4

Elena

"Your mother-in-law," Roxy said softly, her eyes fixed on my glowing screen. "Why is she calling you so frantically?"

A dark, bitter smile touched my lips. I knew exactly why the old vulture was panicking. In my past life, she had barged into my bedroom at 2:30 p.m. to deliver the news of Adrian's "fatal accident." But because I had walked out of the house earlier today, she was forced to chase me down like a dog.

My phone buzzed continuously, lit up with her name.

"Why aren't you answering?" Roxy asked, leaning forward with concern.

I took a deep breath, steeling my nerves, and swiped to accept the call just before it cut off.

"Hello?"

"Where the hell are you?!" Her sharp, grating scream blasted through the speaker.

There she is. My beloved mother-in-law. The woman who screamed at me over the slightest mistake, treating me like dirt while secretly showering Vivian with warmth and adoration.

In my past life, I thought she was just naturally harsh. Now, I knew the truth: she reserved her kindness only for the woman she deemed worthy of her precious son.

"Is something wrong, Mother?" I asked sweetly, squeezing my free hand into a tight fist until my nails dug into my palm to suppress the urge to scream back.

"Get your ass back here right now! Your husband..." She suddenly broke into loud, theatrical wailing. "My poor, sweet boy... Adrian is dead!"

I leapt to my feet, letting out a sharp, dramatic gasp.

"What?!" I cried out, my voice cracking in fake horror. "What happened to Adrian? Mother, what are you saying?!"

"Just get home this instant and see for yourself!" she sobbed before ending the call.

Roxy jumped up beside me, her hands gripping my shoulders tightly. "Elena, what's wrong? What did she say?"

"A... Adrian..." I stammered, squeezing my eyes shut as tears squeezed past my lashes.

"What about him?" Roxy pressed, her voice laced with panic. "What happened to your husband?"

"That bastard..." I gasped, choking on the words. "...is dead."

Roxy flinched, completely taken aback by my choice of words. She knew how blindly, pathetically I had adored Adrian. She had never heard me call him a name like that in all the years we had been friends.

"Oh, Elena... I'm so, so sorry," Roxy whispered, pulling me into a fierce, suffocating hug. "I'm so sorry, sweetie."

I stood rigid in her arms until I felt a warm tear drip onto my collarbone.

I gently pulled back, looking at her flushed face. "Why are you crying, Roxy?"

Roxy opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She just shook her head and wrapped her arms around me again, holding me tight. We had been inseparable since childhood, our families close until the tragic accident that took my parents.

She knew me better than anyone else. She probably thought I was calling Adrian a bastard out of sheer, unhinged grief. She had no idea that I meant every single word.

"Come on," Roxy said, wiping her eyes and taking my hand. "Let me drive you home."

"Not yet, Roxy," I said firmly, turning back toward the clinic hallway. "I need to pick up my lab results first."

"Elena, your husband just died—"

"His corpse can wait."

I sat back down on the vinyl chair. My phone buzzed again and again—calls from Lucas, calls from my father-in-law, calls from my mother-in-law—but I ignored every single one of them, letting them stack up like digital trash.

"Mrs. Hart?" a nurse called out from the doorway, holding a sealed white envelope. "Your rapid toxin screen came back clean—no heavy metals in your system. But your hormone results came back faster than expected—one of the markers was severe enough that the lab flagged it for immediate release. Dr. Meyers wanted you to see it right away."

I stood up and took the paper from her hands, tearing it open with trembling fingers. My eyes scanned down the chemical analysis column until they hit the bolded red summary.

My breath hitched in my throat. My rebirth was real. The timeline was real.

The results didn't name a cause—that would take the full workup, still days away—but I didn't need it to. The hormone markers were severely suppressed, far outside any normal range for my age. The nurse called it unusual. I called it exactly what I already knew it was.

The "daily health vitamins" Adrian had lovingly handed me every morning for five years weren't vitamins at all.

"How... how can this be?" Roxy gasped, snatching the report out of my hands and reading it line by line. Her face turned pale before flushing with pure, unadulterated rage. "This says... Elena, this isn't natural. Someone did this to you."

"Roxy."

"He did this to you, didn't he?!" Roxy snarled, her whole body shaking as she clutched the paper. "My God! He better actually be dead in a ditch, because if he's not, I will tear his throat out with my bare hands! I knew he was a manipulative scumbag the day you brought him home, but I never imagined he was this rotten!"

