Twelve sharp at night.

Another day gone, just like that.

She’d been working overtime for more than half the month already.

"That damn manager’s like a bloodsucking leech, pushing plans, pushing deadlines every single day. Never stops..."

Clara Sinclair muttered under her breath, got up to shut down the computer, switched off the lights, and pulled the door closed behind her.

"Ding."

The elevator doors slid open right away.

She stepped in at an unhurried pace and casually opened WeChat. The screen was crammed with 99+ unread messages.

"Clara, don’t forget to transfer the money tomorrow. Your brother’s wedding is important, and we’re short on cash!"

"Qingqing, your brother’s still young. As his big sister, you ought to be sensible and help the family more!"

Clara Sinclair didn’t even bother lifting her eyelids. She directly tossed a screenshot into the family group chat—one showing the million-yuan mortgage, plus the 552,000 still owed on the down payment.

The very next second.

A notification popped up: “You have been removed from Dear Family Group by group owner Clayton Sinclair.”

Just as expected.

Without a flicker of hesitation, Clara Sinclair deleted the whole string of contacts clean and blocked every last one of them.

You don’t get to choose your family when you’re born. Later on, there’s really no need to force it either.

Nothing worth losing sleep over.

When she walked out of the building, Clara Sinclair stood by the roadside and hailed a taxi.

She took two steps forward and was just bending down to get in when she suddenly heard the harsh scrape of tires against the road.

Not far away, a black sedan had gone out of control and came charging straight at her.

Clara Sinclair froze on the spot. Her mind went blank-white in an instant. She stood there stiff, unable to move an inch, her mouth falling open on its own.

Bang!

A figure was flung high into the air, landing hundreds of meters away, then run over again and again by passing cars.

And just like that, Clara Sinclair was dead.

………

September, 1968.

Hushi. The Sinclair family mansion.

"Hss—"

A faint groan of pain cut through the stillness of the late night.

Clara Sinclair slowly pushed herself up from the bed and raised a hand to press at her neck. That dull ache came through solid and real. So this wasn’t a dream.

"I was clearly hit by a car, so how..."

"Where is this?"

She looked around. Before her was a lavish suite, fully fitted out with a bedroom, bathroom, dressing room, and study.

The cabinets, shelves, and bed were all made of expensive hardwood.

The entire room was drowning in a kind of death-by-Barbie-pink atmosphere.

Pink-and-white furniture. Pink lace bed curtains. Velvet pink cushions. A pink throw with rose patterns spread across the foot of the bed. Even when she darted into the bathroom for a look, the toilet was pink too.

"Ah!"

A wave of dizziness surged violently through her skull, followed by a splitting, swollen ache.

When the pain finally ebbed, a flood of memories poured into her mind like a bursting tide.

Clara Sinclair sat there for a moment, then honestly wanted to look up at the heavens and ask—

In my last life, did I dig up your ancestors’ graves or what? Why’s the payback this brutal?

Last life, a family that might as well not have existed. This life, no family at all?

Well. That was certainly one clean cut.

Her current situation was ugly, to say the least.

She had transmigrated into a period novel she’d once flipped through out of boredom. The title was The Sixties Heiress Spoiled Sweet by a Hong Kong Tycoon’s Son. Her role was the female lead’s cannon-fodder stepsister, the kind of character who showed up for three chapters, tops, before getting written off.

Her name now was Dawn Sinclair, eighteen years old, one meter sixty-eight, born into a proper old-money household with deep roots and a shining pedigree.

Her grandfather was the great capital magnate Howard Sinclair, known far and wide as “Reginald Sinclair,” and her grandmother Ethel Sinclair also came from a family with real standing.

They had three sons and one daughter.

The eldest son was Martin Sinclair, the second Conrad Sinclair, the third Roland Sinclair, and the youngest daughter was Rosalind Sinclair, the original host’s mother.

The Sinclairs were red capitalists. All three sons had died for the country one after another, and the family’s reputation for loyalty and sacrifice was known by everyone.

Rosalind Sinclair was the only daughter of the family, cherished by every last person in the household. Howard Sinclair was afraid she’d suffer after marriage, so in the end he chose to bring in a live-in son-in-law.

After Godfrey Wentworth married into the family, he acted attentive and devoted toward Rosalind Sinclair. The two of them did manage a few years of what looked like a loving marriage, and then had the original host.

Sadly, fate was stingy. Seven years ago, Rosalind Sinclair died in a car accident.

