Chapter 3

My shrill scream echoed through the room. With a sharp crack, my vision went black, and I nearly lost consciousness.

“Please let me go. Tomorrow—no, I’ll leave Latia right now. I’ll disappear forever from Sam’s sight!”

My voice was barely audible. The pain made my entire body spasm, and despair completely overwhelmed me.

Isla let out a soft snort.

“Only the dead can truly disappear. Continue!”

The second finger was snapped.

My whole body convulsed, cold sweat instantly soaking my clothes.

Then the third, and the fourth.

The searing pain surged like waves, almost swallowing my consciousness.

Suddenly, a sharp ringtone rang out. Isla’s expression changed, and she hurriedly answered the call.

“Sam, don’t worry. The bodyguards are professionals at interrogation. There’s a doctor present too. Nothing will go wrong.”

Her voice was gentle, but her smile was vicious.

“Hazel seems convinced you won’t hurt her. She even threatened me, asking me to let her go.”

As she spoke, she pressed the speakerphone button.

Sam’s furious voice came through the phone. “Hazel, let Isla give you the punishment you deserve!”

They were the exact words as in my previous life, and it made my mind go blank.

So, even after being reborn, I still couldn’t escape dying at their hands.

And this time, it was even more humiliating.

With all ten fingers forcibly broken, I didn’t even have the strength to scream anymore.

I lay limp on the ground like a dying fish.

My will at that moment was completely broken, as if ten fingers were connected to the heart.

Isla only glanced down at me, sneering.

“Dying already? Don’t worry. I won’t let you die so easily.”

She turned to the bodyguards and said, “Call the doctor. Reattach her fingers!”

The doctor and nurses entered trembling. They put an oxygen mask on me to maintain my faint breathing, treated the wounds, and reset and fixed my broken fingers.

I lay on the cold hospital bed like a shattered doll, my consciousness drifting.

Isla led Ethan to my bedside.

Ethan stared at me silently while Isla leaned close to his ear and spoke softly, her voice carrying a poisonous gentleness.

“Your mom betrayed your dad. You have a traitor mother. People will laugh at you. Are you afraid?”

After a moment of silence, Ethan softly answered, “I’m afraid. I don’t want to be laughed at!”

My breathing quickened. My eyelids trembled as I struggled to open them.

Satisfied with his answer, Isla laughed quietly.

“Ethan, your mom is in a lot of pain right now. Do you want to help her feel better?

“Go take off that tube. Then she won’t be in pain anymore, and no one will laugh at you.”

My eyes snapped open. Through the haze, I saw Ethan’s innocent face.

He looked at Isla, then at me, and actually reached out and pulled out the tube.

“Mom, don’t do bad things anymore,” he muttered. “I don’t want a mom like you.”

His voice carried hatred born from being thoroughly poisoned.

My heart turned to ashes.

Even after being reborn, I still couldn’t escape a fate of death.

My own son was going to send me off with his hands!

And in such a humiliating, desperate way.

A piercing alarm rang out.

Isla hugged the frightened Ethan and walked toward the door, coldly instructing the bodyguards, “Take care of it.”

The bodyguards dragged me roughly out of the hospital and threw me into the cold mud outside.

Heavy rain poured down, smashing against my twisted body.

This was the most remote slum in Neopolis. Homeless people die on these streets every day.

I struggled to open my eyes. Rain hit my eyelids, twisting everything in my vision into a blur.

Facing death once again, my heart suddenly became calm.

Being reborn wasn’t to defy fate, but to let me experience once more, clearly and deeply, what it meant to have ten thousand arrows pierce the heart and be torn apart piece by piece.

This time, there probably wouldn’t be another rebirth…