REBORN My Second Life I Became The Villianess (Nyxara) novel Chapter 35

Dario’s POV

The rain was deafening, hitting hard against the twisted metal of the car like a hammer. Blood was pouring down my face, hot and stinging my eyes, turning the flashing amber hazard lights into blurry smears against the empty, pitch-black highway.

My chest felt like it was crushed. Every breath out of me felt like glass was cutting away at my lungs. I couldn't feel my legs. They were trapped under the dashboard, dead. But the physical pain was nothing compared to the gut-punch realization tearing me apart inside.

As sat there bleeding out, my brain flashing backward through the nightmare of the last few years, it all hit me. It was a curse. Every damn bit of it. My mom. My dad. Ella. Bianca. My grandparents.

All of them, dead.

They didn't go out all at once, either. It was a slow, agonizing bleed-out. One by one, my whole family got picked off on by one, in freak accidents, sudden sicknesses, and silent tragedies that didn't make any sense. And it all tracked back to one single, massive mistake. The day I married Nysa Vexari.

God, what an idiot I'd been. I thought marrying her was just business deal, a way to lock down an alliance. But the second she became a Valteri, the whole house started rotting from the inside out. She brought toxicity and ruin straight to my front door, and one by one, she watched my family die until I was the last man standing in an empty, blood-soaked empire.

If I could just get a do-over... if some higher power gave me one more shot at life, I wouldn't touch her with a ten-foot pole. I vaguely remembered hearing rumors that she had a sister somewhere out in the background, but

I had never even paid attention. All I knew was that marrying Nysa was the death of me and everyone I loved.

Tap. Tap. The sound cut right through the storm. I forced my heavy, blood-glued eyelids open, fighting off the blackness creeping into my vision.

A shadow fell over the wrecked car, smoking driver's side door. Through the sheets of rain, a figure stood there, completely dry under a black umbrella.

Long legs with a face carved out of pure trouble. I squinted through the pain, my stomach dropping straight to my shoes as the light caught her features. Nysa.

I stared up at her through the shattered glass, my vision swimming in the dark. She didn't look panicked. She didn't look like a grieving, terrified wife. Instead, she just threw back her head and laughed, the sound cutting sharp and ugly over the roar of the rain.

"All you had to do was treat me like a wife," she sneered, leaning her umbrella back just enough for the dime streetlights to catch the twisted satisfaction on her face.

"All you had to do was sleep with me, just once, but you couldn't even do that. You were too busy playing king."

She tapped a red-painted nail against the edge of the crushed door frame, her smile widening into something feral.

"And now? You're the last of the Valteri, and me? I am the tragic, grieving widow. The entire Valteri empire and all that wealth, is mine." she said with a laugh.

My chest seized. I barely had enough air left in my lungs to force the words out, my voice a broken rasp. "Why?" Her face instantly twisted, the mask of cold composure shattering into pure, venomous rage.

Then my eyes snapped open. The heavy scent of leather and scotch filled my lungs. I slammed my hands down onto the smooth surface of my desk, my heart hammering against my ribs as I looked around my office.

There was no blood, no wrecked car. My eyes instantly fell onto the calendar on my computer screen, the breath catching in my throat. I was twenty-eight years old again, the exact same year I was supposed to meet Nysa for the very first time.

Realization hit me like a physical blow.

I had been reborn. It wasn't possible. In my past life, I never believed in any of that spiritual nonsense or reincarnation bullshit. I believed in cold hard facts, money, power, and what was right in front of my face. But sitting here in my chair, breathing clean air with a functioning body instead of being in crashed car with a crushed chest, the impossible was undeniable. I was back.

And the second my brain caught up, the memories from my past life came flooding in like a tidal wave.

It hit me all at once, every single agonizing detail of the nightmare I had just lived through. I relived the slow, agonizing destruction of my family, the freak accidents that picked them off one by one, and the suffocating isolation of being the last Valteri left standing. I felt the phantom weight of my mother's casket, the emptiness of the mansion after my father passed, the heartbreaking grief of losing my sisters, to tragedies that never made any sense.

I saw Nysa's face, her fake sweet smiles, her venomous clawing for status, and the chilling satisfaction in her eyes as she confessed to murdering her own sister just because she was smarter and prettier.

My hands curled into tight fists against the mahogany desk, the wood biting into my palms. The sheer fury burning in my chest was blinding. I had played the fool for two decades. I had walked straight into a trap, married a monster, and let her destroy everything I loved.

Not this time. The past was wiped clean, but I remembered every single knife in the dark. I was twenty-eight, and Nysa was about to cross my path all over again. Only this time, she had no idea what kind of monster she was walking toward.