The night before the scores were released, Lily Bennett lifted her champagne glass, smiled at the room full of people who had spent the evening pretending I didn’t belong there, and told me I should get used to cleaning floors.

Chapter 1

“Claire’s supposed to be brilliant,” she said, loud enough for every executive, family friend, and social climber in my parents’ penthouse to hear. “So tomorrow, when our scores come out, why don’t we settle this once and for all?”

A few people laughed. Others looked uncomfortable, but nobody told her to stop.

Lily had lived as Richard and Diane Bennett’s daughter for eighteen years. I had been living under their roof for less than three months.

The Bennetts had found me in a small town in western Pennsylvania after supposedly searching for their missing biological daughter for years. I had grown up with Frank Miller, an elderly widower who owned a bait shop, repaired fishing reels, and taught me that poor people could keep their dignity even when rich people mistook money for character.

Then one afternoon two black SUVs stopped outside his store.

DNA testing followed. Lawyers followed. Newspapers followed.

Suddenly I was Claire Bennett, biological daughter of one of Manhattan’s wealthiest families.

Lily, the girl raised in my place after the Bennetts were told I had died as a baby, was expected to welcome me.

She did.

Too warmly.

She brought coffee while I studied. She sat beside me during practice tests. She touched my notebooks constantly, borrowing them, tracing formulas with her manicured finger, laughing that perhaps some of my “country genius” would rub off on her.

In another lifetime, I had believed her.

That life had ended badly.

I remembered it as clearly as I remembered the scar behind my left ear.

I had taken the same entrance examination. Lily had challenged me publicly after the scores came out, and somehow the grades I had earned appeared under her name while mine collapsed into humiliation. She called me a fraud in front of reporters. My parents sided with her. Universities withdrew interest. Creditors appeared with debts created through wagers Lily had encouraged me to make.

Eventually Richard Bennett ordered security to remove me from the family home.

Months later, sick, broke, and alone in a basement apartment, I understood too late what Lily had whispered after destroying me.

“You study. I collect.”

Then I died.

And woke again three months before the exam.

This time I remembered everything.

So when Lily smiled at me across the penthouse and said, “Let’s make tomorrow interesting,” I already knew what she wanted.

She put down her glass.

“Whoever scores lower leaves the Bennett family.”

The room quieted.

Richard looked irritated. Diane looked calculating.

“Lily,” Richard warned.

“What?” she asked innocently. “Everyone keeps wondering which daughter should inherit the company someday. Claire is the biological daughter. I’m the daughter you raised. Ability should settle it.”

Then she looked directly at me.

“When you lose, you give up the Bennett name. You stop pretending you’re qualified to inherit anything. And if you need work afterward, maybe I’ll find you a position with the cleaning crew.”

A few people laughed again.

I studied her carefully.

That was when she leaned close.

No one else heard what she whispered.

“You can’t beat me.”

I said nothing.

Her smile widened.

“The harder you study, the better I score.”

My pulse stayed steady.

There it was.

The secret she had revealed only after ruining me in my previous life.

Whatever strange force had attached itself to Lily allowed her to siphon academic performance from another person. Mine, specifically. For weeks I had felt it happening again—that faint mental fog whenever she hovered around me, the strange exhaustion after practice exams, the way she never seemed to study and yet became more confident every day.

But this time, I had prepared for it.

I stood and faced the room.

“Fine.”

Richard frowned. “Claire.”

“No,” I said. “If Lily wants a fair contest, she can have one.”

Lily’s eyes sparkled.

I continued. “But we put everything in writing.”

Her expression changed for half a second.

Then pride took over.

“Afraid I’ll back out?”

“I’m afraid you’ll lose.”

The room erupted with nervous laughter.

Lily grabbed a pen.

“Tomorrow,” she said, “you’re going to regret coming to New York.”

I slid the agreement toward her.

“No, Lily.”

I smiled for the first time all evening.

“Tomorrow, you’re going to find out what you’ve actually been stealing.”