Chasing The Reborn Heiress

CHAPTER ONE

*SOPHIA*

"You look beautiful, sweetheart. Alexander won't be able to take his eyes off you."

My mother's voice cut through the darkness like a knife, and I jolted awake, gasping. The words echoed in my head Words she'd said ten years ago. Words that had started everything.

I sat up, heart hammering, and looked around wildly. Pink walls. Floral curtains. The poster of Monet's Water Lilies I'd taken down when I turned nineteen. My hands flew to my face, touching smooth skin where fine lines should be. No wedding ring. No bruises hidden under makeup.

My phone sat on the nightstand, and I grabbed it with shaking fingers. The date glowed back at me: March 15th. My eighteenth birthday.

"No," I whispered. "No, no, no."

But my reflection in the mirror across the room told the truth. I was eighteen again. A decade had vanished like smoke.

I stumbled to the bathroom and vomited.

Three days passed in a fog. I stayed in my room, claiming illness, while my brain tried to process the impossible. I'd died. I knew I'd died. The car had spun off that cliff, and I'd felt the impact, felt everything stop. Alexander's face had been my last thought not because I loved him, but because I hated that he was my last thought.

Now I was here. Young. Alive. With ten years of memories that hadn't happened yet.

On the fourth day, my mother knocked. "Sophia? The gallery opening is tonight. You promised you'd come."

The gallery. I'd gone to that opening in my previous life, had met Mrs. Laurent who'd encouraged me to pursue art seriously. Then I'd met Alexander six months later and abandoned everything for him.

Not this time.

"I'll be ready in an hour," I called back, and my voice sounded different. Harder.

I stood in front of my closet and pulled out the demure pink dress my mother had picked out. The one I'd worn like a good daughter. I threw it on the floor and reached for something else a simple black dress I'd bought on impulse and never worn because Mother said it was too mature.

When I walked downstairs, my mother's smile faltered. "That's not the dress we chose."

"I changed my mind."

"But sweetheart, pink is more appropriate for"

"I'm eighteen, not twelve." The sharpness in my tone made her blink. I'd never spoken to her like that before. Never pushed back. "I'm wearing this."

My brother Marcus appeared in the doorway, coffee in hand, and raised an eyebrow. "Someone woke up with opinions."

"Someone always had them," I said quietly.

The gallery was exactly as I remembered white walls, soft lighting, wealthy patrons pretending to understand abstract art. Mrs. Laurent spotted me immediately and waved me over, but I barely heard her greeting. My mind was racing, cataloguing everyone I recognized, remembering which artists would become famous, which investments would pay off, which people in this room would matter.

"Your mother tells me