“Sienna! You’re so heartless! When has the West family ever wronged you? How could you do this to me?!*%
Caitlin’s voice rang out, shrill and dramatic, like she was trying to win an award. She continued to play the victim, acting as if she had done nothing wrong. Still clinging to the lies.
I looked her straight in the eye and let out a short, tired laugh. “Why are you still pretending, Caitlin?”
Then, I lowered my voice just enough for her to catch it. “You, me, and Lance… we’ve all lived this life once before.“}
Caitlin froze.
Her whole body stiffened, and I watched the color drain from her face as the truth settled in.§
That’s right. Lance had been reborn, too.
He told me himself.
In our last life, we’d only met once back at the orphanage.
It was a week before the Wests came to pick me up.”
Back then, the Sterling family had arrived at one of those posh charity functions.
Lance was just a boy, hiding in a corner, working through a problem from the International Mathematical Olympiad.§
It took me all of five seconds to notice that he’d miscalculated.
When I pointed it out, he scoffed and said, “What would you know?“>
The problem was ridiculously complex. It involved mapping planetary positions across a star–strewn sky, so it was definitely not beginner’s stuff.
But I didn’t back down. I sat down and walked Lance through it, step by step.
And in the end, my method was right.
He was stunned, not just because he’d been wrong, but because I was an orphan, and to him, orphans weren’t supposed to know things Aike that, much less solve elite competition questions.
What he didn’t realize was that our orphanage director, Mr. Anthony Grant, had once been a professor at a leading STEM university in the country.
After retiring quietly, he dedicated his later years to teaching children like me simply out of kindness.
I happened to have a talent for science and math.
That spark of unexpected clarity is what caught Lance’s eye.
Coincidentally, his parents were in the middle of a bitter, messy divorce. The orphanage became his escape.
Lance started showing up more. Sometimes, he’d find me just to go over problems. Other times, just to sit. He said being around me made everything feel a little easier. A little quieter.}
“You’re the smartest girl I’ve ever met,” he told me once.
But then his mother showed up.
Later, his mother came looking for him and told him he was not allowed to associate with an orphan girl like me.”
But Lance refused, so his mother slapped him.
I stepped in and took the hit for him.
!
I didn’t realize then what sort of storm was brewing behind Lance’s quiet stare. What began as admiration had already started to turn into something else. Something deeper. Something even he didn’t fully understand yet.”
Not long after, he came back to the orphanage, looking for me.
But I was gone, adopted by the Wests.
He sat on the edge of my empty bed the entire day.”
But Mr. Grant never told him where I’d gone because of privacy policies.
Time passed. We didn’t cross paths again until we were in high school.
Lance was thrilled to see me, but he was about to leave for Europe.>
All he remembered was that I’d ended up with the Wests. But inside their family? I didn’t exist. Not to the public. Barely even to them.
Only a few relatives and close family friends even knew who I was.
So, of course, Lance thought Caitlin was me.
In our past life, when he went back home, Caitlin was the one set up to marry him. He believed she was that girl from the orphanage.
On the day of the wedding, he panicked upon learning that Caitlin had committed suicide in the wedding car. When Lance finally saw clearly that it was the wrong person, he realized that he had married the wrong girl.
He began investigating and eventually found out that the Wests had both a biological daughter and an adopted one.
By the time he figured out who I really was, I was already dead.N
Lance was the one who pulled my body from the lake.}}
And after that? He crushed the Hudson family in my name.”
Back then, I never imagined a brief childhood connection could lead him to such lengths.
It sounded crazy.
But now, all I felt was gratitude.N
Because in this life, I wasn’t alone anymore.
Even so, words could only do so much. Lance didn’t need to say a thing.N
He had evidence. He had power. He had leverage.N
The Wests? They had absolutely nothing left.
Right then, the police arrived.
With the sound of firm slaps landing on Caitlin’s face, she was hit hard by reality.N
“Miss Caitlin West,” the officer said clearly, “you are under investigation for tampering with national college entrance exam results and undermining the fairness of the testing process. Please come with us.“N
There was no talking her way out of this one.N
The same Caitlin who thought she could slip out of a marriage alliance, steal my academic success, and come out squeaky clean?
She completely broke down.
