The shriek of car horns sliced into Harper Owen's skull. Rain stung her cheeks as she wavered.
"Ahh, stop it already." But the city wouldn't listen. It never did.
Feeling numb, she walked through the crosswalk. Another ghost in a rain-soaked blazer, she thought bitterly. That's all I am now.
Her feet carried her forward on muscle memory alone until she hit the familiar feel of steel beneath her fingers. The bridge railing bit into her palms as she gripped it tightly.
The river below was dark and angry, mirroring the chaos in Harper's head. And she couldn't escape it.
"Look at you," she whispered to the water. "Just as messed up as me."
The vibration of traffic was thundering across the bridge. Screech. A truck roared past, spraying her with filthy gutter water. Harper didn't even blink. The cold hadn't touched her since that day.
"What's wrong with me? Why can't I feel anything anymore?" The wind snatched her heartbreaking murmur away.
"Move it, lady!" A man barreled past in a soaked overcoat, his elbow smashing into her ribs hard enough to rattle her bones. She staggered but didn't let go of the railing. Her knuckles went white.
Bastard, she thought, but the anger felt hollow. Even her rage had gone numb.
Her phone buzzed against her hip. It felt distant, muffled, like everything else in her world. She didn't need to look to know who it was. The same number. The same desperate calls haunted her for months. Harper pulled out the phone and threw it into the river.
Not today. Not ever.
A jogger in obnoxiously bright sneakers slowed beside her. "Ma'am? Are you okay? Do you need help?"
Harper turned, studying the woman's concerned face. The way her eyes kept darting between Harper's face and the churning water below.
"Ahh… Do I look like.. I need help?" Harper's voice scraped raw from disuse.
The woman's face tightened. Her gaze was flickering. The jogger recoiled. "I was... never mind. Crazy people," she muttered, hurrying away.
"Crazy," Harper repeated to herself. She laughed, but it sounded more like a sob. "Maybe that's the only sane option left."
Harper didn't want anyone's pity. She hoped for... what? Feeling something? Again?
Jump… A thought like toxic smoke was forming in her mind.
Not an intent. Not yet. A possibility. A way to stop what was pressing down on her chest until she couldn't breathe properly anymore.
No. I am not here to jump. Right? Harper was here to feel the bite of the wind, the vertigo of looking down at her potential end. She needed proof that she was still alive when everything inside had turned to ash. She came to prove she could still walk away.
"Please, Harper," she sighed. "Feel something. Anything." She told herself that. Over and over.
The bridge stretched ahead as she moved forward. She tilted her head back, letting the rain sting her face, her hair plastered to her neck like seaweed.
A shove. Hard, deliberate.
No warning, no sound.
The rail disappeared beneath her fingers. Time snapped.
Hands. Blue gloves. That's all she saw for a moment.
Hands in gloves pushing her over.
"Ah…" Shortly, the rail was disappearing beneath her fingers. Her stomach dropped before her body did.
"No, no, no," she gasped. But the words were torn away by the wind. It was too late. The ground ripped away.
She closed her eyes.
Next was weightlessness.
The whiskey in her stomach burned like acid, her pulse roaring in her ears. "You knew. You fucking knew."
And now…
The images tore through her mind like knives: his trembling hands, his crooked tie, a mixture of betrayal and heartbreak. Harper had replayed every second of that last fight so many times, it had gouged trenches in her sanity.
The honking fell away. The rain softened into mist. The world tilted.
Falling.
"Is this it?" she whispered to the air.
Pain.
Sharp and immediate, centered on her cheek.
Not water. Not a bone-cracking impact. A flat, rigid surface. She was sprawled across a desk.
Disorientation spun her thoughts like a carnival ride.
Harper groaned, forcing her eyes open despite the stabbing fluorescent lights. The roar in her ears wasn't the river. It was the relentless whir of an office computer fan. The smell wasn't river-damp, but stale coffee.
She was in her old cozy office, which she'd fought tooth and nail to keep.
