A car accident on the morning of the college entrance exam. I missed an entire subject.

I should have scored above 680. I got 530—barely enough for an ordinary university.

I married my first love, Landon Henson. Had a child. Ten years of what I thought was a good life.

Until I brought my five-year-old son to a party.

And found my husband with a girl pinned against a wall, his face buried against her neck.

She tilted her face up. "Landon, who do you actually love? Me, or your wife?"

He kissed her forehead, that besotted look never leaving his eyes.

"You, of course. Why do you think I set up that car accident ten years ago so Dora Sullivan would miss the exam?"

"I only married her so you could land the Gilbert heir. Otherwise I wouldn't have touched her."

——

He said it so casually, like breathing. My whole body went cold.

The accident on exam day.

Landon had arranged it.

My fists clenched until my nails broke skin. The girl in front of me was no stranger. She was my half-sister, Leonora Pruitt.

The year of the exam, because my score fell short of Leonora's, I lost the right to inherit our father's assets.

She'd scored 535, five points above mine, and walked away with an oceanfront villa and a private island, both gifts from our father.

And because I lost that bet,

our father threw me out of the house.

Cut my mother and me off without a cent.

For years I'd wondered. Why then? No accidents any other day of my life, but on the morning of the exam, a collision out of nowhere.

I'd even blamed my own bad luck.

All of it. Every last bit of it. Landon's doing.

"Mommy…"

My five-year-old son, Ryan Abbott, tore his hand free from mine and ran toward Leonora, his face lit up with excitement.

The commotion drew their attention.

Leonora eased Landon aside, unhurried, and tilted her head at me. "Well. What a coincidence, sis."

Landon's body locked. He spun around.

He saw me.

Shock first, then panic, then something I couldn't read at all.

"Dora."

He started toward me. "How much did you hear?"

I didn't look at him. I just wanted to take Ryan and go.

But the next second.

Ryan ran straight to Leonora and wrapped his arms around her leg. "Mommy, hold me…"

His voice was small, but it hit my skull like a nail hammered in.

I couldn't move.

Five years old. I'd raised him with my own hands, held him every night and told him stories—and now that same little boy was clinging to Leonora's leg, face upturned, eager to please, calling her—

Mommy.

Leonora looked down and stroked Ryan's hair, her smile impossibly tender. Then she raised her eyes to mine, and the triumph in them didn't even try to hide.

"There's my good boy."

Her voice was soft. She glanced at Landon. "Mommy was just talking to Daddy, sweetie. You couldn't wait for Mommy to pick you up, could you?"

The color drained from Landon's face.

He crossed the room in two strides and pulled Ryan away from her.

"Ryan, you got it wrong. That's your aunt."

"But Auntie told me to call her that."

Ryan blinked, all innocence. "Auntie said she's my real mommy. She bought me tons and tons of toys and said if I called her Mommy, I'd never have to go back to that stupid house."

The blood in my veins ran backward.

"Landon."

I heard my own voice—hoarse, barely mine. "You've been taking Ryan to see her?"

Landon swallowed. He said nothing.

Leonora laughed—a bright, shaking, delighted laugh that carried across the room.

She crossed the floor toward me one stiletto step at a time and dropped her voice low.

"You still don't get it, do you?"

"Ryan is mine and Landon's. You were just… a free womb."

"The college entrance exam destroyed you. The marriage? You were nothing but the substitute. And now even the son isn't yours. Dora Sullivan, you really did lose everything."

My whole body was shaking. My nails dug into my palms.

"You're lying!"

I shoved her aside and lunged for Ryan, pulling him into my arms. "Ryan is mine! I carried him for ten months—I was on that operating table having a C-section while you were out drinking at a bar, Leonora! How dare you say that to me—"

"Dora!"

Landon's brow knotted hard. "Don't make a scene in front of the child."

I looked at the man I had loved for fifteen years, and the tears finally fell.

"Tell me. Is Ryan my child or not?"

Landon's gaze flickered away. He hesitated.

That hesitation made my stomach turn.

He was figuring out how to spin it.

Or maybe, even now, he was looking for another lie to feed me.

"Landon."

Leonora tugged his arm, her voice syrupy. "Just tell her. She'll find out sooner or later."

"He's ours, after all—our blood, our child. She's the outsider here… she deserves to hear it."

The flaunting triumph in that look, the open provocation, sent a chill straight through me.

My arms tightened without thinking, and Ryan began to whimper against my chest.

"Mommy… you're hurting me…"

Then he burst into wailing sobs, reaching both hands toward Leonora. "Mommy, save me! I don't want her! She's mean!"

