Reborn to Love Mr. Right – Episode 17
Arianna read Derek’s message twice before handing the phone to Hayden. The words erased their last doubt: Derek remembered the future. He knew about the trust, the password, and the life that had ended in blood beneath ballroom lights. Unlike Arianna, he had returned without remorse.
Donald instructed security to locate him, but Derek’s phone had already gone dark. Jeff claimed he had not seen his son since the gala and demanded a lawyer before answering further questions. His fear seemed genuine, though Arianna no longer trusted fear as proof of innocence.
Hayden forwarded the message to a digital investigator and asked Arianna not to respond. Derek wanted confirmation that she remembered, and silence would force him to reveal more. “He spent one lifetime studying how to provoke you,” Hayden said. “This time, he doesn’t get to choose the conversation.”
Arianna understood the strategy, but remaining still felt unbearable. Derek had murdered her, stolen her father’s company, and now carried knowledge of events that had not happened. Every advantage she gained through rebirth belonged to him as well. Worse, he knew which losses had once made her reckless and could reproduce them in a different order.
Before dawn, surveillance outside the repair shop detected movement. A hooded figure entered through a rear window and remained inside for eleven minutes. Hayden’s team followed when he emerged, but he abandoned a stolen motorcycle beneath an overpass and disappeared into a drainage tunnel.
Inside the shop, investigators found a filing cabinet forced open and a computer drive missing. The intruder had ignored cash, tools, and customer records. He wanted a single file stored under the name North Road Fleet Services—the shell company connected to Arianna’s fatal car.
One page had fallen behind the cabinet. It listed vehicle identification numbers, false inspection reports, and payments authorized with Jeff’s employee code. Donald stared at the signature as if it belonged to a stranger. Jeff had managed Taylor vehicles for years and could have altered them without drawing suspicion. The betrayal reached deeper than a chauffeur favoring his son; it touched every journey Donald had trusted him to make safe.
When confronted, Jeff insisted Derek sometimes used his office login. He admitted accepting money from the repair shop, but called it a referral bonus rather than payment for sabotage. Arianna remembered how eagerly he had defended his son after abandoning her at school. Their excuses always changed, while their loyalty to greed remained constant.
Donald suspended Jeff permanently and barred him from all Taylor property. The chauffeur reacted with wounded outrage, claiming decades of service should outweigh one questionable document. “Service without trust is access,” Donald replied. “And I gave you far too much of it.”
At school that morning, Derek’s absence created more rumors. Some students believed he had fled after being exposed; others claimed the Taylors had kidnapped him to silence the truth. Ivy moved through the halls alone, her borrowed popularity thinning with every whisper.
She cornered Arianna outside the chemistry lab and demanded to know where Derek was. Her makeup could not hide a sleepless night. “He sent me one message after the party,” Ivy said. “He told me never to call him again, like everything was my fault.”
Arianna searched her expression for evidence of future memory. Ivy still seemed confused by Derek’s sudden change, which suggested his awakening had not included her. “What exactly did he say?” Arianna asked.
Ivy hesitated, then displayed the message. Derek had written that she was useful once but had ruined him in the end. In Arianna’s first life, Ivy had stood beside Derek at the height of his victory. Something afterward must have fractured their alliance.
“He said you ruined him in the end,” Arianna observed. Ivy snatched back the phone and denied knowing what the sentence meant. Her panic suggested she feared Derek, but fear did not make her safe.
Emmy arrived before the argument escalated and reported that the principal wanted Arianna in the auditorium. A school-wide assembly had been scheduled without notice. When they entered, students were already facing a giant screen displaying the Taylor Foundation logo.
The principal appeared bewildered. He had received instructions from an email address that perfectly imitated Donald’s office, complete with authorization codes not issued until years later. Before anyone could dismiss the students, the lights went out.
Derek’s face appeared on the screen in a prerecorded video. He looked calmer than he had at the gala, almost older. “Arianna wants you to believe I stole from her,” he said. “What she won’t tell you is that she has been manipulating everyone with knowledge she should not possess.”
Images followed: Arianna ordering the car back before it returned, changing the gala contract before Derek announced his plans, and identifying the repair shop before police connected it to anything. Each fact was framed as proof that she had orchestrated the conflicts to destroy him.
Students turned toward Arianna. She could feel suspicion taking shape, because Derek had built his attack around a truth no ordinary explanation could survive. Then the final image appeared—a close-up of the future photograph, cropped to show Arianna standing from her wheelchair behind Hayden’s shoulder.
The image had been altered, but its message was devastating. Derek’s voice filled the dark auditorium: “Ask your precious heiress why she has pictures of her own death—and what she plans to do to everyone who gets in her way.”