"What the..." Her voice was hoarse, barely her own.
The monitor was displaying the date and time in crisp. Digits that made Harper's blood freeze.
10:03 AM.
October 18th, 2021.
That date. The day everything had started to unravel. But that was four years ago.
The beginning of her hell.
"Must be a dream, a nightmare," she muttered, touching her stinging cheek.
This can't be real.
The door creaked open behind her.
"Ms. Owen."
That voice. Harper's blood turned to ice.
Ivan Vernon stood there. Rain slick on his shoulders. Suit immaculate. The black mask intensified his eyes. They burned with madness and unshakable conviction. His tie with a sharp knot, the silk undisturbed.
If this was real.
Harper reached out without conscious thought, fingers trembling toward his face. She could almost feel the heat of his skin, the sharp line of his jaw.
"You're…" Her lips moved soundlessly around the word she couldn't believe. "...here?"
Ivan put down the mask. His lips thinned, a muscle ticking in his jaw. He held her gaze with the focus of a man who had already decided how this would end.
His cologne, of bergamot and pine, filled her senses. Impossibly real. The hum of the computer fan gnawed at the silence.
Harper's stomach lurched. She had lived it before.
She could recite his next words, how slowly Ivan would reach into his coat pocket and withdraw a single coin. Harper could predict the way his fingers would curl around it.
Worn edges. Ancient silver. The Vernon heirloom.
Heads for mercy. Tails to destroy. And Ivan Vernon did not believe in mercy; it was purely a ritual.
In her memory, he flipped it once, caught it without looking, and slid it back into his pocket. A decision was made. A verdict was passed.
"Not this time," she whispered, lunging forward as he reached for the coin. Her fingers closed around it mid-air, the metal cold against her palm.
"Mr. Vernon, please."
Her move intrigued him, whether she understood what he was doing. But Ivan stopped her with a glance. Cool, assessing. Amused.
"Nice catch, Ms. Owen." His voice was softer now. "I'd rather you return me the coin."
Harper's hands trembled as she held it. She put the coin on the table showing heads. She stared right at him, feeling like she was burning alive under his cold look.
A pause. His brows furrowed.
"You know it, but you haven't won yet." The way he said it was terrifyingly calm.
"Tell your father something for me," his voice a hammer striking iron. "This isn't over."
Ivan's gaze raked over her, sharp and searching, like he could see the cracks in her facade. His eyes lingered on her face once more as he turned. His coat was sweeping behind him like smoke.
The door shut behind him with a click so soft it was worse than any slam. No rattling frame. No shattered glass.
Only precision.
What was it?
Her legs barely held her as she stumbled to the window. Unforgiving. Her heart hammered in her ears.
Her hands shook as she gripped the windowsill.
"Is it a death? A hallucination? A nightmare?"
Her coffee mug sat there, half-full, the same one she'd smashed against the wall in her other life, watching it shatter like her marriage, her dreams, her everything.
How? How was she here? Yet no answer.
The air still smelled like Ivan Vernon. A furious man who walked through storms and came out colder on the other side.
Harper still felt dizzy. She pressed her hands against her eyes. Her legs gave out as she walked toward her desk. Harper collapsed into her chair and stared at the screen until her eyes watered.
October 18th, 2021.
The cursor blinked patiently in the search bar where she'd typed a thousand desperate queries in another life. In another time that hadn't happened yet.
"Come on, Harper. Think. What's the last thing you remember?"
A cold wave washed over her, sharper than any river's chill.
The bridge. The gloves. Falling.
How could I be here when I'd been falling toward the river just moments ago?
She looked around wildly at her old, tiny space.
"And somehow… I'm back."
The door banged open as she ran out, the newspaper on her desk fluttering to the ground. The headline screamed in bold black letters: "VERNON LEGACY: Major Group Acquires LV Industries in Hostile Takeover."
She wasn't on the bridge anymore. She wasn't falling. Harper Owen was here, four years in the past, with a chance to stop her destruction.