Marcus POV
The pain in my chest explodes like someone shoved a knife through my ribs and twisted.
I collapse on the dirty kitchen floor, phone clattering from my shaking hand. My left arm goes numb. Can't breathe. Can't think. Only forty-five years old and my heart is giving up—just like I gave up on life twenty years ago.
"Rebecca!" I gasp, reaching toward my wife standing three feet away. "Help... ambulance..."
She doesn't move. Just stares at me with those cold blue eyes, phone pressed to her ear, talking to someone else.
"No, don't come over yet," she says sweetly into the phone. "He's still breathing. Give it ten more minutes, baby. Then we'll finally be together."
Baby? She called someone else "baby"?
My vision blurs. The ceiling spins. But I hear everything perfectly clear.
"The life insurance is five hundred thousand," Rebecca continues, examining her red nails like I'm not dying right in front of her. "After funeral costs, we can pay off my credit cards and take that trip to Paris you wanted. Just wait until—oh, hold on."
She looks down at me. Our eyes meet.
For one stupid second, I think she's going to help me. Call 911. Do something. We've been married twenty-four years. That has to mean something, right?
Wrong.
Rebecca steps over my body like I'm a pile of trash, her high heel almost catching my shoulder. She grabs her designer purse from the counter—the one I bought her last month even though we couldn't afford rent.
"Finally," she mutters. "I've been waiting for this for years."
The door slams.
I'm alone.
Dying alone in the apartment I've paid for, for a woman who never loved me, after raising a daughter who isn't even mine.
Twenty-four years of my life. Gone. Wasted.
My mind flashes through memories like a drowning man seeing his life replay. But these aren't good memories. These are all the moments I chose wrong.
Age twenty-one: Rebecca crying with fake tears, saying she's pregnant. My traditional mother pressuring me to "do the right thing" and marry her. I believed every lie.
Age twenty-two: Wedding day. Rebecca's mother Linda moving into our small apartment "temporarily." She never left. Treated me like her servant for two decades.
Age twenty-three: Baby Lily is born. She has Rebecca's ex-boyfriend's exact face. Everyone can see it except stupid me. I worked three jobs to buy diapers for another man's child.
Age twenty-five: Aria Summers becomes the youngest CEO in the country. I see her face on magazine covers and remember—she confessed she loved me at graduation. I laughed at her. Called her "too boring" in front of everyone. Chose Rebecca's beauty over Aria's brains. Biggest mistake of my pathetic life.
Age thirty: I catch Rebecca texting her lover. She doesn't even hide it anymore. "What are you going to do?" she sneers. "Leave? You have nothing. No money. No education. You're stuck with me forever." She's right. I'm trapped.
Age thirty-five: My best friend David Wu sells his gaming company for fifty million dollars. He begged me to invest with him ten years ago. I said no because Linda called it "stupid computer games." David tried to give me money anyway. My pride said no. Idiot.
Age forty: Lily graduates high school. She looks me dead in the eye and says, "I've always known you're not my real dad. Mom told me when I was eight. You're just the fool who paid for everything. Thanks for the college fund, sucker."
Age forty-five: Now. Dying on a dirty floor. Alone. Broke. Betrayed. My life insurance worth more than my actual life.
The pain in my chest becomes unbearable. Everything goes dark around the edges.
This is it. This is how Marcus Chen dies.
A failure. A joke. A man who made every single wrong choice.
If I could go back... if God or fate or whatever gave me one more chance... I'd do everything different.
I'd choose Aria. I'd invest with David. I'd kick Rebecca and her demon mother out the first day. I'd build the life I was supposed to have instead of this nightmare.
But second chances don't exist. Not in real life.
My eyes close. The pain fades into nothing. Everything goes black.
And then—
A sound. Loud. Obnoxious. Electronic beeping.
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP
An alarm clock?
My eyes snap open. But I'm not staring at the dirty kitchen ceiling anymore. I'm staring at a cracked ceiling with a water stain shaped like a duck.
I know that water stain.
It's from the leaky pipe in my college dorm. The one that leaked for three months before maintenance fixed it. The one from...
No. Impossible.
I sit up so fast my head spins. I'm in a narrow twin bed with scratchy blue sheets. My roommate's sports posters cover the opposite wall. A desktop computer from the early 2000s sits on a cheap desk, playing tinny music from tiny speakers.
"Dude, turn off your alarm!" someone groans from the other bed. "It's Saturday. Why'd you even set it?"
I know that voice.
I turn my head slowly, afraid I'm hallucinating. Afraid my dying brain is playing cruel tricks.
David Wu. Twenty-one years old. Messy black hair. Gaming controller in his hands. Exactly like he looked in...
My hands. I stare at my hands.
Young. Smooth. No age spots. No scars from the factory job. Strong fingers that aren't twisted from arthritis.
I lunge for my phone on the nightstand. Old flip phone. I flip it open with shaking hands.
The date on the screen makes my heart stop:
JUNE 15, 2005
Twenty-four years ago. One year before I entered university. Three months before I met Rebecca.
Six months before I ruined my entire life.
I'm back.
But how? Why? Is this real? Am I dead and this is some weird afterlife? Or did I actually travel back in time?
I pinch my arm. Hard. It hurts.
"Marcus, are you okay?" David sits up, concerned. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
A ghost. Yeah. The ghost of my terrible future.
My phone buzzes. New text message. Unknown number.
I open it. Five words that make my blood run cold:
"Don't make the same mistakes."
The phone buzzes again immediately. Another message. This time with a photo attached.
My hands shake so badly I almost drop the phone.
It's a picture of me—forty-five-year-old me—lying dead on that kitchen floor. Rebecca's high heel is visible in the corner, stepping over my corpse.
Below the image: "You have 100 days to change your fate. Choose wisely. She's waiting."
The phone buzzes a third time. One final message:
"Rebecca registers for classes on Monday. Aria registers on Tuesday. Your countdown starts now."
The messages delete themselves. Vanish from my phone like they never existed.
I stare at the blank screen, my heart pounding.
This is real. Somehow, impossibly, I've been sent back in time. Given a second chance. But by who? And why only 100 days? What happens if I fail?
And that last part—"She's waiting."
Aria. It has to mean Aria.
My chest tightens with a different kind of pain now. Not death. Something worse.
Hope.
David is saying something, but I can't hear him. Blood rushes in my ears.
I have 100 days to rewrite my entire life. To avoid Rebecca's trap. To find Aria before I lose her again. To build the empire I should have built. To become the man I was meant to be.
But whoever sent those messages knows everything. Knows I died. Knows about Rebecca. Knows about Aria.
Is someone watching me? Testing me? What happens on day 101 if I fail?
My phone buzzes one last time. I nearly jump out of my skin.
It's a normal text this time. From my mother: "Have a good weekend, son. Remember to eat vegetables. Love you."
Tears burn my eyes. My mother. She died five years into my marriage, disappointed in me, knowing I'd wasted my life.
Not this time.
I have 100 days to save myself. To save everyone I love.
The countdown has started.
And I'm not going to waste a single second.