Caught In Bed Reborn To Rule

The year I caught Warren Brand cheating with the woman who stole my childhood, I burned their penthouse to ash. I forced Giselle to terminate the pregnancy, turned whistleblower on Warren’s shipping empire, and dragged his name through every tabloid in the city. He despised me for it. When grief and trauma cost me my own pregnancy, he didn't shed a single tear. Instead, he froze the trust fund paying for my mother’s cancer treatments, using her life as leverage to force me into signing a divorce settlement. I never gave in. I told him straight to his face: "The only way you leave this marriage is in a casket." Then came the accident. When that semi-truck jumped the median, Warren threw his body over mine without a second thought. Waking up in the ICU, he acted like a man who’d seen God. He swore he’d remembered how much he loved me. He relocated our entire lives away from the harbor, reported his whereabouts every single hour, and never missed an anniversary. I was stupid enough to think heaven had finally granted me a second chance at happiness. Until the night Giselle’s car plunged into the freezing harbor, and Warren dove into the black water to trade his life for hers. As his pulse faded on the dock, hypothermic and dying, his lips curved into a smile of pure, quiet release. "Back then... Giselle let me go on purpose," he whispered, water leaking from his lungs. "She told me she’d already stolen your family... she couldn't steal your husband, too." He looked at me with fading eyes. "Don't bring me back, Sabrina. I couldn't have what I wanted in life. Just let me be with her in death. You said no divorce... would becoming a widow do?" I died shortly after, consumed by a sickness that doctors couldn't name, but that felt like rotting from the inside out. And then, I opened my eyes. I was standing in the doorway of their waterfront pied-à-terre, looking at Warren’s naked shoulders and the furious, burning defiance in his eyes. This time, I didn't reach for the heavy crystal vase on the console. I let my fingers drop to my side, my voice entirely flat. "Put your clothes on. The press is already downstairs." … For a fraction of a second, the hatred in Warren’s eyes fractured. Nothing was left except sheer bewilderment. Beside him on the tangled silk sheets, Giselle frantically shoved him away. She scrambled to pull a silk robe around her bare shoulders, tumbling off the mattress and landing hard on her knees before me. "Sabrina, please... don't be mad," she sobbed, huge, cinematic tears spilling down her porcelain cheeks. "It was an accident. I swear, I only came here to—" I watched those tears hit the hardwood floor. A detached, absurd thought drifted through my mind: "She really does look exquisite when she cries." Fragile. Innocent. A bruised white rose. If I were Warren, I would have chosen her, too. Right on cue, Warren lunged out of bed, pulling Giselle up and shielding her behind his broad back. "Don't take this out on Giselle," he snarled, his voice rough and defensive. "If you want someone to blame, blame me. I did this. I’ll take the—" "Take what, exactly?" I cut him off without a flicker of emotion. "Brand Shipping and the Price family trusts have been legally intertwined for five years. Take a look out the window, Warren. How many telephoto lenses do you think are pointed at this balcony right now?" Slowly, I reached down and slid off the plain silver band on my left ring finger—the one he’d bought me before he ever made a dime. I set it on the mahogany table with a tiny, metallic clink. "Don't worry," I said. "You’ll get your divorce. All I want is an amicable exit." My last life had been entirely too agonizing. A broken family, a dead mother, a ruined soul. After Warren died, every single breath had felt like swallowing broken glass. Given a second chance at this life, all I wanted was to get as far away from him as humanly possible. Warren stared at the discarded ring, the veins along his neck pulsing violently. Seven years ago. Back then, Warren and I were nothing but harbor rats scraping by on the South Boston docks. We shared stale bread, cheap whiskey, and cold nights in a drafty cold-water flat. We were each other's armor and each other's poison. If someone tried to muscle in on his freight contracts, I slipped laxatives into their crew’s coffee. If a loan shark came after me, Warren put the man in the hospital with a fractured skull. He proposed to me in that leaking attic while rain drummed against the tin roof. "Sabrina, I swear to God, I’m gonna claw our way to the top. One day, I’ll buy you diamonds the size of ice cubes." That cheap silver band had stayed on my finger for seven straight years. Even after my real biological family—the wealthy Prices—found me, and Warren rode their coattails straight into high society, I had never taken it off. Not even when my jewelry box overflowed with Harry Winston and Cartier. Everything changed the day he met Giselle, the girl who had spent twenty-two years living the luxury life meant for me. The apartment fell into a tomb-like silence. I gave a dry, humorless smirk. He really couldn't wait, could he? I tapped my phone screen, signaling the legal assistant