Chapter 1

The bulldozer crushed the sign above the boxing gym before I had even finished unwrapping the white hand wraps from my fists. Dust filled the air, burning my eyes as the last thing my father had left me was reduced to rubble.

Julian Vance stood beneath a black umbrella beside his Maybach, his tailored suit immaculate.

"Keep tearing it down," he said. "Sienna wants to build a ballet studio here. This dump of a boxing gym doesn't suit her."

I rushed toward him, only to be stopped by his bodyguards.

"You promised me before we got married—"

"It was nothing more than a business marriage," he cut in, his voice as cold as ice. "Did you really think you were my wife?"

I collapsed onto the muddy ground.

In my previous life, he had died in the cage trying to save me. Blood had poured from his mouth as he begged with his dying breath,

"Valerie... if there's another life, please look back at me."

But in this life, he forced me to serve as his mistress's bodyguard. He made me kneel in the rain, picking up the championship boxing gloves she had tossed onto the ground.

"Julian Vance..." I stared at his retreating figure, my voice trembling. "Were you... reborn too?"

He turned around, looking at me as though I had lost my mind.

"Reborn? What the hell are you talking about? Did boxing scramble your brain?"

I slowly closed my eyes.

Blood seeped from where my fingernails had dug into my palms.

He hadn't been reborn.

He simply...

didn't love me anymore.