The Mansion I Burned to Rewrite My Fate

I started a livestream in the middle of the street and set my million-dollar mansion on fire in front of everyone watching. Everyone called me crazy. “A house worth over a million dollars, and she just burns it down? There has to be something seriously wrong with her!” I stood in the street, watching the flames roar. Instead of feeling heartbroken, I felt an indescribable sense of relief. In my previous life, I bought this mansion as an engagement gift for my fiancé. That house ended up destroying everything I had. My fiancé had an affair with my best friend. After spending the night drinking with her, they drove recklessly and hit a family on the road. Then they fled the scene, abandoned the getaway car in the mansion’s garage, and spent the rest of the night together inside the house. The next morning, they erased every trace of their crimes and made me the perfect scapegoat. With all the evidence pointing to me, I had no way to defend myself. I was sent to prison. My reputation was ruined overnight. My company went bankrupt. My parents fell ill. In the end, debt collectors cornered me at home and beat me to death. When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the night before they committed their crimes. This time, I wouldn’t give them any chance to fabricate evidence against me. The comments on the livestream flew across the screen. I carried the gasoline I had taken from the garage and splashed it without hesitation over the front door, the couch, and the curtains. “Is she insane? Is she really livestreaming herself burning down a house?” “That house has to be worth at least fifteen million dollars! And she’s just setting it on fire?” “I don’t think she’ll actually burn it. She’s probably putting on a show for followers.” “I know this woman. Isn’t she the billionaire heiress who got engaged a while ago?” I said nothing. I dropped the gas can and calmly pulled a lighter from my pocket. While the viewers were still arguing over whether I would really set the house on fire, the flames exploded to life with a thunderous roar. The fire shot into the sky and lit up the entire street. Everyone went silent. “No way. She’s actually doing it? Is she out of her mind?” “That’s over a million dollars!” “Is this how rich people burn money? That’s terrifying.” I stood in the middle of the street and watched the mansion burn. I didn’t feel even the slightest bit of regret. Compared to being betrayed and framed by my fiancé and my best friend in my previous life—then being made to take the blame while my entire family was destroyed—this house wasn’t worth mourning. I held up my phone and livestreamed the fire from every angle. Since they had used this house to create perfect evidence against me, I would burn the house myself and create the perfect alibi. I looked into the camera. “The house is burning, and the garage next to it is burning too. Everyone, please be my witness. I, Harper Sinclair, am standing right here committing arson. I haven’t gone anywhere.” I took my ID out of my pocket and held it up to the camera. I wasn’t just livestreaming my arson. I was doing it under my real name. As thousands of viewers cursed and questioned me, the flames grew higher and higher. Sirens tore through the night. Police officers and firefighters rushed toward me. I curled my lips into a smile and calmly held out my hands. “I started the fire. I’m mentally unstable. Arrest me immediately, or I’ll keep setting fires and burn down the entire street!” The moment the officers heard that I wanted to burn down the whole street, their expressions darkened. Cold handcuffs snapped around my wrists. Inside the interrogation room, the officers looked grim. “Harper Sinclair, this house belongs to you?” “Yes.” “Why did you burn it down?” I raised my voice and deliberately emphasized every word. “Because I’m mentally unstable. I wanted to start a fire. If you don’t arrest me tonight, I’ll burn down more buildings. I might even burn down this police station.” My reckless attitude angered the officers. One of them slammed his hand against the table several times. “Do you understand that this is a crime? You could go to prison!” The moment he mentioned prison, memories of my previous life came rushing back. By now, my fiancé and my best friend should have been celebrating at a bar, drinking themselves senseless over the mansion I had given them, right? I had to stay at the station tonight and create an airtight alibi. I deliberately acted indifferent and provoked them. “So what if I go to prison? How many years could I get for starting one fire? My parents have money. Do you really think they can’t handle something like this?” “You’re awfully confident! Let me tell you something. In front of the law, money means nothing!” My parents arrived soon after. They insisted on bailing me out immediately. But I refused with everything I had and started acting hysterical right there in the station. “I’m not leaving! The moment I get out, I’m going to find more gasoline! I’ll burn down the whole street! I’ll burn all of you!” My mother burst into tears. “Harper, what’s wrong with you? What are you saying?” Seeing her crying in panic broke my heart. But I didn’t have time to explain. No matter what, I refused to leave. I threw myself onto the floor, screamed, and shouted threats about burning down the neighborhood. The officers eventually lost patience. They handcuffed me again and locked me in a small holding room to calm down. I looked at the room’s twenty-four-hour surveillance camera and slowly smiled. I stopped crying and quietly sat down. This time, with millions of viewers and the detention center’s surveillance footage as witnesses, I refused to believe I could still be accused of killing someone in a hit-and-run.“I promise, my daughter isn’t mentally ill. This is all just a misunderstanding.” My mother kept explaining herself to the officers. But every time they remembered my abnormal behavior the night before, they shook their heads. “Can you guarantee that she won’t do anything dangerous if we let her out?” “She won’t. Absolutely not!” My mother pulled out my medical examination report, her eyes red from crying. “This is my daughter’s recent medical report. She’s perfectly healthy. She would never do anything so horrible. She must have suffered some kind of shock and lost control in the moment.” “And this is the deed to the property. The house she burned belonged to us.” “Please, Officer. Let Harper go. You’ve kept her here all night. She must have calmed down by now.” “We’re willing to pay whatever fine you impose.” Watching my parents run around desperately trying to help me, I couldn’t stop the tears from falling. In my previous life, when I was framed for killing someone in a hit-and-run, they had done everything in their power to clear my name. But every fingerprint at the crime scene belonged to me. I had no alibi. And with my fiancé and