

On the first day of my rebirth, I turn straight into the bedroom of Don Raffaele Caruso and begin undoing my clothes. In my previous life, I was in a marriage of convenience with his son, Matteo Caruso, but there was no love between us. We were notorious in Liberty City's mafia circle. Matteo believed I was the reason he lost his first love. He thought I had deliberately gone into his room the night he was drugged with an aphrodisiac, trapping him in a marriage. Hence, for eight years after our wedding, he stayed out drunk every night and refused to come home. Even when I went into obstructed labor and was on the brink of death, he never asked about me even once. Then, the hurricane came. A storm surge swallowed Liberty City. The harbor collapsed under the waves, and there was only one seat left on the evacuation boat. Everyone thought Matteo would keep it for himself. Instead, he shoved me hard onto the boat. "Go! I'm giving you my chance to live, Chiara. If there's a next life, don't come saving me again. I just want to be with Lucia." The next second, his body was dragged into the pitch-black sea. I survived, only to be hacked to death by a rival family afterward. What Matteo never knew was that he wasn't the only one who was drugged that night. His father was too. This time around, I step into the room just as the effects of the aphrodisiac take hold. Raffaele is currently forcing himself to endure it, his control stretched to the limit. I walk over and say softly, "Let me be your antidote, Don Caruso."

Zoey Devro transmigrates into a novel she already knows the ending of, which is bad news, because she lands as the sidekick to the villainess. In this story, the villainess Elaine Luke ruins everything and takes everyone around her down with her, sidekick included. Zoey has absolutely no interest in that ending. Armed with a system that tasks her with correcting the villainess' worst impulses, she attaches herself firmly to her difficult employer and starts quietly steering the ship. Scheming men get exposed, bad decisions get intercepted, and the villainess slowly becomes someone worth following. Zoey, meanwhile, is building her own empire on the side. She came as a footnote. She is leaving as the whole story.