waiting in the hallway to step inside with the paperwork. "Here. If you're in such a rush to make it official, we can sign right now—" The moment my fingers gripped the pen, Warren’s expression turned dark and dangerous. He crossed the room in two strides, snatched the document from my hands, and ripped it to shreds. Before I could react, he shoved me back against the leather sofa, pinning my wrists above my head, his breath hot and ragged against my skin. "Did you forget, Sabrina? When we said our vows, you looked me in the eye and said there was no divorce between us—only widowhood." His voice was a venomous whisper. "A vindictive bitch like you doesn't just walk away. What is this, some kind of reverse-psychology bullshit?" "Bullshit." Even with the memories of two lifetimes behind me, seeing that familiar, paranoid calculation in his eyes made my knuckles turn white. "Oh, Warren." "You were the one who taught me. In the life before this, you proved you’d rather drown in the freezing harbor than spend another minute married to me." I forced a faint, bloodless smile. "What will it take for you to believe me? Should I wheel my sick mother out here and have her swear on her failing heart?" Ever since the Prices brought me back, my mother, Marion, was the only one in that gilded house who had ever treated me with genuine, aching tenderness. Warren knew that better than anyone. That was why, in our first life, when he was backed into a corner, he used her hospital bills to crush my spine. Warren’s face blanched. His throat bobbed, his lips parting as if to say something—anything. Then a shrill, hysterical shriek tore through the room. "Sabrina! Warren! Please, stop fighting because of me!" Giselle lunged toward the open terrace doors, her knuckles clutching the wrought-iron railing. "I’m the monster here! I’ll just jump—I'll end it right now! Sabrina, just don't hurt him!" "Giselle, no!" Panic stripped every ounce of composure from Warren’s face. He let go of me instantly and sprinted across the room, wrapping his arms around her waist and dragging her back from the ledge. When he looked back over his shoulder at me, his eyes were coated in pure frost. "I told you to stop playing your sick games, Sabrina. Is this how you’ve been tormenting Giselle behind closed doors at the manor?" He straightened his cuffs, his voice dripping with disgust. "Fine. You want a divorce? You got it. But if you want your precious dignity, you’re going to walk out that front door on my arm and smile for the press." Outside, the street was choked with paparazzi and broadcast vans. Swallowing down the bile rising in my throat, I rested my hand on Warren’s tailored arm, facing the barrage of flashing bulbs with the polished, aristocratic grace I had spent years mastering. Warren didn't say a single word. He just stared at me out of the corner of his eye, unsettled. The second the privacy glass rolled up inside the Maybach, I dropped my hand and rubbed my aching cheek muscles. A sharp, mocking chuckle cut through the quiet. "Quite a performance, Mrs. Brand. You almost had me fooled." Warren leaned back against the leather, swirling his lighter. "Tell me. What are you plotting?" I didn't bother opening my eyes, resting my temple against the cool glass of the window. After a heavy pause, Warren suddenly reached over, grabbing my shoulder and jerking me around to face him. His eyes burned with an emotion I couldn't quite decipher. "I asked you a question. Are you deaf?" I stared at him, genuinely baffled. Hadn't he spent his final moments in another lifetime begging me to let him go? Yet, within the span of a single heartbeat, any fleeting illusion was extinguished by his next words. "Listen to me very carefully," he warned, his jaw tight. "Giselle is carrying my child. If you lay a single finger on her, I don't care what history we share—I will destroy you." He sneered softly. "She’s not like you, Sabrina. She’s innocent. Clean." My teeth bit deep into the inside of my lip until I tasted copper. Subconsciously, my palm pressed against my lower abdomen. I had heard those exact words a thousand times in my past life. Back then, in the middle of a screaming match, I had asked him what on earth he saw in Giselle. He had tapped his cigarette ash onto the marble floor and smirked: "Giselle is pure. She doesn't calculate every heartbeat. Unlike you, Mrs. Brand, who would barter our own baby’s ghost for leverage." Before the Prices ever found me, Warren’s rivals had kidnapped me and held me in a flooded cellar for three days and three nights. That was how we lost our first child. The emergency room surgeon told me my uterus was so severely scarred I would likely never conceive again. When Warren finally tracked down the boss who ordered it, he pressed a loaded Glock against the man’s temple, ready to pull the trigger. The man offered his entire harbor operation—every warehouse, every ship, every union connection—in exchange for his life. It was me. I was the one who grabbed Warren’s shaking gun hand and told him to take the deal. That territory was what transformed Warren from a harbor thug into the rising titan of the Eastern seaboard, catching the attention of the high-society Price