Smiling While the Empire Bleeds
By @john1208
Tessana Morvay died with a bright, vacant smile, pretending she didn't know her husband Ilyas and his mistress were slowly lacing her daily tea with nightshade. Bedridden and helpless for years, she perished in agony. But when she wakes up five years in the past on the exact morning a strange, unmarked music box is delivered to her door, Tessana realizes she has the chance to rewrite her fate. Resuming her role as a cheerful, oblivious airhead, she secretly gathers a mountain of Ilyas’s embezzlement files. Knowing the corrupt police will bury the evidence, she cashes in a life debt with Kasimir Volya, the terrifying overlord of the Olynthean underworld. Forming an unstoppable, strictly platonic alliance, they systematically dismantle Ilyas’s life, ultimately reducing his mistress to scrubbing floors in the lobby of Tessana's new high-rise. But as Tessana and Kasimir dig deeper, a chilling twist emerges: Ilyas’s stolen funds and Kasimir’s lifelong hunt for his family's killers are the exact same conspiracy. Can this bubbly mastermind and her underworld shadow outplay a hidden syndicate before the poison finds her cup once again?
4
