After Rebirth, I Became My Ex's Aunt-in-Law

The crowd collectively gasped. Zoe shrieked, her hand flying out too late to block it. The wall of Sinclair operatives surged forward, their bodies shifting to intercept the projectile, but they were a fraction of a second too slow.

Smack.

The wet impact echoed loudly.

Aria caught the tomato mere inches from her nose. The force of the catch caused the overripe, mushy skin to burst in her palm. Red juice, seeds, and pulp splattered against her fingers and down her wrist, but not a single drop touched her pristine face or her clothes.

She stood there, her arm raised, holding the crushed fruit in a firm grip. Her emerald eyes were completely blank.

To the millions watching on Zoe’s livestream, and the hundreds standing in the terminal, it looked like an impossibly lucky, superhuman reflex.

But to Aria, it was just muscle memory.

For a split second, the marble floors of Grand Central vanished. The smell of expensive perfumes and city exhaust was replaced by the stinging, sterile stench of industrial bleach and mold. She was back in the psychiatric asylum.

She remembered the cold white tiles. She remembered the ’patients’ Lydia had paid off to ensure every single day of her confinement was a living, breathing hell.

A tomato was a joke.

In her first life, it had been a sharpened, stolen metal butter knife hurled directly at her face in the cafeteria. It had sliced her cheek open, leaving a jagged, permanent scar that she had stared at in the mirror every day until she died.

She had learned to survive. She had learned to spot the shift in a shoulder, to anticipate the throw, to hide, to hold her breath, to handle excruciating pain, and most importantly—to catch.

Those reflexes hadn’t died with her in that freezing room. They had transferred over, permanently hardwired into her in this second life.

The terminal was completely silent. ℴℴ𝘮

”Got him!” a Sinclair operative roared, breaking the spell.

He grabbed a greasy, frantic-looking man by the scruff of his jacket and hauled him out of the mob like a misbehaving kitten. The assailant kicked and yelled as two more operatives aggressively dragged him toward the exit, turning him over to the terminal police.

Another operative instantly stepped up to Aria. Without a word, he pulled an antibacterial wet wipe from his breast pocket and handed it to her.

”Thank you,” Aria murmured.

Her voice was calm, completely unfazed. She meticulously wiped the crushed red pulp and seeds from her palm, dropping the ruined wipe into a nearby trash bin.

She looked out at the sea of stunned, wide-eyed faces and the hundreds of camera lenses currently broadcasting her to the globe.

Tears welled up in her eyes, spilling over her thick lashes and tracking down her cheeks. ”I didn’t fake my coma,” Aria’s voice cracked, echoing softly over the dead-silent terminal.

The crowd leaned in, hanging onto every single syllable.

”I was attacked,” she continued, her voice trembling with raw sincerity. ”I was ambushed in the dark. I was thrown off a bridge into the freezing river by people who were obviously out of their minds. And when I woke up in the hospital a few days ago... I was terrified.”

She wrapped her arms tightly around herself, looking small and broken.

”I wasn’t ready to show myself to the world,” Aria wept, the tears falling faster now. ”I wasn’t ready to return to the spotlight. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt the freezing water. I felt the hands pushing me. I stayed hidden because I feared for my life, and the lives of the people I love.”

A collective, empathetic sigh rippled through the commuters.

”I am so overwhelmed by the hate,” Aria sobbed, burying her face in her hands for a brief, tragic second before looking back up. ”I just wanted to be safe.”

From the front of the mob, reporters from TMZ and E! News practically materialized out of thin air, shoving their recorders forward.

”Aria! Aria!” a TMZ reporter shouted over the rising murmur. ”Your mother, Eleanor Vale! People are calling her the Princess Diana of high society! How does it feel knowing her company is being dismantled?!”

Aria lowered her hands.

Eleanor Vale had been a beloved socialite. She was kind, graceful, and universally adored by the public before her sudden, tragic death.

”What about the remaining fifty percent of Vale Entertainment?” a journalist pressed.

Aria paused, her tears slowing as a genuine flicker of confusion crossed her mind.

’Wait,’ Aria thought. ’Fifty percent was on the market?’

She hadn’t known the shares were publicly floating. But more importantly, who on earth would buy the other half? Vale Entertainment was a rotting, dying carcass of a company. It had a horrific reputation, zero top-tier talent, and would require a massive, multi-million dollar resurrection just to keep the lights on. The entertainment industry was cutthroat. Nobody wasted resources on a dead brand.

’Did Damien buy it?’ Aria wondered, her heart doing a slight flutter. ’Did he buy it secretly to surprise me?’

She couldn’t confirm it without looking stupid, so she played it perfectly coy.

Aria offered a sad, deeply poised smile.

”You will know through official announcements very soon,” Aria responded gracefully, giving a vague, professional non-answer that only fed the mystery.

Before the TMZ reporter could follow up, a loud influencer holding a ring light shoved his way to the front of the pack.

”What about the audio leak?!” the influencer screamed, desperate to trap her in her own conspiracy. ”You said you were glad the ruse was over! You said hiding was exhausting! Explain that!”

”I wanted people to keep believing I was in a coma,” Aria confessed, letting her voice crack with desperate, lingering terror. ”It was a ruse to protect myself. I was terrified they would come back to finish the job if they knew I was awake.”

She looked directly into the ring light, her expression hauntingly sincere.

”It was a traumatizing situation. I still have nightmares about the water every single night. I am in constant dialogue with my therapist, and I am actively working on my mental health. I just... I just wanted to survive.”

Checkmate.

The influencer lowered his ring light, his mouth hanging open. The crowd erupted into a chorus of sympathetic murmurs and supportive shouts.

”Leave her alone!” someone yelled from the back. ”She’s a victim!”

Aria stood beneath the golden clock, the undisputed master of the narrative. She had taken a career-ending audio leak and effortlessly spun it into a heartbreaking tale of PTSD and survival.

She took a deep, calming breath, wiping the last tear from her cheek.

She was about to take the next question from the press when....

BANG.

The deafening, explosive crack of a gunshot ripped through Grand Central Terminal. The sound bounced off the vaulted ceiling, leaving a split second of ringing silence in its wake.

And then, the entire terminal erupted into screaming terror.