My eyes narrowed. I spun around and slapped Linda so hard the food scraps in her hair flew off.

"That's for lying."

"Go look at yourself in a puddle before you talk about anyone else's face."

Linda clutched her cheek, stunned, then started crying for real.

This time the tears were genuine.

Jason grabbed a chair and launched himself at me like he was ready to die.

Dad's foot hit the floor and he roared.

"QUIET! Everyone stand down!"

Mom took over from there, pulling the three of us apart for separate questioning.

In my previous life, Linda had bullied me, but I'd kept quiet. I didn't want to be labeled a troublemaker, didn't want Mom and Dad coming down on me for causing drama.

So I never told Mom about the rotten food.

They just turned it around and called me ungrateful, said I was picking fights with Linda.

After that, Linda got bolder.

"Spoiled leftovers today, pig slop next time. How's that sound? Ha!"

This life, I shoved the remaining disgusting food right under Mom's nose.

"This smells like death. A dog wouldn't eat it. You want me to?"

Mom's forehead creased, but she managed a strained smile and softened her voice.

"She just didn't realize the salmon had gone off. She was trying to give you something nice."

I watched her lie through her teeth with a completely straight face.

I smiled. "Oh, really?"

Then, while she wasn't looking, I grabbed a mouthful of the rotten, reeking salmon and shoved it straight into her mouth.

She gagged, "UGGH," and bolted to the bathroom, retching violently.

I watched with a cold smile.

"Still think it's edible? Are you sure this isn't attempted poisoning? She's trying to kill me with food contamination. Is that what this is?"

Mom staggered out, spent ten minutes rinsing her mouth, face gray as ash, and couldn't say a word.

She shot me a long, heavy look.

"I'll deal with her."

Really? I didn't believe it for a second.

When Jason and Linda came out, their faces were smug all over.

"Just wait. Your day's coming."

I let out a sharp laugh.

"Go ahead, keep putting on your little show. I can't stand people who perform."

Linda's face went white, then red, then white again.

She looked to Jason for backup, eyes brimming. "She's insulting me. She's so rude, wah—"

Jason's protective instincts kicked into overdrive.

He shoved me off the hospital bed onto the floor, face twisted with contempt.

"I'm warning you. One more time you make Linda miserable, I will rip your mouth off your face."

I stared up at his idiot face and shifted my gaze to Mom and Dad behind him.

"Are you watching? You see exactly who's hurting who here?"

I was pale and thin, the wound on my wrist still seeping blood.

Dad exploded.

He slapped Jason across the face and snapped, "Eve is your sister too. She's half-dead and you're still doing this? What kind of older brother are you?"

He caught himself, glaring at me furiously.

Linda whimpered and threw herself at Jason, wrapping her arms around him and sobbing pitifully.

"Daddy, don't hit him. Hit me instead. He was only trying to protect me."

She touched her reddened cheek and dropped her head.

Jason looked deeply moved. Mom and Dad looked like they had massive headaches.

Everyone stared at me.

I picked myself off the floor without any expression. Just as I opened my mouth—

Linda dropped to her knees in front of me with a loud thud.

"Sis, it's my fault. I've been in your place for over ten years. You can hit me, yell at me. I deserve it."

She clutched her chest, looking like she might faint from heartbreak.

Mom couldn't take it. She rushed to Linda and helped her up, then turned to me, impatient:

"Linda has been pampered her whole life. She's never suffered a day of hardship."

"No matter how much you resent her, you don't get to insult her like that."

"When you insult her, you insult the Veil name."

"I'm ordering you. You will apologize to Linda today."

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.

The next day, Dad flew overseas for business. I checked myself out of the hospital alone and went back to the estate.

I barely stepped through the door when Linda grabbed me at the edge of the ground-floor pool.

The challenge in her eyes wasn't even hidden:

"Guess. If we both fall in, who do you think they'd save?"

I looked at the pool, three meters deep, and a chill moved through me.

In my previous life, she pushed me in. I nearly drowned, saved at the last second by a maid coming out to use the bathroom. I was left with fluid in my lungs and a cough that never went away.

Not this time.

She shoved me into the pool with everything she had. I dove straight to the bottom and swam to the far end underwater.

Linda was expecting to watch me thrash. One blink, and I was gone.

She craned her neck over the edge to look, and slipped right in, because I'd smeared the pool edge with lubricant beforehand.

I lay on the tile and watched her flail. What an idiot. I'd learned to swim.

Then Jason came sprinting from the side, screaming her name, desperate to get her out.

I narrowed my eyes. So it was a setup from the start.

It took them ten full minutes to haul Linda out.

She was shaking, terrified, and then suddenly dropped into a deep bow in front of me, eyes glistening.

"Sis, I was wrong. I'm so sorry. I'll make it right, I swear—"

I was bored. I wanted to walk away.

But Jason was staring at me, rage building behind his eyes like a wildfire.

"You—actually—tried—to—kill—her."

He grabbed a fistful of my hair from behind with one hand and wrenched me off my feet, hanging me in the air.

Then he forced my head underwater and held it there.

I stayed calm, held my breath, and played along.

Go ahead, the harder the better.

What felt like a century later, he pulled me back out.

He dumped me in front of Linda's hospital bed and kicked me.

"On your knees."

I curled up on the floor. Mom was right beside Linda's bed, looking at me like she hated me.

"The doctor said Linda nearly died. Severe suffocation. Pulmonary edema."