family. Back then, Warren had wept into my lap, kissing my scars, thanking me for being the brains behind his survival. He even set up a private memorial fund in our lost baby’s name. Yet the moment he stopped loving me, my sacrifice became proof that I was a cold-blooded, heartless schemer. And later, when I retaliated by forcing Giselle to terminate her pregnancy, Warren personally went to the cemetery, dug up our first child's little urn, and scattered the ashes into the ocean. "If you can't be a mother, you don't get to take away my chance to be a father." I had hemorrhaged from pure rage that night, while he walked out the door without looking back. He conveniently forgot that the only reason Giselle remained "pure and innocent" was because she had spent her life enjoying the shelter, wealth, and love that had been violently stolen from me. Thinking of those two lost babies, my eyes stung with hot tears. But I swallowed the ache and kept my spine rigid. "Don't worry," I said quietly. "A deal is a deal." Warren furrowed his brow, looking like he wanted to say something, but his phone rang with an obnoxious chime. He answered immediately, his voice softening into an unbearable gentleness. "Giselle?... Where are you? Does your stomach hurt?" He glanced at me, a flicker of awkward hesitation crossing his face. I knew the drill. "Driver," I said clearly. "Pull over." Warren’s jaw tightened. He didn't say a single word to stop me. He simply let me step out into the freezing harbor drizzle, the Maybach speeding off and leaving me in a cloud of exhaust. I didn't waste a second. I hailed a cab and sped directly to Massachusetts General Hospital. The moment I pushed open the door to my mother's private room, the tears finally broke. In my previous life, when Warren ordered his accountants to freeze my mother’s medical trust, I had completely lost my mind. I had lunged across the center console while he was driving, my hands locked around his throat. "Did you forget? Without my mother signing off on our marriage, you never would have touched a single cent of the Price family’s venture capital!" Back then, Warren had told me that now that I was an heiress, I couldn't go around breaking kneecaps anymore. I had obediently handed over every resource, retreating into the role of a polished, respectable society wife. And in return, he drove a stiletto through my heart. That day in the car, Warren’s eyes had been bloodshot with fury. "You pushed me to this! If your mother raised a vicious bitch like you, she deserves whatever she gets!" I had yanked the steering wheel, intending to die with him right then and there. He survived, shielding me at the last second. But the delay in treatment killed my mother before we ever made it out of the wreckage. Thank God. This time, I still had a chance to fix it. My mother didn't know about Warren’s infidelity. In her eyes, he was still the devoted, doting son-in-law who had pulled me out of the gutter. "Sweetheart," she rasped, reaching out from the hospital bed. "Why are you crying? Did someone upset you? Tell Warren... he’ll protect you." A sob tore through my chest. Looking at her sunken, hopeful face, the brutal truth got stuck in my throat. I couldn't bring myself to say it. After tucking her in and waiting until she drifted off to sleep, I stepped out into the quiet corridor. I pulled out my phone, dialled a number I hadn't touched in years, and waited. "Does your offer from five years ago still stand?" When the deep, steady voice on the other end gave me an unequivocal "yes", a massive weight lifted from my lungs. "Thank you, Simon." I exhaled, feeling the ground settle beneath my feet. But as I turned to walk back to the room, a pair of strong, familiar hands grabbed me by the scruff of my neck, slamming me back against the corridor wall. I looked up into Warren’s murderous gaze. "I was wondering why you suddenly acted so generous," he spat, venom dripping from his tongue. "You had this waiting for me the whole damn time!" "What are you talking about?" He dragged me toward the mounted news monitor hanging above the nurse's station. The headline was blaring in bold red across the local entertainment channel. Grainy photographs of Warren escorting Giselle into an exclusive private OB-GYN clinic were currently trending across every social media platform. The Boston press had never been subtle—the captions called her a home-wrecking gold digger, ripping into her with cruel, lurid detail. Beneath Warren’s fury, there was a strange, desperate flicker of relief—as if finding out I had leaked the photos proved I still cared enough to be jealous. Yet his words remained vicious. "Didn't I warn you not to touch her? I gave you everything you asked for! Why the hell do you keep going after her?" Behind him, Giselle appeared, weeping hysterically and tugging at his coat. "Don't blame Sabrina, Warren... it’s all my fault. I’ll leave the city. I’ll disappear. Just please don't hurt her..." "Giselle, stop," Warren said, his voice dropping into tender agony as he turned to her. "You’re too soft. That's why she walks all over you. A cold-hearted woman like her—it's no wonder she couldn't keep our baby. It was karma!" My fingernails