The Chosen One's Cruel Game

From the back cover

The Miller family living room, usually a hub of quiet prestige, hummed with a different kind of energy. My adoptive father, Mr. Miller, beamed, the air thick with anticipation for the grand unveiling.

Lined up before him were the five men he had raised alongside me: Ethan Hayes, Justin Bell, Ryan Stone, Kevin White. And me, Chloe Miller, the prize in a twisted game I was forced to play.

"Chloe, my dear," Mr. Miller' s voice, warm and loving, cut through the tension. "Who do you choose?"

Ethan, the man I had tragically chosen in another life, smiled. A perfect, practiced mask of devotion. This time, his smile felt like a cruel joke.

I remembered the cheers, the naive happiness of that last life. He' d been the perfect husband, the perfect son-in-law. Until my father' s funeral.

That night, he handed me divorce papers, his voice stripped of all warmth. "Now that your father is gone, there' s no need to continue this."

Confusion turned to horror as he confessed: our marriage was an act of gratitude. A pact. A lottery among the boys to see who would "care for me" while they waited for Sophia, my sweet, innocent adoptive sister, to come of age.

Every love letter, every tender touch, every whispered promise, now tainted. I was a pawn. A well-behaved doll. Then came the final, devastating blow: he left me to drown in a flooded subway tunnel for Sophia' s sprained ankle.

But then, impossibly, I woke up. Back in my bedroom, on the very day I was supposed to choose.

This time, my choice would not be a game. It would be my freedom.

"I choose Liam Black," I declared, my voice ringing clear and steady in the stunned silence. A quiet, stoic Navy SEAL, an outsider. My escape.

The shock on their faces was a masterpiece of disbelief. Their carefully constructed world shattered by a single, powerful truth.

And I was just getting started.