Chapter 2

I should have been dead.

After Nico was born, my health deteriorated for reasons no doctor could explain.

I died when he was three.

The system brought me back in the body of an eighteen-year-old girl.

It told me my death had been necessary.

Nico Moretti needed a dead mother and a distant father in order to become the lonely, obsessive villain the story required.

Then Sophie Carter would show him a little kindness.

To a boy starving for affection, it would feel like salvation.

He would hold on until kindness became obsession.

Until obsession became possession.

Until he eventually destroyed Sophie, the man she loved, and himself.

“You have to redeem him,” the system told me.

That was our deal.

I looked down at the new knife in my hand.

Its polished surface reflected a face much younger than the one I remembered.

I smiled.

Redeem him?

No.

I was going to raise my damn son.

Again.

Nico clearly thought no one had seen the dumpster incident.

He stayed frozen for a second, then pretended he had meant to step down.

“Quit wasting my time,” he snapped at the boy. “You lie to me again, and I’ll break both hands.”

Very intimidating.

If you ignored the hand currently rubbing his ass behind his back.

I walked up behind him.

The system panicked.

It apparently thought I was about to murder my own child.

Instead, I smiled and tapped Nico on the shoulder.

“That little thing won’t break anybody’s hand.”

He turned.

I pressed the cold side of my knife lightly against his cheek.

“Want something more useful?”

Nico went completely still.

Then his face went red.

“What the fuck?”

Poor boy.

He had been so busy trying to look dangerous that he’d forgotten the back of his jeans had split when he hit the dumpster.

A strip of bright pink underwear was visible.

I sighed.

This idiot was supposed to become the terrifying villain who destroyed half of New York?

Maybe he killed the protagonists by making them laugh themselves to death.