The moment Rosalind Sinclair was gone, Godfrey Wentworth brought his childhood sweetheart Bianca Ashby into the house in grand style. Along with her came a son and a daughter—Marigold Ashby and her younger brother.

Marigold Ashby was the heroine of the book, one year older than the original host.

To outsiders, the siblings looked like Bianca Ashby’s baggage from a previous life. But in truth, they were Godfrey Wentworth’s children too.

Before marrying into the Sinclair family, that man had already been engaged to Bianca Ashby back in the countryside. He wanted Rosalind Sinclair’s property, so he hid the people on that side for more than ten years.

After Bianca Ashby and her two children moved in, they acted painfully low-key in front of the original host, showering her with “care” and “giving way” to her at every turn.

The original host was still young and had grown up spoiled and protected, simple-hearted and easy to trust. It didn’t take long before she accepted the three of them. She was as close to Marigold Ashby as if they were real sisters, and she truly liked that younger brother too.

Then, one month ago, Godfrey Wentworth got word that the Sinclair family had been placed on the liquidation list. Right away, he started sweet-talking the original host into handing over the property, saying they were all one family and would go to Hong Kong together to live a peaceful life.

But on the very night before leaving, he drugged her and left her alone in the mansion to take the fall, while he took the rest of the family and ran off without a backward glance.

Later, the original host was sent down to a farm. Barely over a month later, she died miserably in the northwest.

Meanwhile, Godfrey Wentworth’s family of four used the Sinclair fortune to settle down in Hong Kong and lived free and easy.

The heroine of the novel built her life from exactly that starting point. In Hong Kong, she rose fast and smooth. Seven years later, at a banquet, she ran into Vincent Ellsworth, the rich young master, and from then on began her sweet life of one pregnancy and three babies.

Now the original host had woken from the drug only to find it was already past two in the morning, the whole house dead quiet except for herself. That was when she understood she’d been abandoned.

She couldn’t get one breath to settle in time and literally died of anger—

and then Clara came over.

"Poor girl."

"At least she had a bit of sense. She didn’t blindly do everything that man told her and hand over every single thing her grandfather left behind."

"She only gave up the financial records from the secret room in the study and the hidden room in the grain store. Added together, that was barely ten percent of the whole family fortune."

"If the plot follows the book, the Red Armbands will come raiding the house tomorrow. That means, at best, I’ve got less than twenty-five hours."

Dawn Sinclair sorted through the whole plot in her head at high speed, then moved without another moment of delay.

She got out of bed. As she passed the mirror, she glanced over by accident and instantly widened her eyes.

"So this is what I look like now?"

The person in the mirror had skin so fair it almost seemed to glow, a pair of long straight legs, a slim waist, and a figure that could honestly be called lovely and shapely.

Dawn Sinclair lifted a hand and lightly touched the mirror, studying that face with care.

A classic oval face. A full smooth forehead beneath curved willow-leaf brows. Eyes that tilted slightly upward at the corners, bright and clear, like black grapes washed in clean water, glinting with living light.

A straight, elegant nose bridge. Small lips with a pretty shape.

"I seriously want to kiss her to death."

Dawn Sinclair broke into a grin and began trying expressions at the mirror one by one—crying, laughing, shocked, all of them.

She truly hadn’t expected to become ten years younger out of nowhere and end up with a face and body this good.

"This trip into a novel? Totally worth it!"

Once she’d had her fill of looking, she stopped wasting time.

She quickly went into the dressing room, dug out a dark outfit that would be easy to move in, then dashed into the bathroom for a fast shower, rinsed her mouth, washed her face, and changed clothes.

Couldn’t be helped. While the original host had been unconscious, she’d sweated all over, and her body felt sticky and nasty from head to toe.

At first Dawn Sinclair thought that discomfort came only from the cold sweat. Later, she realized it was because the original host still had a knot of resentment left in her bones, something that hadn’t fully dispersed and was lodged right in her chest.

"Good girl, don’t worry. Go on and get yourself a better next life. Everything that belongs to the Sinclair family, I’ll get it back for you piece by piece."

"I’ll live well in your place. The debts that should be repaid, the vengeance that should be taken—I’ll do it all for you. Just wait for me. Once I’ve built up enough strength, we’ll go to Hong Kong together and settle the score."

To be able to live again like this—what unbelievable luck.

In this life, we’ll make that dream come true together. Living easy off rent, traveling all over the world, seeing every mountain and river there is.

After Dawn Sinclair whispered those words, the heavy, clogged feeling in her chest suddenly loosened and dispersed. Her whole body felt much lighter.