On the day I was meant to deliver my twins, I bought out the clinic’s entire stock of contraction inhibitors, forcing my body to halt the labor.

I held on until the next day, watching as my husband announced that his mistress had been the first to give birth to his child.

Her child would be the future heir of the Russo family.

Only then did I let out a relieved breath and allow myself to give birth to my twins.

In my past life, Victor was diagnosed with fertility problems.

To secure an heir, he kept ten mistresses and declared that whoever gave birth to his child first would see their child become the family heir.

I was ecstatic when I unexpectedly became pregnant with twins, but on the day of my delivery, I was met with his fury.

He ordered the doctors to shove my babies back inside me.

He told them to sew me shut. I felt my newborn twins suffocate in my womb.

“Sophia died in childbirth,” my husband, Victor, snarled. “Her baby, too.”

“Now you’ll pay for what you stole from her.”

He beat me to death in front of her grave.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on that day.

This time, they can have their perfect little family.

————————

1

I called for the nurse, demanding she give me the last injection of the inhibitor.

The nurse looked terrified, pleading with me. “Mrs. Russo, you have to deliver now! Any longer and you could die!”

Before I could open my mouth, Victor’s soldati burst in and dragged me away.

The doctor shouted desperately from behind, “Mrs. Russo's heart rate and blood pressure are dropping! Moving her like this will cause a massive hemorrhage! She and the twins could die!”

But the soldati paid him no mind, roughly hauling me toward a family meeting.

Victor’s other mistresses had also been brought to the scene, some with already swollen bellies.

Then, all of us, including me, were forced by the soldati to drink a bowl of black liquid.

The hall instantly filled with shrill screams and agonized wails as the foul stench of blood spread through the air.

“Even if Mrs. Russo has a child, it's not like we're moving up. But why do we have to lose our babies?! Ah, it hurts! Help me—”

I, too, was forced to drink a full bowl. The labor I had just suppressed erupted into a torrent of blood.

My screams startled the other women, and they panicked:

“Mrs. Russo was drugged too? But she's about to give birth!”

“If Mrs. Russo isn't the one giving birth, then who is? Who wants all of us dead?”

I writhed on the floor in pain, gritting my teeth and shouting to the guards outside, “Get a doctor! Someone’s going to die!”

Just then, Sophia Bianchi, clad in a white chiffon dress, strolled in on Victor's arm. Her face was rosy, showing no signs of having just given birth.

The moment Victor saw his mistresses lying in pools of blood, his expression darkened.

Sophia, however, covered her nose and shrieked, “Oh my God, why have all my sisters miscarried? Who could be so cruel?”

Before she could finish, Victor glared at me and lashed out, kicking me hard in the stomach.

“You bitch! Drugging them while I was gone! Your jealousy drove you to kill them and their unborn children!”

I couldn't even straighten from the pain. Seeing her standing behind him with a triumphant smirk, I gritted my teeth. “I didn't… It must have been her—”

“Still won't admit it?” he roared. “This isn't the first time you've hurt someone out of jealousy! This time, I'm done indulging you.”

He barked an order at the mistresses. “Slap her. Each of you. When you're done, I'll send you all to the best clinics and recovery centers.”

A soldato pinned me in the center of the room, completely ignoring the blood that streamed from between my legs.

The girls walked forward, weeping, and slapped me with tears in their eyes. “I'm sorry, Mrs. Russo…”

One after another, the slaps rained down. My ears rang, my vision blurred. I went deaf in one ear.

Only after everyone had been sent away did Victor, satisfied, take the baby from the nanny's arms and walk over to me with Sophia.

He looked at my blood-soaked body and bleeding cheeks, a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes. But the next moment, he lifted his chin, his voice cold.

“Don't blame me for this. You needed to be taught a lesson, to learn what happens when you get jealous and hurt people.”

“This will stop you from trying to steal the heir's title from Sophia and her son.”

I shuddered and looked up at him.

So, he hadn't changed at all.

No wonder he had blamed me the second Sophia spoke.

No wonder he said this was 'not the first time.'

Because in my last life, he had framed me the same way, all to condemn me for Sophia.

My eyes reddened. He said coldly:

“Quinn, playing the victim is useless now. And giving birth earlier would have been pointless.”

“I already had the doctor induce Sophia's labor. This time, she was guaranteed to be first. Whoever gives birth first, their child is the heir. It’s useless even if you give birth now.”

