The Scapegoat's Return

The Scapegoat's Return

Sibeal Sallese

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Halloween night in the mortal world. The Rift, our fleeting portal between the Shadowlands and their realm, was closing fast. Spirits around me scrambled, desperate to return. But not Chloe. She stood at its edge, Ectoplasmic Flames – her rare, ghostly green power – roaring from her palms, forcing it open. She was buying time. For him. Liam. My gut twisted. Not with worry, but with a chilling sense of déjà vu. This was precisely how it all unfurled in my previous life, my destiny intertwined with her misguided devotion to him. A devotion that led directly to my destruction. I remembered every horrifying detail. Chloe, then my girlfriend, screaming accusations, blaming me for Liam's end, as she led the Enforcers straight to me. Right when I was on the brink of ascending to Arch-Spirit. The Enforcers didn't care for truth; they simply tore me apart. To be annihilated, merely a scapegoat for her idolized fool. The betrayal, the agony, burned as fresh as ever. Why did she always choose him? Why did I have to suffer for their toxic dance, not once, but twice? But now, I was back. Reborn to this exact crossroads, this critical choice. To everyone else, I was just a low-ranking Patroller. Good. Let them underestimate me. Because I understood one thing perfectly: I had a new plan. A painful, meticulous plan. This time, they would both pay.

Introduction

Halloween night in the mortal world. The Rift, our fleeting portal between the Shadowlands and their realm, was closing fast. Spirits around me scrambled, desperate to return. But not Chloe. She stood at its edge, Ectoplasmic Flames – her rare, ghostly green power – roaring from her palms, forcing it open. She was buying time. For him. Liam.

My gut twisted. Not with worry, but with a chilling sense of déjà vu. This was precisely how it all unfurled in my previous life, my destiny intertwined with her misguided devotion to him. A devotion that led directly to my destruction.

I remembered every horrifying detail. Chloe, then my girlfriend, screaming accusations, blaming me for Liam's end, as she led the Enforcers straight to me. Right when I was on the brink of ascending to Arch-Spirit. The Enforcers didn't care for truth; they simply tore me apart.

To be annihilated, merely a scapegoat for her idolized fool. The betrayal, the agony, burned as fresh as ever. Why did she always choose him? Why did I have to suffer for their toxic dance, not once, but twice?

But now, I was back. Reborn to this exact crossroads, this critical choice. To everyone else, I was just a low-ranking Patroller. Good. Let them underestimate me. Because I understood one thing perfectly: I had a new plan. A painful, meticulous plan. This time, they would both pay.

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I woke up in a blindingly white hotel penthouse with a throbbing headache and the taste of betrayal in my mouth. The last thing I remembered was my stepsister, Cathie, handing me a flute of champagne at the charity gala with a smile that didn't reach her eyes. Now, a tall, dangerously handsome man walked out of the bathroom with a towel around his hips. On the nightstand sat a stack of hundred-dollar bills. My stepmother had finally done it—she drugged me and staged a scandal with a hired escort to destroy my reputation and my future. "Aisha! Is it true you spent the night with a gigolo?" The shouts of a dozen reporters echoed through the heavy oak door as camera flashes exploded through the peephole. My phone lit up with messages showing my bank accounts were already frozen. My father was invoking the 'morality clause' in my mother’s trust fund, and my fiancé had already released a statement dumping me to marry my stepsister instead. I was trapped, penniless, and being hunted by the press for a scandal I hadn't even participated in. My own family had sold me out for a payday, and the man standing in front of me was the only witness who could prove I was innocent—or finish me off for good. I didn't have time to cry. According to the fine print of the trust, I had thirty days to prove my "rehabilitation" through a legal marriage or I would lose everything. I tracked the man down to a coffee shop the next morning, watching him take a thick envelope of cash from a wealthy older woman. I sat across from him and slid a napkin with a $50,000 figure written on it. "I need a husband. Legal, paper-signed, and convincing." He looked at the number, then at me, a slow, crooked smile spreading across his face. I thought I was hiring a desperate gigolo to save my inheritance. I had no idea I was actually proposing to Dominic Fields, the reclusive billionaire shark who was currently planning a hostile takeover of my father’s entire empire.

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