Karma's A Bitch: My Second Life

My manipulative bitch of a best friend was harassed by a drunk outside a club.

As a black belt in mixed martial arts, I stepped in to protect her, but I accidentally beat the guy so badly he died.

Yet, when we went to court, she refused to testify for me.

Accused of manslaughter, I was sentenced to three years, spending hellish days in a maximumsecurity women's prison.

When I finally got out, I discovered she had already married my boyfriend. They even had a twoyearold daughter.

Worse, they conspired to marry me off to her divorced, abusive older brother.

Then, I opened my eyesand I was back on the exact day she was harassed.

Chapter 1

One second, I was dazed behind the wheel, metal crunching in a fatal car crash.

The next, my eyes snapped open, and I was staring at the familiar ceiling of my old bedroom.

I grabbed my phone, the screen glaring back with a date from exactly three years ago. I was back on Hailey's twentysecond birthday.

I stood in front of the mirror, taking in my reflection. I had spent hours doing my hair and makeup, dressing up just to celebrate the girl who had been my best friend since middle school.

Two unread messages sat on my lock screen.

The first was from Hailey. She sent a location pin followed by a voice note. I tapped play, and her sickeningly sweet voice filled the room. "Hey babe, I booked this spot. Make sure you don't get lost!"

The other message was from my boyfriend, Tristan.

[Delaney, are you ready? I'm almost at your place.]

I rolled my eyes so hard my temples throbbed.

In my past life, I was nothing but a naive ATM. I even paid the difference out of my own pocket to buy Hailey a limitededition Cartier diamond necklace under Tristan's name, stupidly hoping my best friend and boyfriend would get along.

What a joke.

I served three years in hell, and by the time I got out, their kid was already over two years old. Doing the math, she was already pregnant with his bastard right now.

I let out a cold laugh, mentally dragging that trashy couple straight onto my hit list.

Then, I typed out a dismissive reply to Hailey.

[Babe, I just twisted my ankle. Heading to the ER right now. I'm so sorry I can't make it to your party. I'll make it up to you later.]

I came from money, and she didn't. Over the years, she had leached more than her fair share of perks off me, which was why she always played the role of the perfectly submissive, devoted friend on the surface.

A barrage of "concerned" voice notes flooded my screen. I didn't play a single one.

Just the thought of hearing her sugarysweet tone made my stomach churn with nausea.

I switched over to Tristan's chat.

[Not feeling well. Go without me.]

Before he could even type a response, I muted his notifications and tossed the phone onto the mattress.

I glanced at the gifts sitting at the foot of my bed. The Cartier necklace was supposed to be from Tristan, and I had bought a designer bag under my own name. Neither were even my style.

I grabbed the shopping bags, marched straight to the boutique, and returned them both.

Stepping out of the luxury store, I casually opened my social media feed. Right at the top was Hailey's latest post.

She was wearing a frilly white dress, holding a massive bouquet of flowers, and surrounded by a mountain of presents like some pampered princess.

And right beside her stood Tristan. He was leaning in, his shoulder angled slightly toward hers.

To anyone scrolling by, they looked exactly like a couple.

"Fucking trash."

I had known Hailey since middle school. She grew up strictly middleclass, but back when the rest of us were still figuring out how to use a hairbrush, she was already playing the delicate, pale, softspoken sweetheart.

She knew exactly how to wrap guys around her finger.

But being the center of attention always came with a target on your back.

One day after school, a group of mean girls cornered her in an alley. The reason was textbook high school drama: the leader's crush was obsessed with Hailey.

I had been a sick kid, so my parents threw me into mixed martial arts classes just to build up my immune system. It turned out I was a natural.

By my early teens, I was already dropping opponents twice my size.

So, when I saw Hailey backed against a brick wall, I didn't hesitate. I stepped in and laid out those bullies in under a minute, sending them running.

Before disappearing around the corner, the leader spat at the pavement and pointed at me. "I'm gonna make you pay for this, Delaney!"

I planted my hands on my hips and yelled back. "Bring it on! My older brother is Pierce!"

I turned around and offered my hand, pulling a sobbing, tearstreaked Hailey up from the dirt.

From that day on, despite being complete opposites, we became inseparable.

Chapter 2

Later on, she asked me why my brother and I had different last names.

Chewing on my smoothie straw, I stared up at Pierce's photo pinned to the very top of the Honor Roll. I didn't know how to explain that Pierce only lived with us because both his parents were dead.

Seeing me hesitate, Hailey gave me a playful smirk. "I won't pry into the private affairs of rich families, but"

She paused, stepping up to point directly at Pierce's photo, "you wouldn't mind if I went after your brother, right?"