dug so deep into my palms that they broke the skin. Hearing him bring up my dead child for the second time today shattered whatever restraint I had left. The grief and rage of two lifetimes erupted like boiling magma. "Warren Brand, you're the one who crawled into her bed, and you're blaming me?" My voice shook with venom. "You didn't even bother to check who leaked those photos before you started throwing accusations—" "Crack." The blow snapped my head to the side. My vision swam with white spots, the taste of iron filling my mouth. Before I could recover, Warren’s fingers clamped around my throat, shoving me hard against the nurse’s desk. "How can you be so damn ruthless, Sabrina?" he growled, his face twisted in rage. "Giselle is your sister! She was willing to raise this child alone, in secret, just so she wouldn't ruin our marriage! Why can't you just let her live?" A sharp, tearing cramp seized my lower abdomen. A dull, rhythmic throbbing began deep inside my pelvic bone. Summoning every ounce of strength in my body, I reached blind onto the counter, grabbed a heavy glass tumbler, and brought it down hard against the side of Warren’s head. The glass shattered. Crimson blood welled immediately from his temple, dripping down his cheekbone. He stumbled back, releasing my neck. He touched the blood, letting out a dark, breathless laugh. "There she is. That's the real Sabrina Price." He stepped closer, his eyes feverish. "Just leave Giselle alone, and I’ll give you whatever you want. Okay? Just let her go." Before I could speak, a weak, trembling voice drifted from the doorway behind us. "Sweetheart?... What's that noise out there?" Warren’s gaze darkened. He reached out, his hand wrapping around the brass handle of my mother's hospital door. Every drop of blood drained from my face. I lunged forward, throwing my entire weight against the door, my hands desperately clutching his sleeve, tears blurring my vision. "Warren, please... I’m begging you. Don't go in there. Please. Her heart can't take this..." A brief flicker of hesitation passed through his eyes. But with Giselle watching from a few feet away, his cruel pride won out. "Look at that. The untouchable Mrs. Brand actually has a weak spot." He sneered down at me. "Promise me you’ll hold a press conference tomorrow and tell the world those rumors are lies, and maybe I’ll—" "I will!" The sheer terror of losing my mother swallowed my pride whole. I fell to my knees on the cold linoleum, clutching the hem of his trousers. "I promise. I’ll do the press conference. I’ll sign the papers. I won't take a single dime from the company. Just please, God, leave her out of this!" Warren froze, stunned by my total surrender. Then, his pupils violently contracted. "Sabrina... you're bleeding." A warm, heavy trickle was running down the inside of my thighs, soaking through my white linen slacks. A wave of dizzying nausea slammed into me. I reached out blindly, trying to grab his hand for balance. Suddenly, Giselle let out a theatrical gasp, clutching her stomach and folding toward the floor. Without a second thought, Warren shoved me aside. He swept Giselle into his arms, his jaw clenched as he glared down at me with disgust. "Even the tough-as-nails Sabrina has learned how to fake an illness. Bravo!" he snarled. "I almost fell for it again. Staging a scene right in front of the hospital staff to make Giselle look like a monster—you really are a piece of work!" My consciousness was already fraying at the edges. The last thing I saw before blackness pulled me under was the broad, unyielding silhouette of his back as he carried Giselle down the hall. …… "Mrs. Brand... I am so, so sorry. Your uterine lining was already severely compromised. Combined with the severe emotional shock and blunt trauma... we couldn't save the pregnancy." The doctor’s voice felt like it was traveling through miles of water. I lay frozen on the gurney, my palm resting over my hollow, aching stomach. A silent tear slipped from the corner of my eye, soaking into the thin hospital pillow. Even after living this nightmare twice... I still couldn't protect my child. I picked up my phone with trembling hands. There was an unread text from Warren: "【If you can accept Giselle’s child into our home, I won't divorce you.】" Attached was an automated location pin, updating his coordinates in real time. It was the exact same thing he had done after the car crash in my previous life. My heart didn't even skip a beat. I simply swiped the notification away. Then, my screen lit up with an incoming video from Simon. I tapped play. The footage showed Giselle lounging on the plush leather sofa of a high-end penthouse, draped across the lap of Victor Kane—Warren’s most vicious corporate rival. "Victor, honey," Giselle purred in the video, her fingers tracing the collar of Kane’s shirt. "If it weren't for you, do you really think I’d let that harbor trash touch me? He’s a glorified dock worker playing dress-up in an Armani suit. He actually believed I was some innocent virgin." She giggled, resting a hand on her stomach. "Once you take down Brand Shipping, you can't forget your promise. You have to marry me." Watching the screen, a sound ripped from my