The Empire I Chose Over Love

Serena was still crying.

“Nora, I swear I didn’t mean it,” she sobbed, her voice trembling between broken breaths. “I only had too much to drink. I don’t even know how Lucas and I…”

Before she could finish, she grabbed the small fruit knife from the room-service tray.

A few people gasped.

“I’m sorry,” she cried, pressing the dull edge near her wrist. “I betrayed my own sister. I don’t deserve to live.”

I had barely come back to myself when Lucas Arden crossed the suite.

“I’ll marry you.”

His voice was calm.

Serena froze.

I turned to look at him.

His eyes were different from the last time.

In my previous life, Lucas had stood in the corner for a long time, silent and reluctant, before finally giving in. This time, he did not hesitate at all.

My heart sank.

He remembered too.

“Lucas…” Serena stared at him, stunned.

“You don’t have to do this.” Lucas gently took the knife from her hand and set it on the table. “I’ll marry you. I owe you that much.”

For two seconds, the hotel suite went silent.

Then a cold voice came from the hallway.

“You owe her?”

Graham West stepped out from around the corner, his expression dark. He walked to Serena’s other side and looked straight at Lucas.

“I’m the one engaged to Serena,” he said. “If you want to marry her, shouldn’t you ask me first?”

Lucas frowned. “Graham, this has nothing to do with you.”

“Nothing to do with me?” Graham gave a short laugh. “Our engagement was announced to half of New York last month. You show up in her suite this morning, and now you’re offering to marry her. How exactly is that none of my business?”

Lucas’s face hardened.

“The engagement can be called off.”

“That isn’t your decision.”

The two men stood facing each other with Serena between them, pale and trembling as if she were the only victim in the room.

That was when I understood.

Graham remembered too.

In my last life, he had married me after the engagement switch. We spent five years under the same roof, cold and resentful, barely more than strangers.

He rarely looked at me unless he was drunk.

Whenever he was, he would sit alone in his study, staring at Serena’s photograph like a man mourning the life he should have had.

After Serena died, he lost control and went after Lucas. Later, on my birthday, I was pushed into traffic and died under the wheels of an oncoming car.

Afterward, both of them stood at my grave and cried about making it up to me in the next life.

Now the next life had come.

And here they were, fighting over Serena again.

“Serena,” Graham said, lowering his voice as he looked at her. “Our engagement is still in place. You choose.”

Lucas looked at her too, his tone just as firm.

“Serena, I’ll marry you. I mean it.”