the entire room. “You all see Noah at his best. What you don’t see is what my life is actually like.”

Then she began listing my “crimes,” one by one.

She said I was controlling, that I dictated what time she had to be home. She said I had the driver follow her to monitor her. She said I limited her social circle and filtered her friends. She even claimed I had installed tracking software on her phone.

At first the audience looked surprised. Then came the whispers. Their expressions shifted from curiosity, to sympathy, to judgment. In the end, all their eyes landed on me as if I were an abuser in a tailored suit.

Then she played her “evidence.”

What came up on the big screen were several pieces that had obviously been edited.

One was a text I had sent her: “Don’t meet Luke alone tonight. Come home.”

She had cut out the beginning—“One of the partners asked about his background. I don’t trust him”—and left only the commanding part.

Another was footage from the parking garage showing the driver waiting a short distance behind her car.

She claimed I had assigned someone to stalk her. The truth was that someone had been waiting outside the office for me that day, and she herself had said she was scared, so I had sent the driver to pick her up.

There was also an audio clip of me speaking sharply on the phone: “Don’t bring outsiders into the R&D building again.”

She didn’t play the second half—“There’s a restricted area in that building. Anyone entering without authorization is breaking the law and could ruin the company.”

“I’m not here for money, and I’m not here to make a scene,” she said, wiping at the corner of her eye. “I just want to be myself again.”

Then she threw a divorce agreement onto the table. The paper slapped against the surface with a crack like a slap across the face.

“Noah, I want a divorce.”

In that moment, my mind went blank.

Some people started avoiding eye contact with me. Others instinctively lowered their glasses, as if afraid of being associated with trouble. A few took out their phones and pointed their cameras at me, waiting to capture my humiliation.

I didn’t sign.

Not because I wanted to trap her, but because I truly treasured our marriage. I thought maybe I had simply been too busy lately and neglected her.

Even when I discovered she was already sleeping with Luke, I didn’t blame her at first. I thought she had been deceived.

I showed Claire everything I had on Luke—his background, his contact with a competing company, the signs that he had been secretly probing for our core algorithm—and over and over I told her, “He’s a corporate spy. He wants to steal what we built.”

Claire looked at me with eyes so cold they might as well have belonged to a stranger.

Her family’s company had been struggling for the past few years and relied heavily on projects tied to mine, so she never completely broke with me.

Gradually, she stopped bringing up divorce. She stopped making scenes in public.

I really thought she had come to her senses.

Until one night, long after midnight, I got a call from my technical director.

“Noah, the offline package for the core algorithm has been copied,” he said, his voice tense. “It was done through an internal authorization route, and the logs were cleaned almost perfectly. But we caught one abnormal device connection… and it came from a location on your home whitelist.”

I turned and looked at Claire.

She was standing in the doorway in her nightgown, her face perfectly calm.

That was the moment I understood she had betrayed me.

From that day on, my company began to collapse.

Investors stopped payments. The media began publishing stories about “technical controversy” surrounding Obsidian Tech. A rival company rushed out a product of its own, claiming it had access to the same-generation technology, with rumors spreading that we were the ones who had copied them.

If I wanted to save my team, I had to lower my head and negotiate.

Luke called me to this building and said they could “leave me a way out,” that maybe the company wouldn’t have to go straight into liquidation.

I knew it was a trap.

But I had no choice, because it wasn’t just my company. There were people under me whose livelihoods depended on it.

And then I stood on that rooftop, and he pushed me.

The memory stopped there. Pain yanked me back into the present.

I lay on the ground, my vision filled with nothing but the sky and the edge of the building. Blood ran from the corner of my mouth, tasting of iron. I wanted to call out, but my throat felt torn open. I couldn’t form a complete word.

Footsteps came from the distance, growing closer. High heels clicked against the pavement with an unhurried rhythm.

Claire had come down.

She wasn’t even running fast. She adjusted her shawl once, as if she were worried about the cold—or about disturbing her appearance. As she approached, she raised her voice just enough for the people around us to hear, her tone trembling with perfect performance.

“Noah! How could you do this?” She knelt beside me, laying her fingers gently on my shoulder as if comforting me. “Even if the company went bankrupt, you can’t just jump. You still have me, you still have—”

As she spoke, tears spilled down her face.

Crocodile tears.

I wanted to tell everyone around us: I didn’t jump. They pushed me.

I wanted to say everything, to make her stop acting.

But when I opened my mouth, I coughed up blood. My chest hurt so badly it felt numb, and I couldn’t force out a full sentence. All I could do was glare at her, my teeth shaking as I clenched my jaw.

When Claire saw me like that, she seemed even more reassured.

Her expression didn’t change. She still looked like a woman on the verge of collapse with concern. But she leaned down, brought her mouth close to my ear, and in a voice only I could hear, said:

“You thought refusing to sign the divorce papers could keep me trapped?”

“You tried to stop me from being with Luke. You deserve this.”

I stared at her, my chest rising more and more shallowly.

I wanted to lift my hand and wrap it around her throat, but all my fingers did was twitch once.

Claire immediately stepped back half a pace and raised her voice again for everyone else.

“Quick! Call an ambulance! He’s bleeding!”

The next second, all sound drifted away.

—

When I opened my eyes again, the ceiling above me was a familiar white. The air conditioner hummed softly. Outside the window, traffic moved in the distance.

I sat up and touched my chest.

No pain.

No blood.

The phone on my nightstand was lit up, the date clear on the screen:

Seven days before the banquet where Claire would ask for a divorce.

In my mind, I saw her standing onstage in tears, the edited “evidence” on the screen, and the sound of the divorce papers slapping down in front of me.

Last time, I didn’t sign. I investigated. I tried to win her back.

And step by step, I walked straight into the death trap she and Luke had built for me.

This time, I was only going to do one thing.

In the exact same place, I was going to throw every bit of filth she had splashed on me in my last life right back at her.