Deep into the night, the Ashford villa was so quiet it almost felt frozen.

Vivienne Ashford moved like a sneaky little cat, carefully pushing open Elliot Ashford’s bedroom door. She leaned in and took a quick look. No one was there. The room was empty, except for the steady rush of water coming from the bathroom.

She slipped inside at once and headed straight for the desk. The second she found Elliot’s phone, she keyed in the password fast and unlocked it. The screen lit up, and sure enough, it was already on the chat app.

At the very top of the pinned contacts list was one name: "Tongtong."

Elliot was a notorious high school troublemaker in senior year, the kind everyone knew and no one wanted to mess with. Wild, reckless, impossible to control. But when it came to the school beauty, Aurora Shelton, he was completely gone for her. Head over heels, no joke. He had caused plenty of drama at school just standing up for her, and getting publicly criticized had basically become routine for him.

Right then, a new message from Tongtong popped up.

"Brother Xu, do you boys all really like the soft, fragile type... like your little sister?"

That "little sister" was obviously Vivienne herself.

The corner of her mouth lifted. Without even blinking, she typed back, "Yep. That’s exactly the type we like."

The other side clearly did not expect that kind of reply from Elliot, who usually treated her like a queen. There was a long pause.

After a while, Aurora sent another message, sounding cautious this time.

"Then for girls like me, the kind who always play basketball with boys... you guys probably aren’t into that, right?"

Vivienne didn’t hold back at all.

"Yeah. Can’t stand tomboys like you. Blocking you now."

And after sending it, she really did block and delete the school beauty in one smooth move.

Then she leaned back in the chair, looking completely at ease, and waited for Elliot to come out and lose it on her. It wasn’t because she had some weird masochistic streak. It was because she didn’t belong in this world in the first place. Only death could send her back.

Vivienne Ashford had transmigrated into a book.

Before all this, she had just been an ordinary girl. Her dream was simple: buy a home, settle down, get a stable job, live a decent life. Ever since college, she had worked herself to the bone for that goal, studying while also making money off drawing meme stickers to support herself.

Honestly, her life had been insanely lucky. One of her original comic characters got picked up by a big company, and the two million copyright payout went straight into buying her apartment.

Right after graduation, she even got into a public institution job with great pay and benefits. Even though she had been adopted, her parents adored her like she was their precious treasure. She had basically been living the winner script.

Who would’ve thought that on the day she was supposed to officially become a full employee, while she was riding her bike toward the bridge, a big black Mercedes came straight at her. She had obviously slammed the brakes with all her strength, but for some reason they just failed. Then she crashed into it, and after that...

When she opened her eyes again, she realized she had fallen into one of those rich-family true-and-fake-heiress novels and become the fake daughter with the doomed ending.

The Ashford family turned out to be crazy rich. Their youngest daughter had been kidnapped by traffickers when she was six years old.

Mr. Ashford was a superstitious businessman. Some so-called master had told him that all seven child positions in the family had to be filled for wealth to keep flowing in, so he adopted Vivienne from an orphanage.

The six brothers had always believed she stole their real sister’s place. So they targeted her at every turn. No matter how hard she tried to get close to them, all she got back were cold stares and icy faces. To them, the way she kept trying to please them was just pathetic, cheap, embarrassing. In their eyes, she could never compare to their real sister, not even a little.

By the time she turned twenty-three, she had just gotten engaged to the eldest son of a family close to the Ashfords when the real heiress suddenly showed up.

The real heiress flat-out said that man was her childhood fiancé. The six brothers switched sides on the spot, and just like that, it turned into a full-blown fake-heiress-versus-real-heiress battle over a fiancé.

The real heiress was actually some hidden boss-level character, while the fake one was nothing more than doomed cannon fodder. The six brothers all stood with their biological sister, crushed Vivienne Ashford with debt, and dragged her name through the mud.

In the end, that poor fake heiress lost everything and took her own life. And the moment Vivienne Ashford transmigrated into the book just so happened to be the fake heiress’s seventeenth birthday.

That day, Mr. Ashford had specially prepared a fruit cake for her. But she bit into a cherry with a pit still inside, got choked to death on the spot, and through that absurd twist of fate, she became the current Vivienne Ashford.

At the same time, a strange rule dropped straight into her mind:

If she wanted to return to her original world, she had to die in an accident. But there were two hard no’s—suicide was forbidden, and being executed for a crime didn’t count either.

After thinking it over carefully, she decided the fastest route was to deliberately piss off the Ashford brothers, each one weirder than the last.

These brothers were all seriously something else—one had a bad temper, one was gloomy as hell, one was practically neurotic. More importantly, every single one of them hated this fake heiress.

Right now, the other brothers were away building their careers, and their parents had left to recover from illness. The only one still at home was the youngest, Elliot Ashford. Hotheaded, impulsive, easy to blow up—he was the perfect target.

She had hesitated before, wondering if making Elliot carry the label of killer was a bit too ruthless. But then she thought about it again. Five years later, when the real heiress returned, wouldn’t these same brothers join hands and drive the fake heiress into a dead end anyway? She was only helping them get it done ahead of schedule.

The sound of running water from the bathroom stopped.

Vivienne turned her head and looked over just as Elliot pushed the door open and walked out. He was bare-chested, lean muscles sharply defined, short hair still dripping. His face was young, still carrying that raw, unpolished boyishness.

The second he saw Vivienne sitting there, his expression darkened. "Why the hell are you in my room?"

Vivienne didn’t answer. She only lowered her eyes and glanced coolly at the phone in her hand.

Elliot reacted in an instant and lunged forward to snatch it away. "Who said you could touch my phone?"

He flipped through his contacts, and his heartbeat spiked. That familiar name was gone. He kept swiping up and down in a panic, but no matter how hard he searched, he couldn’t find the pinned contact that used to sit at the top.

"Vivienne Ashford, you deleted Tongtong’s contact, didn’t you?" He glared at her, fury boiling under his voice.

Vivienne lifted her head and met his eyes without a trace of emotion. "Yeah. I did." Her tone was flat, casual, like she was admitting to something totally insignificant.

That one sentence blew the fuse completely.

For three whole years, the first thing Elliot did every morning was send Aurora Shelton a good morning message. Not once had he missed a day. And now all those chat logs were gone, wiped clean by his own sister.

Burning with rage, Elliot grabbed the steel ruler off the desk, his knuckles going white from how hard he clenched it.

But when Vivienne saw his reaction, a flicker of satisfaction flashed through her eyes instead. She raised a finger to her neck and said with a cold, provoking smile, "If you’ve got the guts, aim right here. One hit and I’m dead."