Her eyes flashed with greed in that moment, as if Pierce wasn't a human being, but a black card with no spending limit that could catapult her into a higher social class.

Back then, I was oblivious.

But looking back with the clarity of a second life, I realized that was the exact moment Hailey consciously made a sport out of stealing what belonged to me.

The clothes I just bought? Borrowed and never returned. The books I was reading? Swiped from my desk. My circle of friends? Suddenly hers.

Even my brother wasn't offlimits.

I was too young and stupid to spot a snake in the grass.

When I found out Hailey was actually going to make a move on Pierce, I ran straight to him to deliver the news.

Pierce just listened, slowly raising his gaze to pin me with a freezing look. "Delaney. Where's your ID?"

I blinked, lost, but fished my student ID out of my bag anyway. "Right here."

Pierce let out a low scoff. "Do me a favor and look at the grade level on that plastic. You're a freshman. Any romantic thoughts you have for the next three years are just a legally classified waste of oxygen."

Pierce was three years older than me. I was a freshman in high school while he was a senior, and he had lived with us since he was ten.

When we were younger, I actually loved trailing after him. Having a dropdead gorgeous older brother was the ultimate flex for a teenage girl.

But the older we got, the more he turned into a brick wall.

He was calculated, painfully rational, and as freezing as a lake in November. Even as a teenager, he kept everything locked down tight behind a stoic facade.

My dad constantly bragged that Pierce was destined to run an empire.

Yet, in my past life, this infuriatingly icy guy was the only one whose eyes grew bloodshot from holding back tears every time he visited me in that prison.

I must have been a colossal idiot back then, always bending over backward for Hailey.

Since her personal ATM suddenly bailed on her birthday, the mountain of gifts in her post looked noticeably cheaper than usual.

It didn't take a genius to figure out why my phone started buzzing with a FaceTime call mere minutes after she posted. I swiped ignore.

Glancing at the clock, I figured they were already wrapping up dinner and heading to their second locationa private karaoke lounge. A lounge I had bankrolled in my past life.

In that previous timeline, it was past midnight by the time we stumbled out of the club. The rest of the group had piled into Ubers and driven off, leaving Hailey standing alone on the curb.

That was when a belligerent drunk lunged out of the shadows, tackling her from behind and shoving his filthy hands all over her body.

Tristan and I had just pulled my car around the corner. My headlights illuminated the sceneHaileys clothes were halftorn, and she was shrieking.

It was a sketchy deadend street, well out of sight from the bouncers. Worse, the creep's buddies were leaning against a nearby wall, laughing and egging him on.

Seeing my best friend getting assaulted, I slammed the car into park, threw open the door, and sprinted over. I yanked Hailey out of his grip.

The drunk immediately pivoted, lunging right at me.

Dropping my center of gravity, I executed a clean shoulder throw. The drunk slammed into the asphalt, accompanied by the sickening crunch of breaking bone.

Seeing this, the other thugs immediately flicked open their switchblades and boxed me in.

Squaring off against armed, adrenalinefueled men was pushing my limits.

But Tristan? My supposed boyfriend sat paralyzed behind the steering wheel, locking the doors and pretending he didn't see a damn thing.

Desperate to carve out an escape route, I unleashed a brutal kick. In the chaos, I didn't gauge my power.

My heel caught one of the attackers in the chest, sending him stumbling backward. His skull cracked violently against the jagged edge of the concrete pavement, and he went completely limp.

Sirens wailed seconds later. A passerby had called the cops, and we were all dragged down to the precinct.

That was when the detective delivered the news: the blunt force trauma to the guy's skull was fatal. He was dead.

My parents hired the most ruthless defense attorney money could buy. But the alley was a blind spotno security cameras, no dashcams. The only witnesses were the surviving thugs and us.

It was a textbook case of selfdefense. But when it was time to testify, Hailey, the girl I had killed a man to protect, took the stand.

Looking straight at the judge, she spoke into the microphone. "The man had already stopped bothering me. Delaney she just misread the situation. She mistakenly thought I was being attacked"

Chapter 3

Even though my family threw insane amounts of money at the case, I still got slapped with a threeyear sentence. My parents aged a decade overnight.

Pierce, who was usually so utterly composed, looked at me with bloodshot eyes. "Delaney, don't be scared. I'm right here with you."

After I was locked up in that violenceridden, soulcrushing women's prison, Hailey actually had the nerve to visit me.

She showed up wearing the custom Chanel jacket I bought her. Through the thick visitor's glass, she cried her eyes out, acting like she was the one who had suffered some massive injustice.

