The Principessa's Second Life

In my past life, I was stripped bare, my body offered as an antidote to the drug that ravaged the man I loved, my adopted brother, Khalid Carver.

Later, we married. But on our wedding night, an assassination attempt left him crippled.

I thought my love could heal his wounds, all of them.

But in the safe house by the lake, as a raging fire engulfed us, I rushed in to save him, only for him to shatter my skull with a whiskey bottle.

Before darkness consumed me, I heard his cold voice accuse my father and me of destroying his happiness. He declared he was giving all the family's territory to Sloane. We, the ghosts of a fallen house, could all go to hell together.

Khalid's whisper was a devil's curse in my ear: "You destroyed everything for me. We can burn to ash together!"

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1

I awoke to Khalid Carver's labored, restless gasps.

I opened my eyes to the familiar bedroom in the Carver manor, a room that bore no trace of a wedding.

I had been reborn. The shock and dizzying second chance sent my head spinning.

"Cassia, come to my room."

Khalid's low, hoarse voice from the adjacent room sent a tremor of pure fear through me.

A glance at my watch sent a cold sweat prickling down my spine.

I was reborn on the very night Khalid was drugged.

The thought sparked a single, frantic urge: run. Get as far away from Khalid as I possibly could.

But before my feet were even in my slippers, he materialized in my doorway.

"Cassia, I've already called Sloane. I need you to go pick her up. Now."

Even through the haze of drug-fueled lust, I saw the wariness and loathing in his eyes.

A chilling thought crystalized in my mind.

Khalid had been reborn, too.

I gave a hasty nod, grabbing my car keys and striding past him toward the door.

As I left the manor, I could feel Khalid’s piercing gaze burning into my back.

The address Khalid gave me was for an apartment near his company.

So, he and Sloane Petrov were already living together? It was true, then. I had ruined his happiness.

When Sloane saw my car, she yanked open the passenger door and slid inside.

"How's Khalid?"

She looked anxious, but I could have sworn her eyes flickered with a greedy excitement.

"You'll see when we get there."

I had no desire to speak to her. It wasn't jealousy—neither my mother nor I had ever cared for her.

Sloane was the daughter of a Soldato, and she’d clawed her way into high society only through the Carver family's sponsorship.

At first, my parents were polite enough. She was hardworking, ambitious, and a master at wearing a pleasant mask.

She was a graduate of a prestigious university in the city. My parents had even driven her to campus themselves on her first day.

Mother, pleased, thought Sloane, being a year my senior, could guide me in social circles. Sloane took her role seriously, reporting my every move to my father after each party.

She kept reporting to him, even after I’d made it clear that my mother orchestrated my entire social calendar.

I always sensed a sharp, calculating edge behind her pleasantries, but I dismissed it as paranoia.

This continued until one night, during a clash with a rival family, she panicked. She tearfully called my father. When he rushed over, she threw herself into his arms. He went pale, snatching his hands back as if he’d touched a hot stove.