Chapter 1Frozen Justice for My Abuser

He walked perfectly in my footprints just to avoid stepping in the deep snow, and then, inevitably, he slipped.

He blamed me. He claimed I had packed the snow down too hard, making it slick. He demanded fifty thousand dollars in damages.

It didn't stop there. He bled me dry. Through a relentless campaign of harassment, he cost me my job, drained my savings, and finally, in a fit of manufactured rage, shoved me into an open excavation trench at a construction site. I was knocked unconscious. I froze to death in the dark.

And then, I woke up.

I respawned at the exact moment before we walked out of the apartment building's lobby into the winter storm.

Without a second thought, I pivoted on my heel, marched back upstairs to my apartment, and slammed the door shut.

The old man was stunned. A few seconds later, he followed me up and started hammering his fists against the wood.

* * *

Bang! Bang! Bang!

My front door rattled violently in its frame, but I couldn't focus on the noise. I was hyperventilating, my back pressed against the cold wood. My heart thrashed against my ribs like a trapped bird.

The phantom agony of freezing to death—the slow, creeping numbness, the feeling of my blood turning to slush, the final, terrifying lethargy—still clung to my bones.

"Michael! Why did you turn back around?"

Old Man Pendleton’s voice was muffled through the door, grating and utterly entitled. "The snow is too deep out here. I’m not risking it. Come back out and blaze a trail for me."

I closed my eyes, wrapping my arms around myself.

"My grandson wants bacon for breakfast, so I need to get to the grocery store," he whined, the banging resuming. "You're young. You've got good knees. You really going to refuse to do a simple favor for an old man? Whatever happened to respecting your elders, huh?"

Arthur Pendleton. The neighborhood nightmare. He just kept rattling off excuses, trying to guilt me into stepping back out into the freezing cold.

Like hell I am.

In my previous life, I had obliged. He had stepped exactly where I stepped, slipped on the compacted ice, and then launched a lawsuit from hell, demanding fifty grand. When I refused to pay, he showed up at my corporate office every single day, screaming until HR finally let me go just to avoid the PR nightmare.

But losing my job hadn't been enough for him. He tracked down my parents in our quiet rural hometown upstate. He made them the laughingstock of the county, filing bogus police reports against my dad, who had been the town’s bookkeeper for thirty years. My dad was brought in for questioning. Even though he was completely cleared, the whispering and the stares from people they’d known their whole lives broke my parents. They sold their house at a loss and moved across the state, shadows of their former selves.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The pounding grew more aggressive.

I pushed away from the door, my mind snapping into sharp, crystalline focus. I cleared my throat.

"Arthur!" I shouted, making my voice crack. "I have Covid! The really bad strain! Cough, cough, cough!"

I ran to the kitchen. "Hold on, just give me a second to cough up this blood, and I'll open the door! Cough, cough!"

I grabbed a paper towel, squirted a generous dollop of ketchup onto it, and smeared a little at the corner of my mouth for good measure.

Arthur must not have heard me clearly because the relentless banging didn't stop.

I took a deep breath, yanked the deadbolt back, and threw the door open, launching into a violent, chest-heaving fit of coughing that sounded like I was hacking up pieces of my lungs.

"Cough, cough, cough! Arthur, I told you, I’m severely infected. I'm burning up. What do you need?"

As I spoke, I pulled the paper towel away from my mouth.

It was a mess of crimson red.

"Look, it's not that I don't want to help," I wheezed, leaning heavily against the doorframe. "I genuinely have a terrible respiratory infection..."

I shoved the ketchup-stained paper towel toward his face. "Smell it! That's the smell of fresh, highly contagious lung tissue!"

Arthur shrieked, executing a backward jump that was shockingly athletic for a man of his age.

"Get away from me! If you give me pneumonia, I’m suing you for medical bills!"

He pressed his back against the hallway wall, but then, I saw his cloudy, calculating eyes dart back to me. His greed was a living, breathing thing.

"Listen, Michael," he wheedled, pulling his coat tighter around his neck. "Can't you just push through it? Just walk me to the end of the block. I’m terrified of falling."

I stared at him. The sheer audacity was staggering.

"My grandson looks up to you," he continued, laying the guilt on thick. "You can't just abandon us over a little cold. Put on a double layer of N95 masks. I won't hold it against you!"

Then, the kicker.

"You're doing so well for yourself. I heard you talking on the phone—you just got a fifty-thousand-dollar year-end bonus! Surely a successful young man like you can afford to do one tiny favor?"