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.

"Dora, have you eaten? I made you some sweet bean pastry. At least have a bite—you'll crush it today."

I didn't reach for it.

I just stared at him.

"No thanks. The college entrance exam is too important. I'm not eating anything handed to me by a stranger."

I stepped past him and walked away.

The smile on Landon's face froze solid.

"A stranger?"

He frowned and followed after me. "Dora, what's wrong? Why are you suddenly being so… distant?"

He looked genuinely confused.

Because before the exam, we'd made a promise: once we got into the same university, we'd be together.

I'd always believed it was mutual. That we both felt the same way.

I never imagined I was just a pawn in his hand.

A stepping stone to help Leonora Pruitt get everything she wanted.

I didn't even spare him a glance. I lengthened my stride toward the exam hall, trying to shake him off as fast as I could.

"Dora, my stomach— it hurts, all of a sudden!"

Landon clutched his stomach, his face twisted in pain, and grabbed my arm.

"I can't take it. Can you… take me to the hospital?"

I stopped. Turned around and looked at him.

His face was pale and drawn, and he really did look like someone in the grip of some sudden attack.

I almost laughed.

So the car crash didn't work. Time for Plan B, is that it?

I said nothing.

A flicker of guilt passed through Landon's eyes, but he kept up the agonized act.

"Dora, please. I'm begging you. It's one test—if it doesn't work out, we can just retake next year together."

"I think— it's the hereditary thing, the one that runs in my family. If I don't get to a hospital soon, I could actually die here…"

I smiled, cold, and pointed toward the staff at the entrance.

"If you need help, go ask them. Why are you coming to me? I'm a student about to sit an exam."

"Landon."

I locked my eyes on his and spoke word by word.

"What makes you think I'd throw away my one shot at this exam for you?"

Something cracked in his expression.

He clearly hadn't expected me to say that.

The old Dora Sullivan loved him so deeply she would have dropped her exam pass and carried him to the hospital herself.

"Dora, you've changed."

He clutched his stomach, his voice shaking. "You weren't like this before. So cold. So heartless."

"You're right. I've changed."

I glanced at my watch. "There are forty minutes until the math exam. You have two choices."

"One: go find a staff member. They'll call you an ambulance. Two: keep performing out here, and I call the police and report you for disrupting the exam."

Every trace of color drained from Landon's face.

I smiled and added one more thing.

"Besides, nobody knows better than I do that you, Landon Henson, don't have any hereditary condition."

After all, in my past life we were married for ten years. Every single physical came back clean. This whole act was just another way to stall me until the exam started without me.

More and more students were pouring into the exam hall. I had no interest in wasting another second on him. I turned and walked away.

"Dora Sullivan, how can you be this cruel? You're just going to abandon me?"

I kept walking, pace quick and unhesitating, when a body slammed into me from the side.

"Ow!"

"God, do you not have eyes? Watch where you're walking!"

Leonora rubbed her shoulder, all wounded indignation, and glared at me.

"I mean, sure, we're in the same exam hall, and everyone knows you're the big genius—but do you really have to barrel in here like you're trying to kill me?"