Chapter 4
Dana said nothing at first.
She just walked toward me.
One step.
Then another.
Then she held out her hand as if I were supposed to place mine in it and come home quietly.
I stared at her, numb.
Then I exhaled once and said the same two words I had said to her countless times in my past lives.
“Go die.”
Those words had worked before.
Three times, in fact.
Dana’s mouth moved slightly.
A cold, faint smile appeared.
“So you finally can’t pretend anymore.”
I shot her a sharp look.
At the gala, she had said it.
Yuanyuan, you’re so obedient now that it feels strange.
This whole life, I had played the perfect role.
And she had found it strange.
A horrible thought flashed through me.
Dana Cenyue remembered too.
She had also come back.
I didn’t even have time to process it.
Evan was already on his feet, face dark with anger.
“She wants to leave you,” he snapped. “Why are you chasing after her?”
Dana never looked at him.
Not once.
Her eyes stayed on me, smiling and unreadable.
Then men appeared behind her, quick and silent, and dragged Evan out before he could fight.
He cursed all the way down the hall.
My face changed instantly.
“What are you doing?”
Dana stepped close and lifted my chin.
Her gaze moved over my face with terrifying calm.
“You’re worried about him.”
Her voice was so gentle it turned my blood cold.
The next second, it sharpened.
“How dare you worry about another woman?”
I stared at her.
“How did you find me so fast?”
This time she answered.
“At the gala, someone saw him give you his card. Tracking his car afterward was easy.”
A deep exhaustion washed through me.
From the first life on, I had never once truly escaped her.
Not by myself.
Not with help.
Not alive.
Dana sighed softly and touched the back of my neck.
“She slept in the same bed as you,” she murmured. “I’m jealous. Maybe I should have her killed.”
That snapped something in me.
Evan had helped me.
He was innocent in all this.
I bit out, “We didn’t do anything.”
“Oh,” Dana said softly. “Still not acceptable.”
Then her smile returned, beautiful and bloodless.
“You know I hate anyone getting too close to you.”
I shoved her away.
Hard.
The temper I had been holding back for this entire lifetime finally split open.
“Are you insane?” I shouted. “Aren’t things going great with Bianca? Why do you care what I do? Even if I really ran off with someone else, what business is that of yours? I waited so long for you to get tired of me. Why did you come back?”
Dana stood over me.
“I never got tired of you.”
She smiled again, and the familiar chill of her darkness swept over me.
I was so tired.
Tired in a way that seemed older than my body.
“Dana,” I said, voice shaking with rage and something even deeper, “haven’t we tortured each other enough across all these lives? Why can’t you just let me go?”
She repeated the word as if testing it.
“Tortured?”
Her lips curved.
“Aren’t we in love?”
I slapped her.
The crack echoed in the little room.
Dana’s face turned with the force of it.
Then, in the next breath, she dragged me against her chest.
The scent of cold cedar and faint smoke wrapped around me like a prison I knew too well.
It was the smell of every locked room. Every chain. Every failed escape.
I wanted to scream.
Instead, I whispered against her ear, “Across every life, there’s one thing I regret most. If I had known what meeting you would do to me, I never would have appeared in front of you that first time.”
Dana’s body went still.
And just like that, I was pulled back to the beginning.
To my first life.
Back then, I had still been the oldest daughter of the Sullivan family.
Spoiled. Reckless. Impossible.
One night at a club, Dana and I reached for the same bottle of wine.
The manager nearly sweated through his shirt.
“Miss Sullivan, that bottle was reserved by Ms. Duan.”
I looked at the bottle, then at him.
“If it was already reserved, why was it placed out here?” I asked coolly.
Then I threw a card onto the counter.
“I’ll pay more.”
The manager hesitated and glanced behind me.
I followed his gaze.
That was when I first saw her.
Dana Cenyue sat on a sofa in the dim light, one leg crossed over the other, gorgeous enough to make the room around her disappear.
Our eyes met across the space.
Then she turned slightly and said something to a server at her side.
The server approached me and bowed his head.
“Miss Sullivan, Ms. Duan says the wine is on her. She’d like you to enjoy it.”
I accepted without the slightest guilt.
Men being generous to me was hardly a rare event back then.
Later, when I saw Dana drinking with a few friends, I casually stepped in and took a drink meant for her.
It was much stronger than I expected.
My vision blurred for a second.
An arm appeared around my waist, steadying me.
Dana withdrew it almost immediately, as if the touch meant nothing.
I looked at her and smiled.
“I’m Sierra Sullivan.”
“Dana Cenyue.”
Her lips curved.
“Nice to meet you.”
Someone behind me called my name.
I waved at her and laughed.
“My friends are calling me. See you around.”
At the time, I said it lightly.
I didn’t know there really would be a next time.
And I definitely didn’t know that next time would come when my family had already collapsed.
My father and brother were exactly the kind of men who could waste a fortune to the bone.
So when our company fell and the debts came crashing down, I was shocked, but not surprised.
Then Dana appeared again.
“You remember me,” she said.
She paid off the Sullivan family’s debt.
I was stunned.
Between her impossible beauty and frightening wealth, everything moved with dangerous ease after that.
We ended up together.
At first, I thought fate was being kind.
Then slowly, carefully, the truth began to show.
Her possessiveness. Her need for control. The way her moods could turn without warning.
By the end, every time she touched me, my skin would crawl.
I didn’t even know what I was feeling anymore.
Fear. Disgust. Panic.
Maybe all of it.
Finally, I told her it was over.
“We’re not right for each other,” I said.
To this day, I still remember the look on her face.
Something dark flashed through her eyes, violent and quick, but then she smiled.
“What did you say, Yuanyuan?”
“I said we’re done.”
She took my hand and led me to the front door.
“All right,” she said softly. “Then go.”
I stared at her, shocked by how easily she agreed, then rushed to open the door.
It wouldn’t budge.
I turned.
Dana smiled at me with perfect calm.
“Why aren’t you leaving, Yuanyuan?”
My voice trembled.
“What do you mean?”
She wrapped her arms around me and buried her face in my hair.
“Don’t even think about leaving me.”
That was how it began.
I screamed. I fought. I starved myself. I broke things. I injured her when I could.
None of it mattered.
No one came for me.
No one helped me.
Dana would simply take my hands after I hurt myself fighting her and rub them as if I were the one making unreasonable trouble.
“If you’re tired, eat something,” she’d say.
“Get away from me!”
I would yank my hand back and cry until I couldn’t breathe.
“I hate you.”
And she would smile.
“What a relief. At least you feel something for me.”
That was the night the system first appeared.
It told me I was the canary heroine in this world.
That my mission was to escape.
And ever since then, life had become an endless loop of struggle, death, and trying again.
Now, in this miserable little house, staring at Dana as she held me like she had every right, I finally understood.
She had remembered too.
Every life.
Every attempt.
Every lie.
This whole fourth life, while I pretended to play her game, she had been watching me and pretending right back.
Bianca had never been a replacement.
She had been bait.
Just another piece in Dana’s trap.
And I had walked right into it.