"I don't need a lab to tell me who did this or why," I said, taking the paper back and folding it neatly into my purse. "I'll deal with my body. I'll fix everything he broke. But right now, I have a show to attend."

At least the toxin screen was clean—whatever poison my mother-in-law had planned for me hadn't started yet. That nightmare wouldn't begin until years from now, once I had finished paying off every cent of Adrian's fake debt and had nothing left for them to extract from me. I still had time.

We left the hospital and hurried out to Roxy's car. The drive to the estate was suffocatingly quiet, the air thick with Roxy's radiating anger as her knuckles turned white on the steering wheel.

Halfway through the drive, a text notification popped up on my phone screen.

'Elena, I am so worried about you. Where are you? Please answer me.'

It was from Lucas.

My grip tightened around my phone until the frame creaked under my fingers.

Lucas. The sweet, comforting brother-in-law who had drugged me night after night in my past life. Right now, he was probably waiting at home, pretending to worry about me.

Roxy pulled her car to a halt right outside the grand iron gates of the estate. "I'm coming inside with you," she declared before I could even open my mouth.

I looked at her, a faint, genuine smile touching my lips. "I wouldn't have it any other way."

We stepped out of the car and walked up the front steps, stepping into the massive, marble-tiled living room. The entire family was gathered in the main lounge—and sitting right in the center of the sofa was her.

My blood ran cold. The memories of my deathbed swept over me like a tidal wave—the laughter, the syringes, the cruelty, the mockery. A sudden wave of intense nausea hit me, my whole body trembling as pure, feral hatred flooded my veins.

I wanted to rip the glass vase off the entry table and drive it through every single one of their throats right here, right now.

"Elena..." Roxy whispered, taking my trembling hand. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," I breathed, forcing my racing pulse to slow down. "I'm fine."

My mother-in-law was the first to spot us. She scrambled up from the sofa, her face red and blotchy with fake tears.

"Where on earth have you been?!" she shrieked, stomping toward me. "I tell you that your husband is dead, and you take your sweet time waltzing in here with your friend?!"

Instead of arguing, I collapsed down onto my knees right on the foyer floor, bursting into violent, heartbreaking sobs.

"Mother!" I screamed, burying my face in my hands as my body shook. "Adrian! Oh God, please tell me it's not true! What happened to my sweet husband?!"

Seeing me broken on the floor, my mother-in-law's aggressive facade instantly melted into fake sympathy. She dropped down beside me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders and wailing at the top of her lungs.

What a vile wretch.

If a stranger walked into this house right now, they would genuinely believe she was a heartbroken mother mourning her dead child.

A pair of polished dress shoes stepped into my line of vision. Lucas knelt, gently taking my arm and pulling me up from the floor with an impeccably soft, comforting touch.

The moment his fingers closed around my arm, my stomach twisted. In my past life, those same hands had touched me while I was unconscious. I wanted to rip my arm away. Instead, I leaned into him and sobbed harder.

"Sister-in-law," he murmured, his voice filled with deep, soothing warmth. "I know how terribly you're hurting right now. I don't even know how to comfort you... Everyone knows how deeply you loved my brother."

My cries grew louder, my chest heaving as I fed them exactly the pathetic, broken performance they were expecting from me.

Through my tear-blurred vision, my eyes shifted toward the sofa, locking onto the woman sitting quietly in a delicate black lace dress, dabbing at her dry eyes with a silk handkerchief.

Vivian.

My mind raced. What on earth is she doing here right now?

In my past life, Vivian had been a ghost to me. I didn't even know what she looked like. For three years, I believed Adrian was dead while she secretly lived with him and raised their first child. I only saw her for the first time when she walked into my deathbed as his pregnant wife.

She was never supposed to be in this house today.

I choked back a sob, pointing a trembling finger at her through my tears.

"Who... who is she?" I wept, looking at my mother-in-law.

My mother-in-law wiped her face, smoothing her hair back. "Oh, that's Vivian, my sweet girl. She's my distant cousin. She rushed over the moment she heard the news to help console the family."

Cousin? A dark, vicious laugh nearly escaped my throat.

They were already changing the script. They were so eager to insert Adrian's mistress into my home that they were introducing her as a relative on day one.

I looked Vivian dead in the eyes, watching the tiny, triumphant smirk hiding beneath her sorrowful mask.

Welcome to the game, Vivian, I thought, letting a fresh wave of fake tears pour down my cheeks. You just walked straight into my trap.