Reborn Heiress Marries My Ex-Fiancé's Brother

Tonight was supposed to be the night I became the happiest woman in D.C., celebrating my engagement at the legendary Bolton Manor gala. I wore emerald silk and a diamond that cost more than most mansions, convinced that Hank Bolton was my soulmate and the key to my family's future. But behind the heavy oak doors of the guest wing, the dream died. I found my fiancé tangled with another woman, laughing about how I was nothing more than a "clueless cash cow" whose inheritance would fund his run for the Senate. In my first life, I reacted with tears and screams, which only allowed his family to paint me as an unstable lunatic. They stripped me of my dignity, bankrupted the Adams estate, and watched coldly as my brother, Lucas, died in a ditch trying to save me. I ended up gasping for air in a burning building, realizing too late that my perfect engagement was actually my execution. I died in the soot and the shadows, feeling the searing heat of a betrayal that burned worse than the fire. I lost everything because I was too blind to see the monsters hiding behind expensive smiles. But then, I suddenly gasped for air and realized the smoke was gone. I was standing in front of a vanity, the calendar mocking me: October 14th. The night of the gala. I had been given a second chance, and this time, I wasn't going to be the victim. I recorded the betrayal on my phone and walked into the library with a heart made of ice. I didn't just blow up the engagement; I demanded a new groom-Hank's "invalid" older brother, Dereck, a man the world had written off as a dying recluse. "I'll take him," I told the stunned family. I wanted a husband who couldn't cheat, a puppet who would leave me a wealthy widow within a year. I thought I was choosing a safe, broken man to shield me from my enemies. I didn't know that under his blanket, Dereck was hiding a holster, or that the "dying" man was actually a predator who had been waiting for someone exactly like me to walk into his trap.