throat that was half-sob, half-laughter. I suddenly couldn't wait to see Warren’s face when he saw this. "This" was the woman he called clean? Pure? Free of calculation? No wonder Giselle had backed off in my previous life. Warren’s grand, self-sacrificing devotion had never been anything more than a ladder for her to climb. Before I could even process the bitterness, the door to the recovery room flew open. A nurse rushed in, her face paper-white. "Ms. Price! Your mother... your mother is in cardiac arrest!" My mind went blank. Ignoring the agony between my legs, I ripped the IV from my arm and sprinted barefoot down the corridor toward her room. Monitors were screaming. Tubes snaked across her frail, shuddering frame. When I crashed through the door, my mother’s cloudy, half-closed eyes suddenly flared with a terrifying burst of clarity. Her skeletal, trembling hand reached out, clamping onto my wrist with surprising strength. "Sabrina..." she gasped, her chest heaving. "Don't... don't stay with him anymore. We don't need... any of it..." "Mom!" Before I could say another word, two residents pulled me back, forcing me out into the hall as the crash cart barreled inside. "Why?" "Why did I come back to this life if I still couldn't save her?" I slid down the wall, clutching my knees, not even daring to scream. I was terrified that if I broke down, God would take it as an insult and take her away forever. I stared numbly at the red emergency light above the door. Then, the hurried whispers of two nurses passing by drifted into my ears. "It’s so heartbreaking... The patient was completely stable until that girl, Giselle, came into the room with an iPad..." My head snapped up. I lunged forward, grabbing the young nurse by the sleeve. "What did you just say?" The nurse jumped, terrified by the feral look in my eyes. "I—I just said your sister came by earlier... She showed your mother something on a tablet, and right after she left, the heart monitors started flatlining..." I sprinted down the hall to the security office like a madwoman. Flashing my family credentials, I forced the guard to pull up the corridor surveillance and zoom in through the glass window of my mother's room. On the grainy security screen, I saw Giselle tilting a tablet toward my mother’s bed. Playing on the screen was a crystal-clear, high-definition sex tape of Giselle and Warren. A deafening ring filled my ears. My hands shaking uncontrollably, I hit Warren’s speed dial. The call connected. But it wasn't Warren’s voice that answered. It was Giselle. "Why?" I rasped, my throat raw and bleeding. "She was your mother for twenty-two years..." "My mother?" Giselle’s laugh was cold, sharp, and entirely unhinged. "The second you came crawling out of the gutter, all she ever cared about was you! Why should I give a damn about her?" She paused, her breath hissing through the speaker. "Sabrina, women like you are supposed to rot in the harbor mud. What right did you have to come back and take my life? My name? My inheritance?" In the background, the sound of running water stopped. "You think having Price blood makes you special?" Giselle mocked. "You spent your whole life clawing through the dirt, and yet you were stupid enough to trust a man with everything you owned. You're pathetic, Sabrina." The line went dead. The phone slipped from my numb fingers, clattering loudly against the floor. It felt as though someone had carved a cavernous hole into the center of my chest, letting the freezing winter wind whistle straight through my ribs. Moments later, the lead physician emerged from the ICU, pulling down his surgical mask with a heavy, exhausted breath. "We managed to regain a pulse," he said gently. "She’s stabilized for now, but she's in a medically induced coma. Her heart is dangerously weak." I slumped against the corridor wall, gasping for air like a drowning woman pulled from the surf. Giselle’s venomous words echoed through my skull on an endless loop. "You were stupid enough to trust a man with everything you owned." She was right. I had been an idiot. I had handed Warren the keys to my kingdom on a silver platter. Slowly, I pulled myself up from the floor, picked up my phone, and redialled Simon Burke. "Simon," I said, my voice ice-cold and steady. "That offer from five years ago? I want to double the stakes." It was time to take back everything that belonged to me. …… Fresh out of the shower, Warren slipped into the king-sized bed next to Giselle. For the first time in his life, when her soft, manicured hands reached out to touch his chest, a wave of profound unease washed over him. He pulled away. Without understanding why, all he could see in his mind was the blood soaking through Sabrina’s white linen pants. An irrational, clawing panic gripped his throat—he needed to see me. Right now. He ignored Giselle’s protests, threw on a coat, and drove straight back to our brownstone in Back Bay. The house was dark. Empty. The sheer absence of my presence sent a cold spike of dread through his ribs. Just then, his executive assistant, Peter, hurried into the foyer, holding a tablet. Before Warren could demand where I was, Peter handed him the screen. "Mr. Brand... you need to see this."