"I'm so sorry, Delaney. I was just so scared"

She pulled the exact same pathetic, helpless face she always used whenever she screwed up. "You'll forgive me, right?"

Forgive?

I wanted to rip her apart with my bare hands.

I rotted in that cell for three years. It took me that entire time just to stop trembling with sheer hatred every time I thought of her.

Yet, the moment I walked out those prison gates, the first piece of news I got was that my socalled best friend had married my boyfriend. And they had a twoyearold kid.

Did I hate them? With every fiber of my being.

Was I resentful? I was practically choking on it.

So, in this second life, I was going to step back, grab a frontrow seat, and watch fate tear them to shreds.

I went back to my room, waiting in the dead silence for the inevitable drop.

At 1:30 AM, my screen lit up with Tristan's caller ID. I knew exactly what was coming. I swiped to answer.

On the other end of the line, Tristan was panting. The background was a chaotic mess of noise. His voice was frantic. "Delaney you need to get down to the police station. Something happened to Hailey."

Let the show begin.

When I stepped into the precinct, wearing an expensive trench coat and clicking my heels against the linoleum, the place was in chaos.

Shrieks, curses, the sharp barks of police officers, and the wail of sirens outside all bled together. On any normal night, that kind of noise would give me a migraine.

But right now? It was music to my ears.

That deafening racket was the soundtrack to my rebirth. I had severed myself from the tragedy of my past life. My new reality started here.

I walked past the crowd, my designer bag hanging loosely from my arm, and stopped right in front of Tristan.

He looked pathetic. The corner of his mouth was split open and bleeding, and his shirt was ripped at the collar. He had his head buried in his hands.

Hearing my footsteps, he looked up. His very first words to me were: "Why didn't you show up to Hailey's party tonight?"

I paused. Funny, I never noticed how quick Tristan was to play the interrogator before.

I tilted my head, looking down at him. "And what exactly would have changed if I did?"

In my past life, the second I saw Hailey getting assaulted, my only instinct was to jump out and save her. Meanwhile, Tristanmy supposed boyfriend, the guy secretly sleeping with herstayed locked inside the car the entire time.

Later, his pathetic excuse was that he was busy calling 911 from the front seat.

The reality? A random bystander was the one who actually made the call.

My response must have hit a nerve. He bolted upright, glaring at me with vicious intensity.

"You're a black belt in MMA, aren't you? Back when we used to hang out, whenever creeps bothered Hailey, you always fought them off! If you had just been there tonight"

"If I had been there tonight, the one getting harassed, groped, and assaulted would have been me. And then you wouldn't have to feel so bad about it, right?"

Tristan froze. All the aggressive fire vanished from his eyes in an instant.

He stared at me in disbelief. "You you know, don't you?"

Chapter 4

I offered a sweet, perfectly composed smile. "What do you think?"

Done wasting breath on him, I turned on my heel and followed a female officer down the hall to find Hailey.

She looked a thousand times worse than Tristan. Her clothes were shredded, barely covered by an oversized fleece jacket the officer had draped over her shoulders.

She was curled into a tight ball on the holding room cot. The expensive salon blowout shed gotten specifically for tonight was a rats nest of tangled curls.

Her eyes were rimmed with angry red. Because her skin was so unnaturally pale, every single bruise and scrape stood out like neon signs.

But staring at her, a cold knot of nausea tightened in my gut.

She looked exactly like what she wasa venomous snake crawling out of a sewer, desperately trying to disguise itself as a swan.

She dropped her chin, letting the tears fall in that textbook, pitifully fragile way she had perfected over the years.

The officer gave me the rundown. After stumbling out of the club, Hailey was jumped by a group of drunks.

Tristan only intervened after she had been dragged into an alley, and only after hed supposedly called 911 and grabbed a bouncer.

When he finally stepped in, he picked up a literal brick and smashed it directly into the attackers skull. Right now, that drunk was fighting for his life in the ICU, practically braindead.

When the officer finished speaking, Hailey slowly raised her head. Her voice was a fragile, trembling whisper. "Delaney"

I didn't rush forward to throw my arms around her like I used to. I stayed rooted to my spot, my hands shoved deep into the pockets of my trench coat.

She blinked, genuine confusion flashing across her face. Sensing the freezing drop in temperature, the officer assumed we needed a moment and quietly slipped out, clicking the door shut behind her.

"Why are you standing all the way over there?" Hailey asked.

My face remained blank. "Just checking in. It's not like I can do anything to help. Since you're both still breathing, I'm heading home. It's late."

That was putting it nicely. I was strictly here for the entertainment.

All the color drained from Hailey's face, leaving her ghostwhite. Raw, panicked realization flashed in those wide, perpetually innocent eyesshe knew I saw right through her.

