Chapter 3

Mom’s voice was ice. Linda stood beside her, tears still on her cheeks, the corner of her mouth curving up just slightly.

Here we go again.

In my previous life, Mom only ever protected the fake daughter she'd raised with her own hands.

During a family trip around the world, Linda shredded my passport and I was stopped at the gate.

Mom didn't ask what happened. She just said I was a problem.

Said they'd go without me.

I held back my tears and went home to the estate alone, watching two months of Linda's beach vacation photos pile up online.

After that I learned to be smarter, I hid my important things, locked my room.

Stopped letting Linda walk in whenever she felt like it.

That made her angrier.

At a family dinner, she claimed her eight-million-dollar necklace had gone missing and only I had been in her room. She said I'd been acting sneaky, hiding things, locking doors.

Mom believed her immediately.

She had people smash my safe and break my lock. Even when there was no necklace, she banned me from ever locking my door again.

Said she was worried about what I might do.

In my previous life, no matter what I said, they called it excuses.

I was stupid back then. I didn't understand that Mom's heart was already tilted. She didn't care what I said.

I cried until I had no tears left, and I couldn't figure out why my own family despised me so much.

This life, I was done trying to understand.

I flipped the table. Glasses exploded across the floor.

"I did nothing wrong. I'm not apologizing to a bully. I already called a reporter. They're on their way to watch the Veil family's real daughter get framed and die."

Before they could react, I ripped out my IV and climbed out onto the windowsill.

The wound on my wrist split open from the strain, blood pouring freely.

The scene was grotesque. Perfect content for the news.

When two-thirds of my body was already hanging outside the window, Dad's voice cracked completely and his knees buckled and he nearly dropped to his knees..

"Eve, get down. Dad believes you. Dad was wrong!"

Linda was crying, but her eyes were triumphant.

She thought the crazier I acted, the more Mom and Dad would hate me.

But she'd forgotten how she'd always been favored, hadn't she?

Around here, the person who suffers the most gets the attention.

And honey, I'm genuinely suffering.

Dad's eyes were bloodshot, his voice shaking as he bargained:

"You're our daughter. Just come inside. You don't trust Dad? I'll make it up to you right now. Whatever you want."

Then he turned and called his secretary: "Transfer all five companies under my name to Eve."

He pressed a bank card into my hand.

"Five million spending money. Your birthday is the password."

I let go of the window frame and eased myself back inside.

Then I buried my face in his chest and sobbed, every bit of the hurt pouring out.

"Daddy, I thought you didn't love me, didn't believe me. I had no choice. This was the only way I could prove myself—"

Dad pulled me close and patted my back.

Mom's expression was complicated.

Jason stood off to the side, completely at a loss.

Only Linda, her eyes locked on me, pure venom.

Of course she was panicking. In my previous life, by this point she'd already wrecked my reputation completely.

Classmates, teachers: people were constantly showing up to report me for something. Theft, bullying, you name it, every bad thing somehow landed on my head.

At first Mom and Dad listened to my side. But after enough times, they stopped believing me entirely.

They decided I was a born liar.

I couldn't fight it with words, so I tried with actions.

But no matter how well-behaved I was, they read it as guilt.

They thought I was someone who'd grown up in the gutter and couldn't be trusted.

Back then, Linda's monthly allowance was over a million. To punish me, they gave me nothing.

I could only watch helplessly as Gran, the woman who'd kept me alive, died in agony from a terminal illness.

I begged them through tears to save her. They called me a scammer trying to squeeze money out of them.

This life? I was going to insult people, flip tables, and claim every last thing that belongs to me.

Everything that was mine had to be given back to me, all of it!

But Linda was clearly rattled.