New York's downpour lashed the floor-to-ceiling windows at three in the morning as Alice Howard slowly sat up in the bathtub. Warm water lapped at her collarbones, where the crimson hue of red wine swirled under the lights in an eerie glow—not the blood of a suicide, but a deliberate disguise she'd mixed. Her fingertips skimmed the surface, and for the third time, she checked the date etched into her wrist: July 11, 2022. She'd been reborn at 27, at the pivotal moment she'd just joined JPMorgan Chase—eight full years before Mark would frame her, destroy her reputation, and leave her in ruins.
"God gave me a second chance." She whispered, a bitter thrill rising in her throat. The face in the mirror was young and pale, but her eyes had sharpened into blades of cold. Mark Stanton, the man who'd pinned embezzlement charges on her, then betrayed her in court as her lover, was sleeping in his apartment just two miles away. She had to use this young body to weave a tighter, deadlier net of revenge.
Her phone vibrated in the pocket of her bathrobe, the text alert shrill. Mark's message dripped with his familiar cloying sweetness: "Darling, 9 AM project meeting tomorrow. Wear that red dress—you in red always reminds me of our first time in the hotel suite." Alice curled her lips and tapped delete. Three years prior, that suite had seen a "first time"—Mark, using a promotion as bait, had recorded her slurred "yes" while she was drunk. That video would later become his fatal evidence in court.
She stood, wrapping the robe around her, and pulled a tiny wiretap from the drawer. This was the greatest advantage of rebirth: she knew Mark would leak falsified merger data in his private meeting tonight. The bathroom tiles reflected her taut spine as she tucked the wiretap into her hair bun, took a deep breath, and dialed Mark's number.
"Mark, I need you." Her voice held just the right mix of exhaustion and longing, like an intern who'd pulled an all-nighter. A lazy laugh rumbled through the line: "Baby, be there in half an hour. And I've got a surprise—encryption keys to JPMorgan's internal system."
The downpour amplified the late-night silence. Before Mark arrived, Alice poured red wine into the bathtub; the blood-like ripples clashed with lightning flashing outside. She deliberately loosened her robe's sash, letting her skin bare itself as the doorbell rang. Mark's pupils dilated with desire when he stepped in: "You know better than anyone how to welcome a guest."
They tangled on the couch, lust and power warping into one. Alice panted against his ear, her fingertips sliding the wiretap into his suit pocket. Mark's hands roamed roughly, and she met him with feigned compliance, all while memorizing every word of his leaked data: "Third-quarter merger needs tweaking. The board dinosaurs won't care if the numbers are real…" As climax hit, she bit his neck, a bead of blood seeping through his skin—like a trophy of their depravity under the dim light.
Later, Mark lay sprawled on the couch as Alice feigned sleep. She'd confirmed the wiretap held enough evidence, but when he rolled over, she caught a whiff of his wrist: a Roman eagle tattoo, identical to the one on Ryan Black's wrist in her dreams last night. The realization sent chills down her spine. Ryan, the tech CEO set to rise in three months—why did he have a secret tie to Mark?
The rain masked footsteps outside the door until Sarah Jones's voice called: "Alice, I cracked the anonymous forwarding path in Mark's emails." The hacker who'd become her ally someday was just a fired ex-intern now. Alice grabbed her robe, shoving Mark's still-sleeping phone into a drawer—more secrets waiting to unlock.
They fled through the storm to Sarah's shabby apartment, where wiretap recordings and encrypted files from Mark's phone blazed across the computer screen. Alice understood then: this revenge would be bloodier than she'd imagined. Ryan's involvement, the board's depths, the price of selling her body for leverage—all of it. The scarlet water drained from the bathtub, but the real revenge had only just seeped into her soul.