Then came the flash of ugly, uncontainable resentment.

"Delaney, what the hell is that supposed to mean?" Her voice lost its fragile tremor, sharpening into an accusation. "Aren't we best friends? Look at what just happened to me! How can you be so damn cold? I never expected you to be this kind of person."

"Funny. I never expected you to be this kind of person either." I cut her off, my tone dropping to dead zero.

"I treated you like a sister. Tell me, Haileyhave you ever actually looked at me as a friend?"

Hailey choked on her breath. "Wwhat are you talking about?"

"Read my lips."

I was done playing games in this sterile interrogation room. Like I said, I was only here for the show.

In my previous life, this exact night was the prologue to my nightmare. After I accidentally killed that man, my parents rushed to this very precinct.

My mother, a woman who had lived her entire life with flawless grace, crumpled onto the dirty linoleum floor, sobbing hysterically when they told her I was facing prison time.

The stress aged both my parents a decade overnight.

While I sat handcuffed to a metal desk and my parents clung to each other in the hallway, the girl I had thrown my life away to protect just stood in the corner. Hailey didnt offer my parents a single word of comfort.

And Tristan? He hovered right by her side. After tossing my parents a few pathetic, generic words of sympathy, he escorted Hailey right out the door.

Looking back, there was zero chance they went back to their dorms that night. They definitely checked into a hotel together.

And I was nothing but the collateral damage they left behind.

But tonight, in this new reality, I pulled out my phone and opened my family group chat. Before going to bed, my parents had dropped a photo of their anniversary dinner.

Their faces were glowing, radiating pure happiness. Pierce had even liked the message.

In this life, I was going to hold onto my family with a death grip.

When I pushed open the precincts double doors to leave, Haileys and Tristans parents were just rushing in. We brushed past each other in the entrance.

They glanced back at me, mouths opening as if to ask what happened, but an officer immediately barked at them to keep moving.

I stood alone on the sidewalk, the cold night air biting my cheeks. I turned back, staring through the glass at the chaotic, fluorescentlit precinct.

Every single ounce of suffering they forced me to swallow in my past lifein this life, I was going to make them choke on it, a thousand times over.

Chapter 5

The news of Hailey getting dragged into an alley blew up across the entire campus overnight.

When I slid into my seat for my morning lecture the next day, I heard a cluster of girls whispering frantically next to me.

I turned my head. "What are you guys looking at?"

They exchanged nervous glances, their mouths instantly snapping shut. I leaned back in my chair. "It's about Hailey, isn't it?"

The color drained from their faces, and they gave stiff little nods.

A girl I was on decent terms with scooted closer, clutching her phone to her chest. "Delaney, I know you and Hailey are super tight. You're probably going to be pissed if you see this, which is why we didn't want to show you."

"What video?"

She hesitated, then tilted her screen toward me. It was shaky, shot from a window overlooking the alley behind the karaoke lounge.

You could see Hailey getting yanked into the shadows by a group of guys. Scraps of her white frilly dress were tossed out onto the filthy pavement.

The footage was grainy, but the audio was crystal clear. The piercing shrieks and the grotesque, slurred laughter of the men painted an ugly enough picture.

My brows pulled together. I wanted to see Hailey's reputation crash and burn, but leaking an assault video was straightup gutter trash behavior.

This wasn't the kind of revenge I wanted. I needed her fully conscious, eyes wide open, watching as I methodically stripped away every single thing she cared about.

Catching the cold shift in my expression, the girl instantly tapped the screen, pausing the video. "We have no idea who leaked it. It was circulating everywhere by midnight. Yesterday was her birthday weren't you there?"

Everyone on campus knew we were inseparable. Hailey was the golden girl of the arts department, riding on her carefully curated innocent looks.

Half the trustfund kids were obsessed with her, and she cycled through boyfriends like fast fashion. But beneath that sweet facade, she was an arrogant snob who had stepped on plenty of toes.

Now that this video was out, every single person who secretly hated her guts was grabbing some popcorn and piling on.

I lowered my gaze, tracing the edge of my notebook. "I wasn't there. I have no idea what actually went down."

Even though I was disgusted by whoever leaked that footage, my memory of rotting in a cell because of her was permanently branded into my brain. Forgiveness wasn't even on the table.

I looked back up at the girls. "You guys don't need to walk on eggshells around me when it comes to Hailey anymore. We're done."

The sudden, brutal severing of our famous friendship hit them like a shockwave. They exchanged wideeyed looks.

That piece of gossip alone was going to feed the rumor mill for weeks.

Neither Tristan nor Hailey showed up to classes that day.