I gave a tragic smile, clutching my bleeding lower body and whispering:

“I already took inhibitors to stay out of the way of your little family. But why couldn't you just let me have my children? Why did you still make me drink that potion and try to kill my babies…”

He froze, his brow furrowing.

“Don't be ridiculous. Your due date was last night. I asked the doctor; you already gave birth.”

I was drenched in a cold sweat, crying out in pain as I pulled at him, trying to make him look at my still-swollen belly.

His face filled with disgust as he impatiently shook my hand off, refusing to even glance at my stomach.

“Stop the act. If you want to prove you weren't trying to harm Sophia, then at the family meeting tomorrow, you will admit that you were unable to conceive and asked Sophia to be a surrogate for you.”

“Then, you will transfer all the shares and property in your name to her and her child, and you will serve them from now on.”

“If you dare to pull any more tricks, or even touch a hair on her head, this time, it won't just be you and the bastards in your belly I'm dealing with—your critically ill father isn't going to enjoy the protection of our VIP ward for much longer.”

My eyes widened in disbelief as I stared at Victor, a heart-wrenching sob escaping my lips.

“Victor, you bastard! My dad is in a coma because he saved you! How can you threaten me with his life!”

Victor said impatiently, “As long as you serve Sophia well while she's recovering and take good care of her and the boy afterward, I won't touch him.”

With that, he wrapped an arm around Sophia and left.

“Sophia, thank you for giving me an heir. I'm going to reward you well.”

Blood was gushing from my lower body. I kept begging the soldati guarding the hall to take me to the clinic, to save the babies in my womb.

My mother-in-law, Elena Russo, rushed in. When she saw the blood-soaked hall and me drenched in foul-smelling amniotic fluid, her face went pale.

“Get her to the clinic, now! If anything happens to my grandchildren, I won't spare a single one of you!”

I was taken to the family’s private clinic, but the doctor was nowhere to be found.

Elena, as the family Mamma, was furious and demanded to know where my assigned doctors had gone.

A nurse answered hesitantly.

“Ma’am, all the doctors in the city were summoned by the Underboss to the riverside villa. Miss Bianchi pricked her finger during a blood draw, and the Underboss feared complications, so he ordered all available doctors to be on standby.”

“Right now, in the entire city… there are no doctors.”

Elena furiously made one call after another. “He's lost his mind! The wife he begged to marry is bleeding out giving him children, and he's pulled every doctor for a mistress, leaving his own wife to die!”

On the tenth call, Victor finally answered, impatiently asking what she wanted and if I had gone crying to her for backup again.

Elena shouted, “Quinn has lost so much blood she's unconscious! The babies are losing oxygen! And you took her doctors away? Are you trying to kill your wife and children?”

Victor sneered. “Did Quinn put you up to this? She had her babies yesterday. Why is she pretending to be in critical condition now?”

“Alright, alright, I have to take birth photos with Sophia and my son. She wants a doctor? Fine, I'll send someone over.”

Elena hung up, gripping my hand tightly.

“Don't be afraid, Quinn, the doctor is coming.”

I clutched my stomach, feeling the life inside me fade.

I remembered my last life, how Victor had my children sewn back inside my womb to suffocate.

Trembling, I grabbed Elena's hand and spoke with difficulty.

“Mamma, three years ago, when my dad went into a coma to save Victor, you promised you would treat me like your own daughter. You said if Victor ever treated me badly, you would help me leave the Russo family.”

“I'm begging you, let me leave him. I promise I won't stand in the way of his beloved woman's son becoming the heir. I just want my children to be born safely.”

Elena was already in tears, repeating,

“It was all to repay your father's sacrifice. Back then, I only offered to take you in as my goddaughter. It was Victor who confessed his love, who proposed. He adored you. How did it come to this? It's all that bitch Sophia's fault. If she hadn't shown up, things would never have gotten this bad.”

I gave a miserable smile. Yes, how had we ended up here?

The man who had blushed at my debutante ball and sworn to love me for a lifetime, who swore that if he betrayed me, he would suffer a thousand cuts and die a horrible death.

Now, for another woman, he was putting me through a thousand cuts.

“Please, mamma,” I forced out.

Hearing my faint plea, Elena finally nodded.

“Alright! When you two got married, I made him sign a separation agreement with you, just in case a day like this came. I'll go get it and have it expedited right now!”