best friend giving false testimony against me, I was convicted of murder. My family was destroyed overnight. My parents were even beaten to death. Yet they had never once blamed or doubted me. When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the night they committed their crimes. I didn’t have time to explain anything to my family, so I had set the fire first. Silent tears streamed down my face. I apologized to my parents in my heart. Once everything was over, I would explain it all to them. My parents did everything they could to prove that the house belonged to me and that I had only set the fire in a moment of emotional instability. Since no one had been injured, the police ultimately gave me a warning. Once I paid the fine, I was free to leave. I looked up at the time. I had finally survived the night. The house was gone, and I had an alibi. This time, I should be safe, right? On the drive home, I looked at the trending headlines online. “Billionaire Heiress Livestreams Herself Burning Down Her Million-Dollar Engagement Mansion—A Collapse of Morality or Humanity?” My mother snatched the phone out of my hand and stared at me anxiously. “Harper, what happened? Why would you set fire to the house? That was the engagement gift you gave Adrian!” The moment I heard Adrian’s name, my chest tightened. “Mom, I’m calling off the engagement.” “What?” The car suddenly screeched to a stop. Everyone lurched forward from the force, their heads slamming into the backs of the seats. I covered my aching forehead and was about to ask what had happened when two familiar figures rushed toward us. “Harper! You’ve gotten yourself into serious trouble!” Adrian yanked open the car door and dragged me out. Standing beside him was my best friend of more than a decade, Bianca Hart. “Do you know that the person you hit last night died after doctors failed to save them?” My mother looked as if she had been struck by lightning. She stared at me in disbelief. “Harper, you hit someone? Is that why you lost control last night?” I shook my head and was about to explain, but Adrian had already taken out his phone. “Hello, is this the police? I’d like to report that I’ve found the suspect in last night’s fatal crash on Riverside Avenue!” “Yes, she’s right here with me.” He ended the call and glared at me viciously. “Harper, even though I’m your fiancé, you have to pay for what you did!” I stared at him in shock and kept shaking my head. “That’s impossible. I didn’t drive anywhere last night. How could I have hit anyone? Do you have evidence?” Bianca let out a cold laugh. “Harper, didn’t you burn the evidence?”I was taken to the police station again. With a grim expression, an officer placed several horrific accident photos on the table. “Harper! You drove drunk last night, hit a black sedan carrying a family of three, and fled the scene. None of them survived!” “The medical examiner has already examined the bodies. Other than the youngest child, the two adults might have survived if you had called for help and gotten them to a hospital. Instead, they lay there bleeding until they died!” Everyone erupted in shock. My mother nearly fainted when she heard that. She looked at me through her tears and kept asking what had happened. Adrian stepped forward and pulled her away from me. “Ma’am, don’t you understand? Harper spent the night drinking and sleeping around with some random man at a bar. She got drunk, didn’t call a rideshare, hit someone, and ran!” “I warned her not to go to places like that, but she never listened. And now look what happened!” In an instant, he painted me as promiscuous, reckless, and completely heartless. Everyone else began accusing me of being a murderer. “That was an entire family! How could you just leave them there and run?” “Do rich people really have no compassion? Do you think other people’s lives don’t matter just because you have money?” “I didn’t.” I tried to defend myself, but tears kept spilling down my face. “If you hadn’t fled the scene, those two adults wouldn’t have died!” I shook my head desperately, praying someone would believe me. “I really didn’t do it! I never went to a bar, and I never drove anywhere. You keep saying I did it, but where’s the evidence? Where is it?” Bianca jumped in with the same answer as before. “You burned the evidence!” Everyone suddenly looked at me as if they had figured everything out. “No wonder she livestreamed herself acting crazy and burned down her million-dollar mansion. She was destroying the evidence!” “She’ll do anything to escape justice!” “What a monster! She should pay for three lives with her own!” “What are the police waiting for? Two adults are dead. Arrest her and sentence her to death!” Every accusation and insult sounded painfully familiar. Everything had happened exactly this way in my previous life. My heart began to pound in panic. Adrian looked at me with disgust. “Harper, that house was supposed to be the home you gave me for our marriage. You burned it down just to cover up your crime!” “If that’s how things are, then I don’t see any reason for us to stay engaged.” “Adrian! You’re lying! You were the one who hit them!” I screamed at him. Two officers pinned my shoulders down and kept me from moving. “Harper, I’m going to ask you one more time. Why did you really burn down the house?” “You kept insisting last night that you were mentally ill, but this morning your mother said you had suffered an emotional breakdown. Which story is the truth?” I frowned and gave them a completely different answer. “I burned down the house to prove that I’m innocent.” The male officer gave me a strange look. Then they brought out an evidence bag containing a lipstick and a bracelet. “Harper, these were found at the accident scene. The lipstick and bracelet both belong to you, and we found your DNA on them. They must have been left behind during the collision.” Yes. These pieces of evidence were exactly the same as in my previous life. After that, they would find the getaway car in my garage, with only my fingerprints on it. Then there would be bloodstained clothing and a dashcam destroyed inside the mansion. Every piece of evidence would point to me. But now the house and garage had both burned down. Could things really still follow the same path? I forced myself to calm down and began thinking through every possibility. I looked up and asked, “Did the surveillance cameras around the accident capture me?” “You really won’t stop until you see yourself in a coffin.” The male officer impatiently pulled up the surveillance footage. “The window tint kept us from seeing the driver’s face, but the red sports car was confirmed to be registered to you.” “Even though you burned the vehicle, we’ll do everything we can—” I stared at the timestamp on the screen and suddenly shouted, “Stop!” The crucial evidence that could prove my innocence had appeared. At last, I smiled. I knew I had a chance to turn everything around.