Walking out of the lecture hall, I pulled out my phone and drafted a clinical, oneline breakup text to Tristan. I hit send, then immediately went to their profiles and blocked both of their numbers.

A swift, mechanical sequence to cut the dead weight. I knew exactly how they operated.

They would definitely try to crawl back and latch onto me again. After all, I had been an embarrassingly easy target for years, handing out free perks like an idiot.

After my afternoon seminar, I drove straight to my parents' place.

In my past life, my threeyear sentence broke them. They spent their days drowning in despair while our family business took a massive nosedive, leaving Pierce to carry the entire empire on his back.

Even though I had texted them earlier about coming over for dinner, standing on the welcome mat, my pulse hammered in my ears. I took a deep, shuddering breath, locking my knees before finally pressing the doorbell.

We lived in a sprawling penthouse with a panoramic view of the river. The heavy front door swung open.

The scent of our housekeeper prepping dinner drifted through the warm air, and my dad was lounging on the sofa, watching the evening news.

My mom stood in the doorway, her eyes instantly crinkling into a soft, radiant smile. "There's my Delaney."

I thought I had built up enough mental armor. I thought I could keep it together.

But the warmth of this sceneseeing my mom standing there so vibrant, with actual light in her eyes instead of that hollow, grieving stareshattered my defenses.

A brutal lump lodged in my throat. My vision blurred, and hot, heavy tears spilled over my lashes, dripping down my face before I could stop them.

My moms breath caught. She rushed forward, grabbing my hands tightly. "Oh honey, what's wrong? Did something happen on campus?"

To them, I had only been away at the dorms for the weekend. But to me, I had just crawled out of a threeyear stint in hell, finally feeling the sun hit my skin again.

Chapter 6

At the dinner table, my parents kept piling food onto my plate. Midconversation, they suddenly brought up Pierce.

"Oh, right. Your brother is coming back soon."

My fork froze in midair.

After high school, Pierce had gone abroad for college and cofounded a tech startup with some classmates. According to my dad, the company was actually crushing it.

In my past life, he was supposed to return around this exact time.

But because of my case, he dropped everything and rushed back, only to make it just in time to watch the judge sentence me to prison.

This time, I hadn't derailed my life. If he stuck to his original schedule, he would be back within the next two weeks.

Truth be told, my relationship with Pierce in my past life was complicated. During my sophomore year, Tristan started aggressively pursuing me, and we eventually got together.

Pierce caught us walking down the street one day.

He dragged me aside, his face hardened, and flatout ordered me to break it off.

I thought he was just playing the overbearing older brother, and it pissed me off. "You told me no dating before eighteen. I'm almost twenty now! Why do you care?"

"I'm your brother!"

"You're not even my real brother!"

After that fight, I started avoiding him like the plague. He was three years older and had already received his acceptance letters for universities abroad.

He left early and came home late every day. Even if we accidentally bumped into each other in the hallway, I would glare at him and storm off.

Looking back now, the way he watched me walk toward that piece of trash was loaded. Beneath that heavy, suppressed stare was a violent, suffocating possessiveness and rage.

I was just too blind to see it. Right up until the day his flight took off, I was still giving him the silent treatment over him trying to keep me away from Tristan.

I never imagined the next time I saw him, I'd be wearing handcuffs.

Thinking about how he ran himself into the ground trying to save me in my past lifea guy who was notoriously a clean freak, reduced to showing up with heavy stubble and bloodshot eyes.

He wasn't my biological brother, but he was more family than anyone else could ever be.

After dinner, I went back to my room and pulled out my phone. My text thread with him was dead, frozen over two years ago on the day he left the country.

I stared at the screen, trying to figure out what kind of apology text would actually work, when my thumb slipped and hit the call button.

I flinched, dropping the phone straight onto the floor. I scrambled to snatch it up, only to see the timer already ticking. He had picked up.

His cold, crisp voice came through the speaker. "Hello?"

My entire body went rigid. My throat seized up.

Pierce called out again. "Delaney."

Hearing that familiar voice, a sharp ache hit the back of my nose. When I finally opened my mouth, my voice cracked. "I'm here."

His breathing over the receiver dropped.

Across half the globe, his oppressive, heavy voice came through, dripping with a terrifying, bloodthirsty edge. "Who made you cry? Give me a name. I'll send the jet back right now."

I sniffled, staring at the framed photo on my desk. It was a picture of us from when we were kids.

In the photo, I was smiling at the camera, but the young boy beside me was looking straight at me.

Gripping the phone, across the entire Pacific Ocean and multiple time zones, I finally spoke the truest words in my heart.

"Pierce, I miss you