Chapter 5
Everyone in the detention center froze.
Theresa was the first to snap out of it.
Like a lioness gone rabid, she lunged forward, snatched the contract from my hands–and tore it to shreds.
“You wish!” she screamed, pointing a trembling, venom–laced finger at me.
“My daughter’s safe now! You’re not getting a single cent!”
“Rot in this damn cell, you heartless bitch!”
I watched the paper fragments scatter in the air like confetti–and laughed even harder.
No one knew.
I had been here before.
In my past life. I’d piloted the rescue vessel into the crushing depths of the ocean–only to be sabotaged from within.
Aubrey and Nathan had worked together to trap me inside the cockpit and sink me alive. I watched my oxygen run out
inch by inch, unable to escape the ice–cold dark.
And after I died?
They pinned everything on me.
Said I’d deliberately sabotaged the mission to eliminate my competition for the chief designer role. Said I’d tried to kill
my own sister–and paid the ultimate price.
Every one of my students came forward to condemn me, too.
While they-
One rebranded as the grieving, resilient sister–turned–savior.
The other became the genius scientist who saved them all.
Glory. Fame. Untouchable status.
And me?
I came back from the dead to collect what they owed me
That was why the first thing I did after returning to this life… was lock myself in a holding cell.
I needed to watch it unfold from the front row.
Chapter 5
The rescue operation, led remotely by my dear husband Nathan, was a roaring success.
Thirty–six hours after contact was lost, the Neptune–X miraculously rebooted. It surfaced intact.
Aubrey and the other twenty crew members were rescued, alive.
Nathan Hale became a global icon overnight.
Every major outlet ran his face on the front page, calling him the miracle worker who rewrote the history of deep–sea
rescue. The scientific genius. The savior.
And me?
The villain.
The traitor.
The woman who turned her back on her family, her country, her students.
No one remembered the fifty–three researchers I once pulled from the wreckage of a collapsed trench.
No one mentioned that the success of that mission was my work–not Nathan’s.
The investigation into me?
Dismissed. “Insufficient evidence.”
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