It felt like someone had carved a piece out of my heart.

"Ryan, look at me."

I cupped his face, my voice breaking.

"Mommy's right here. I'm your mommy."

Ryan froze for two seconds, then let out a piercing cry and shoved my hands away.

"You're not! Auntie told me! You're the bad one! You stole me!"

Leonora's eyes went red on cue.

"No matter how much you hate me, the child is innocent. You can't keep him from his real mother just because you and Landon have problems."

The chill that ran through me went all the way to the bone.

"I want a DNA test."

The results came back fast. Ryan was not my child.

His biological parents were Landon Henson and Leonora Pruitt.

Leonora lifted her chin. "Believe me now?"

"Fine."

I let go of Ryan. I stood up slowly and wiped my face dry.

"I'm giving him back to you."

I turned and walked away without looking back.

Behind me, Landon panicked.

"Dora, where are you going? Don't do anything rash."

He tried to rush after me. I stopped and looked him in the eye.

"Landon, let's get a divorce."

His pupils contracted.

"Dora, stop this."

"Just go home. We'll talk when I'm ready."

I turned away without another word, but the tears were already pouring.

Not my child. I carried him for ten months—morning sickness so violent I was hospitalized, a C-section where I hemorrhaged and nearly died on that table—and the child I loved more than my own life was never mine. Leonora's egg, borrowed womb. That was all I ever was to them.

What did they think I was?

Thoughts crashed over me, one after another, drowning out everything else.

I never saw the car speeding toward me.

The next second, I was flying.

When I opened my eyes again—

I was back. The morning of the college entrance exam.

"Dora, don't forget your milk and bread. It's exam day—no getting nervous, okay?"

The moment I heard those familiar words from my mother, my head snapped up.

Ten years ago.

Not long after my mother said that exact sentence.

I'd been crossing the intersection when a car ran the red light and slammed into me.

This time, I would not let it happen again.

I grabbed my mother's hand so hard my knuckles went white.

"Mom, walk me to the exam hall today."

She blinked, then smiled.

"What's gotten into you? Yesterday you said you didn't need—"

"I'm begging you."

My voice was shaking.

Her smile fell. She saw my eyes and whatever was in them made her go still—because no girl shaking like this was shaking over an exam.

She pressed the back of her hand to my forehead. No fever. She nodded anyway. "Alright. Mom will take you."

We reached the familiar intersection before long.

I stood at the edge of the crosswalk, my heart hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat.

My mother was chattering beside me about something. I didn't catch a single word.

This was the crosswalk.

In my last life, a silver van had come tearing through here and sent me flying three meters.

Fractured right leg. Concussion. Missed the math exam entirely.

I'd spent ten years remembering that plate number. JC-7K362.

There it was.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught the silver van easing up to the left-side intersection, idling at the corner.

The driver wore a baseball cap pulled low, face hidden, but the engine was still running.

He was waiting.

Waiting for me to reach the middle of the road.

"Mom," I said, my voice eerily steady, "record on my phone. Right now—don't stop."

Before she could react, I'd already pressed the phone into her hands, hit record, and pulled her onto the crosswalk with me.

Three steps in, the van's engine screamed and it launched straight at me.

Now.

I spun around, raised the phone at the van, and the flash fired.

The driver threw a hand up instinctively to shield his eyes. The steering wheel jerked. The van grazed the hem of my school skirt and plowed into a fire hydrant on the curb.

Screams erupted all around us.

I stood frozen in place, the voice recorder I'd been gripping slick with sweat.

"Dora!"

My mother screamed and threw her arms around me. The phone clattered to the ground, still recording.

I crouched down, picked it up, and aimed it at the smoking van, capturing the plate number in perfect clarity.

Then I dialed 110.

"Someone just tried to run me over on purpose—I'm a student, it's exam day. Plate number JC-7K362. He's still here."

I hung up. Ten minutes later, a police car arrived.

The driver tried to run. An officer tackled him to the ground before he made it five steps.

The officers ended up putting me in the squad car themselves and driving me straight to the exam hall.

"Thank you, officers."

I stepped out, thanked them, and turned to my mother.

"Mom, I'm going in."

A long line had already formed at the entrance.

My gaze swept the crowd and stopped at one corner.

Landon Henson.

Eighteen-year-old Landon.

He was wearing a white T-shirt, holding a bottle of water in one hand and a box of sweet bean pastry in the other, smiling at me.

That smile was clean and warm—a completely different creature from the man who would corner a woman against a wall ten years from now.

He walked up to me, still smiling, his voice gentle.