Slap in the hospital

CHAPTER 7: 

The ward was so quiet you could hear the IV dripping.

My hand was still in the air after slapping Chloe Lane. My palm was burning, red, but I felt more alive than I had in two lifetimes.

Chloe fell back onto the cold hospital floor, her white dress now stained. She held her face with both hands, her eyes wide, not with tears — but with pure disbelief. In her twenty-two years of life, no one had ever dared to touch her. She was the little princess of the Lane family, the adopted daughter that my father loved more than his own blood. The girl who could cry and make the whole world stand on her side.

"Sophia Lane! You... you hit me?"

Her voice trembled. It was the voice she used to use to frame me. The innocent, broken voice.

My father, Robert Lane, finally reacted. He rushed over like a madman and pulled Chloe up from the floor, holding her in his arms like she was a fragile piece of porcelain.

"Sophia! Are you crazy?! Have you lost your mind?! Apologize! Apologize to your sister right now!"

My mother, Linda, who had just woken up after three years of being a vegetable, tried to get up from the bed. Her body was so weak that she almost fell. I rushed to hold her.

"Mom, don't move! The doctor said you need to rest!"

But my mother pushed my hand away. She looked at Robert Lane holding Chloe, and her eyes, which had just been full of love for me, were now filled with a rage I had never seen before.

"Robert Lane," her voice was hoarse, but every word was like a stone smashing into the floor. "Who is your daughter?"

My father froze.

"I asked you, who is your daughter? Is she your daughter, or is Sophia your daughter?"

"Linda, what are you saying? Of course both of them are..."

"Both?" My mother laughed, but her laughter was full of tears. "When I was in a car accident three years ago, I was pregnant. Did you know? I was two months pregnant. I lost that child in the accident. I became a vegetable. And during the three years I was lying in this bed like a dead person, you brought your illegitimate daughter and her mother into my house! You let them sit in my father's seat! You let them bully my Sophia!"

The room went completely silent.

Chloe's face turned white as paper. "Auntie, you... you misunderstood... I am..."

"You are Lisa's daughter," my mother pointed at Chloe, her hand shaking violently. "Your mother was my best friend. I brought her into Lane Group. I trusted her. And she seduced my husband and gave birth to you. And then she cut the brakes of my car!"

This secret, this truth that I only learned after my death in my last life, exploded in the ward like a bomb.

Chloe screamed, "You are lying! My mother would never! You have no evidence! Sophia told you, right? This bitch is lying to you!"

She turned to look at me, her eyes full of poison.

And that was when Alexander Knight, who had been silent and standing at the door like a guardian god, finally moved.

He walked past me, past my father, and stood directly in front of Chloe. He was a head taller than her. He didn't need to shout. He just looked down at her.

"Evidence?"

He took out his phone and threw it onto the hospital bed.

On the screen was a car repair report from three years ago. And a bank transfer record. Fifty thousand dollars transferred from Lisa's account to a car mechanic named John, two days before my mother's accident. And then, a death certificate for that mechanic — dead in a gas explosion one week after the accident.

"You want more evidence?" Alexander's voice was so cold it could freeze blood. "I have your mother buying rat poison in bulk from a pharmacy, the same poison found in Henry Lane's blood test. Do you want me to continue?"

Chloe's legs gave way and she collapsed to the floor again. This time, my father didn't help her up. He stared at the phone, his hands shaking. He was a weak man, but he wasn't a fool. He knew what those records meant.

"Lisa... Lisa did that?" he muttered.

I walked up to Chloe. I crouched down so we were eye to eye.

"Chloe, do you remember when I was ten years old? You pushed me down the stairs of Lane Group and then cried and said I pushed you? My father beat me with a belt for an hour and locked me in the storage room for a whole night without food. You sat outside eating cake."

Chloe trembled.

"Do you remember when I was eighteen, you put love letters to other boys in my bag and showed them to Ethan, making him think I cheated? He didn't talk to me for three months. I cried every night."

I raised my hand again.

_PAK!_

The second slap was even harder than the first. Chloe's lip split and blood came out.

"This second slap is for my grandfather. He raised you like his own granddaughter for twenty years. And your mother poisoned his heart medicine. He died coughing blood in his study, calling my name. And you were at a party celebrating because you thought you would finally become the heiress."

"Stop... stop..." Chloe was now truly crying, not fake tears. Real, ugly tears.

But I wasn't finished.

I stood up and looked at my father. The man who was supposed to be my hero.

"Dad, you asked me to apologize? Fine. I apologize. I apologize for being your daughter. I apologize for believing for twenty-three years that you would one day look at me the way you look at her."

I took off Alexander's suit jacket that was on my shoulders and put it over my mother's thin shoulders.

"From today on, I, Sophia Lane, have no father. I only have a mother. And a husband."

I turned to Alexander. He was looking at me, his eyes dark with pain, pride, and love. He opened his arms.

I walked into them without hesitation.

He picked up my mother again, easily, as if she weighed nothing. He carried her like a daughter, not a mother-in-law.

"Let's go home," he said to me, his voice soft, only for me.

"What home?" I asked.

"Our home. Knight Mansion. I had people prepare your mother's room. With the best doctors. And a garden full of her favorite roses. Just like you wanted in your last life."

I froze. In my last life, I had once told him, casually, that my mother loved roses.

He remembered.

Tears finally fell from my eyes, but this time, they were not tears of hate.

Behind us, as we walked out of the ward, we heard Chloe's phone ringing loudly.

It was Ethan. On speaker.

"Ethan! That bitch Sophia hit me! She hit me in front of everyone! You must come! You must help me get revenge! She married Alexander Knight! That monster!"

And Ethan's panicked voice came through: "What? Alexander Knight? Chloe, are you crazy? Don't provoke him! Don't you know he bankrupted the entire Miller family in my last life because of Sophia? Stay away from her!"

The door closed, cutting off their voices.

I held Alexander's hand tightly as we walked down the long, cold hospital corridor. The nurses all stared at us.

For the first time in two lifetimes, I was not the abandoned Miss Lane.

I was Mrs. Knight.

And tomorrow, I would return to Lane Group as the Project Manager, with 2 billion in my hand and the devil himself standing behind me.

Chloe, Ethan, this game has just begun.