Chapter 2

At that moment, I hadn't cried because I was hungry.

I'd cried because Whitney had suffered multiple blows from a cane after the director found out she'd stolen the pies. She'd clutched them to her chest, protecting them with everything she had.

By the time she handed them to me, her entire body was covered in bruises. Bloody scratches marked her thin face, but her eyes were bright as she smiled and urged me to eat.

"I don't know what to do with you. You'd better make a ton of money and pay me back one day, you little brat," she'd joked carelessly.

I lowered my head even more, but my tears wouldn't stop streaming down my face. It was the first time anyone had ever been so good to me, and I was moved.

So, I lent her all my extraordinary luck. After that, she was never caught stealing again. Everything started going smoothly for her, so much so that even the orphanage director began treating her well.

I didn't have to go hungry anymore. Whenever Whitney got something, she would always think of me first.

A sharp pain twisted in my stomach, yanking me back to reality. Someone threw me into the back of the van, and Whitney's figure disappeared from my sight.

When I came to, I found myself by a cold, windy river on the outskirts of town. My hands and feet were tightly bound with rope.

A sudden thought struck me, and my whole body trembled. A numb, electric jolt shot down my back as though someone had jammed a live wire straight into me.

"Let me go… Please…" I begged weakly as the cold, damp air from the river hit me, fear squeezing my chest tight. I was terrified of water, and Whitney knew that.

"Throw him in!" she said coldly, not a hint of hesitation in her voice.

The icy water rushed into my mouth and nose, and despair swallowed me whole. I kept trying to scream for help as darkness engulfed me.

Somewhere above the river's surface, I faintly heard Whitney's voice. "You deserve this, Gabriel Johnson. If it weren't for you, Simon wouldn't have died."

I couldn't hear anything after that. My consciousness was slipping away. Still, I knew one thing clearly—I was the one who'd tried to save Simon, while she'd caused his death. So why was I the one being tortured?

…

"Hey, dummy, I'm talking to you. You deaf or what?" A sharp, cocky female voice rang out.

My mind exploded with a loud boom, the terror of drowning still clinging to me. When I opened my eyes, I saw Whitney's face.

For a moment, I thought I was dead. A surge of pure hatred rushed through me, and I shoved her away before I even realized what I was doing.

At the side, Simon reacted quickly and caught Whitney in time. She stared at me in shock, struggling to process what had just happened.

The next second, Simon stormed over and pushed me to the ground.

He snapped, "What is wrong with you? Why did you push her?"

He wrapped an arm around her as she put on a pitiful, teary-eyed look. "Whitney, I told you your little brother's sick in the head, but you never believe me…"

Perhaps he still wasn't satisfied, for he glared at me with pure anger and raised his foot to kick me. I dodged, and he roared, "How dare you dodge?"

Simon's incessant screams rang out a few seconds later. Like a madman, I'd lunged at him and started swinging punches. Both of us ended up with bruises all over our faces, swollen and beaten black and blue.

"It's you!" I screamed in my head. "You're the one who made my life a living hell!"

By the time Whitney finally snapped out of it and reacted, I'd already knocked Simon to the ground. She furiously shoved me away and carefully helped him up. I noticed her hands were trembling.

I frowned, only then feeling the sharp, stinging pain on my face. That was when it finally hit me—I'd been reborn and gone back to the time when Simon and Whitney were secretly flirting behind everyone's backs.

Looking at the two of them, I couldn't help but smile. My nails dug so hard into my palms that the skin split and blood smeared across my hands, but I didn't feel a thing.

Simon was the pampered son of a wealthy family, while I was just the Johnson family's adopted son. And yet I'd just beaten him up in front of a crowd.