"Hello, police? I've got a guy here who was arrested for soliciting at a karaoke bar. His company fired him, but he refuses to leave and he's threatening me. Could you send someone over right away?"

The moment those words left his mouth, most of the women at the surrounding desks started pointing and whispering, their faces twisted with disgust.

I could hear every word of their snide remarks.

"I can't believe Laurence hasn't even been married three years and he's already pulling this kind of thing. What a scumbag."

"Right? I heard his wife is gorgeous, and he still goes out and cheats. Absolutely pathetic."

"If I were his wife, I'd file for divorce on the spot."

Faced with the flood of gossip, I just shrugged and let it roll off me. There was nothing I could do. Public opinion was a wildfire, and I wasn't some silver-tongued lawyer who could argue down a mob. Besides, I hadn't done anything wrong. I had nothing to be afraid of.

Maurice hung up the phone and turned to me with a cold snort. "Just wait till the cops get here. You'll regret it."

"Make up whatever stories you want about me," I said evenly. "I don't care."

Before long, two officers arrived. One of them was Toby Lawrence, the same officer who'd handled my detention.

Toby looked at me, confusion written all over his face. "Didn't you just get out of holding? You paid the car owner's damages and everything. What kind of trouble did you get into now?"

I picked up the disciplinary citation from the desk and handed it to him. He took it, read it through, and his brow furrowed deeper with every line.

Maurice jumped in from the side, fanning the flames. "Officer, you see it, right? This guy got busted soliciting at a karaoke bar."

Toby shook his head. "No, he didn't."

Two words. That was all it took to freeze Maurice in his tracks.

"Officer, are you saying this document is fake?"

"It's right there in black and white. It says he was caught red-handed!"

Toby's expression was dead serious. "The document is real, but the incident never happened. That day, Laurence Chavez got into a dispute with the owner of a Maybach and was detained for seven days. I handled the case personally. There's no way he could have been at a karaoke bar. Something doesn't add up."

"And the bigger issue is that someone accessed official department files and sent them to your company. That's a serious violation."

The words hit Maurice like a brick wall. He couldn't get a single syllable out.

Toby fixed him with a hard stare. "I have a feeling you're not exactly uninvolved in this."

I jumped in immediately. "That's right. It has to be connected to Manager Lambert. He was the first one to receive this citation. If there are questions, he's the one to ask."

"No, I just signed for a courier delivery, that's all—" Maurice scrambled to explain.

But before he could finish, Toby pulled out a pair of handcuffs and clamped them on his wrists. His tone left zero room for argument. "You're coming to the station for questioning. If everything checks out, I'll let you go."

I watched Toby lead Maurice away, but instead of relief, a knot of unease tightened in my gut.

Meanwhile, the women at their desks were already backpedaling as fast as their mouths could move.

"See, I told you! Laurence always seemed like a stand-up guy. No way he'd do something like that."

"Exactly, exactly. It was obviously Manager Lambert making things up. He almost ruined an innocent man's reputation."

I turned and looked at those fair-weather coworkers. I didn't bother hiding my contempt. "You all flip faster than a coin in a hurricane."

Every one of them turned away, suddenly unable to meet my eyes.

I wasn't in the mood to work anymore. I walked back to my desk, grabbed my bag, and left the office early.

I needed to get home and check on my wife. That knot of unease came from my previous life. In my last life, this was exactly when she'd taken our child and disappeared. I hadn't done anything wrong this time around, but was history about to repeat itself? I suspected that even after my rebirth, she would still misunderstand me.

I drove home, pushed open the front door, and found the place gutted. Aside from two cabinets left standing against the wall, everything was gone. The TV, anything of value—all of it, vanished.

I opened the cabinets. The savings account booklet I'd hidden inside, the one with half a million dollars in it, was gone too.

I stood there, drew a long breath, and thought to myself: Just as I expected.

I started calling my wife. Ten calls before she finally picked up.

Her tone was ice-cold. "What do you want?"

I swallowed my anger and kept my voice level. "Where's everything in the house?"

"Cleared out," she snapped. "What about it?" She said it like I was the one who'd done something wrong.

I asked her why.

She exploded on the other end of the line. "You have the nerve to ask me why? You went out looking for hookers and got arrested, and you're standing there asking me why?"

"I'm telling you right now, Laurence—you're walking away with nothing. Expect the divorce papers from my lawyer."

I let out a cold laugh.

"You think this is funny?" she screamed. "We haven't even been married three years and you're already chasing other women. The kid stays with me. I'm changing the last name to mine."

"Laurence Chavez, you are going to pay for what you did!"

My voice was calm. "I didn't do any of that. I don't know who's pulling the strings behind this, but it doesn't matter. You'll come back to me eventually."

I hung up before she could respond, then immediately dialed 911.

"Hello, 911? This is unit 201, Building 3, Prescott Heights. My home's been completely cleared out. I believe it's a burglary."

Less than fifteen minutes after I hung up, a patrol car pulled into the complex. The officer who stepped out was the last person I expected to see again so soon—Toby Lawrence.

He climbed the stairs, looked up, and froze when he saw me standing in the doorway. "You again?"

I spread my hands, the picture of innocence, and gestured at the empty apartment behind me. "Chief Lawrence, I don't know what happened. I came home and everything was gone."

Toby walked inside, did a slow circuit of the stripped-bare rooms, then came back and asked me to walk him through the whole story.

I told him everything I knew, start to finish, leaving nothing out.

He frowned. Something didn't add up. The station had never contacted my family, never told anyone I'd been picked up on solicitation charges. So how did my wife know? And when he factored in the bogus citation from my workplace earlier that day, the whole thing started to smell like something far more deliberate.

He took a team down to the property management office, pulled the security footage, then told me to ride back to the station with him.

As the patrol car pulled out of the complex, a black sedan parked along the curb suddenly whipped into a U-turn and sped off in the opposite direction.

I caught the plate in a single glance. B992.

The same car that had run me down and killed me in my previous life.

Every muscle in my body locked up. I started trembling before I could stop myself.

Toby, sitting beside me, noticed immediately. "What's wrong? Why are you shaking?"

I pointed at the retreating black sedan. "That car. Plate number B992. I think it's been following me."

Toby's brow creased. He turned to the officer beside him. "Alden Salazar, run that plate when we get back. Anything comes up, I want to know right away."

At the station, Toby called my wife and my father-in-law, told them to come in.

About two hours later, they showed up—and they weren't alone. Two men I'd never seen before walked in with them. The moment they laid eyes on me, all four of them rushed me without a word. Fists. Kicks. No questions asked.

My wife was shrieking over the chaos. "You cheating piece of garbage! You go behind my back and then have the audacity to call the cops on me?"

"You're absolute trash!"

I took a punch and two kicks before Chief Lawrence stepped in. Without him, they wouldn't have stopped.

"This is a police station, not your personal playground!" Lawrence barked. "Keep this up and I'll have every single one of you arrested!"

The room went still. No one dared move.

But Olympia wasn't done. She grabbed my collar and jabbed a finger toward the officers. "He solicited a prostitute! That's a fact!"

Lawrence shot her a hard look. "Who says he did? You have proof?"

She whipped out her phone and pulled up a text message, supposedly from the station. "See for yourself. It says right here: Laurence Chavez, fined five thousand dollars for soliciting. Family members are to pay the fine immediately."

Lawrence took the phone. His expression darkened.