“Tomorrow, I will announce that you are my sole heir. As for that ungrateful whelp, I will disown him!”

Elena left immediately.

I lay on the hospital bed as waves of pain washed over me, and I moaned in agony.

The young assistant Elena had left behind anxiously awaited the doctor.

Finally, someone arrived.

But it wasn't a doctor. It was a soldato.

Seeing the bloody scene in the delivery room, he awkwardly handed over a bag. A pack of gauze and a few painkillers fell out.

“The Underboss said it's just postpartum bleeding, it's not fatal. He said you should just wipe it up yourself and stop disgusting him.”

The assistant's eyes were red as she threw the bag to the ground.

“Mrs. Russo, I'm taking you to a hospital in another city. You have to hold on.”

I wailed in agony. My vision went black, and I passed out.

I woke to a bucket of ice-cold water thrown over me.

Before me was Victor’s face, etched with disgust.

“If you're awake, stop faking it,” he said, looking down on me. “You know I'm announcing the heir tomorrow. Did you have to run off to another city for treatment? Trying to make everyone think Sophia's the villain here?”

Sophia stood behind him, holding an infant, tears streaming down her face as she looked the picture of heartbroken innocence.

“Mrs. Russo, I know you hate me. But you can take it out on me. Why did you have to get Donna to try and take my child?”

“That assistant was still shouting as they dragged her away, screaming that Donna was going to get the papers to have my child signed over to you, saying I wasn't fit to be the heir's mother…”

I opened my mouth, but no words came out. I could only shake my head, trembling as I begged:

“I… didn't… Take me to the clinic… the babies… they can't hold on…”

“You're lying again!” Victor frowned impatiently. “My mother rushed out of the clinic and had lawyers working overnight. Weren't you the one pulling her strings? Did you think you could steal Sophia's child and become the heir's mother?”

“Didn't you have your children yesterday? Still pretending to be critical? Trying to make me feel sorry for you? In your dreams!”

Pain wracked my body. The blood from my lower body had long since clotted, sticking to my skin and emitting a heavy, foul stench.

Sophia covered her mouth and retched, her eyes welling. “Sister, you know I can't stand the smell of blood after giving birth. Are you refusing to clean yourself up just to make me sick?”

She cried until her face was pale, shrinking into Victor’s arms, looking utterly pitiable.

“Look at the state of you!” Victor's face was full of disgust. “Like a madwoman, stinking. You're a disgrace!”

He waved his hand, and a soldato poured bucket after bucket of cold water over me until my face was ashen and my body trembled uncontrollably. Only then did he stop them.

Sophia, nestled in his arms, cried, “Mrs. Russo, I'm begging you, please don't separate me from my child… If you insist on taking my son, then I'll just jump out this window!”

She made a move as if to jump, and Victor quickly pulled her back.

His anger finally boiled over. He turned and kicked away the hand I had clutching his pant leg, then leaned down and hissed:

“Don't think you can keep your position just by manipulating my mother. I've already had the old mansion locked down. Nothing you two plot will work!”

“As for you—I've warned you not to bully Sophia and her child, but you won't listen! In that case, I'll have to take special measures.”

He whipped his head around and gave a cold order to a soldato:

“She drove Sophia to suicide; she'll pay the price. Go, pull her father's oxygen tube and throw him from the roof!”

“Victor!” I screamed, my voice tearing. “Are you insane! That's my dad! He saved your life!”

“So what!” Victor sneered. “To shove you into our family, to make your child the future Don, he made a big show of saving me, then used it to force my hand in marriage. You're married in, you got pregnant. If you can't give me my first child, you're useless. The debt is paid. I don't owe you anything anymore!”

“Now.”

I scrambled wildly toward the soldati, trying to stop them, but I was brutally kicked to the ground.

The dried blood on my lower body gushed out from the impact, like a bursting dam, instantly staining the floor red.

The pain was so intense I screamed until my throat was raw, curling into a ball.

Victor was about to drag me again when he saw my raised belly, exposed by the kicking, and the sea of scarlet on the floor. The color drained from his face.

He instinctively rushed to my side, holding me, and turned to demand of Sophia.

“What's going on?! I put you in charge of her delivery! Didn't you say she gave birth yesterday without any trouble, that the babies were in the nursery?!”

“Then why is her stomach still so big?! Why is she still bleeding!!!”