Hospital ward.

Genevieve Whitmore had been worn down by illness until she was little more than skin and bone. She struggled to prop herself up and stared at him. "What did you say? Not one of my four children is mine?"

Her husband, Victor Whitmore, let out a cold laugh. "That’s right. Those four girls you gave birth to? I had them switched out years ago. Lord knows which ditch they died in."

"No... that’s impossible! Impossible! You’re lying. You have to be lying!"

Genevieve fought to sit upright, eyes wide, staring at the man she had shared a bed and a life with for decades, like she no longer knew his face.

All these years, she had thought Victor was a decent enough man.

There had never been any grand love story between them, no sweeping romance worth talking about, but they had spent so many years together. Life had been plain, but it had gone on.

Who would have thought...

She would see hatred in his eyes.

Victor Whitmore truly hated her.

From the bottom of his heart, he hated Genevieve Whitmore.

But for the sake of the Whitmore family, for the sake of those children, he had swallowed it for decades. Now, at last, he did not have to hold it in anymore.

"I’m lying to you?" He sneered. "Sure, I’ve lied to you for years. But today, this is the one true thing I’ve said, and you still won’t believe it."

"Since you’re about to die, I’ll say it again so you hear it clear. The eldest and the youngest were mine with Amelia Blackwell. The second and third were your elder brother’s and your third younger brother’s."

"Well? Happy now? You spent your whole life working yourself to the bone, and in the end you were just raising children for us Whitmores. And that little family fortune of yours? It’s about to belong to the Whitmore name too."

"That so-called Wanyue Group? From now on, it’ll be the Whitmore Group. Hahaha..."

"You..." She broke into a fit of coughing. "Why... why? Why would you do this?"

All these years, Genevieve Whitmore had never once believed she had done anything to wrong Victor Whitmore or the Whitmore family.

So why?

What gave them the right to treat her like this?

"Why?" Victor’s face twisted. "And you’ve got the nerve to ask why?"

"If your family hadn’t used that so-called debt of gratitude to force my hand back then, would I ever have agreed to marry you? And would Amelia Blackwell have ended up marrying somebody else? You should’ve died a long time ago!"

Victor Whitmore grabbed Genevieve by the collar and, without the slightest mercy, yanked her straight off the bed.

Genevieve Whitmore’s head slammed hard into the sharp corner of the table beside her.

Blood burst out at once, running from the back of her head all the way down her neck, staining even the safety pendant hanging there a deep, shocking red.

It was like she could no longer feel the pain. Her hand, so thin it was little more than skin over bone, used the very last bit of strength in her body to clutch Victor Whitmore’s arm tight.

She knew she was dying. She did not want answers about anything else anymore. She only wanted to know one thing—where her children were.

"Tell me... where are my children?"

"Children?" Victor Whitmore looked as if he had heard the funniest joke in the world, then threw his head back and laughed. "Didn’t I already tell you? They’ve long since died who knows where. Not even their bones could be found."

"You want to see them? Then go down there and have your reunion with them yourself. Hahahaha..."

"Victor Whitmore... you beast... you..." "Pff—"

Genevieve Whitmore suddenly spat out a mouthful of blood.

Her eyes were stretched wide, blood vessels covering them in red, and she stared straight at the twisted, smug face in front of her.

Hate. She hated him to the core.

She hated that she had been blind enough to mistake this monster for a man.

She hated that she had not even recognized the child she herself had given birth to, and had spent decades raising someone else’s offspring for nothing.

She hated it too much. She could not accept it. Not one bit.

If... if there really was another life...

Then she, Genevieve Whitmore, would make every last one of them pay with their lives.

The hatred and fury filling her chest burned through her like fire, burning away the final breath keeping her alive.

Genevieve Whitmore’s gaze slowly lost focus. In the end, all life left her completely. But those eyes of hers were still fixed open wide.

Even in death, she could not close them.

...

Pain.

A killing pain shot up from below.

Genevieve Whitmore snapped her eyes open, her chest heaving hard, like she was still trapped in that last moment before death—choking on hatred so deep it carved into the bone.

Victor Whitmore’s twisted, vicious grin, the sharp crack of her head hitting the edge of the table, and that soul-crushing despair when she learned the truth… scene after scene kept flashing through her mind like an endless reel.

Hatred.

It burned so fiercely it felt like it could scorch her whole body to ash.

Hadn’t she died?

Died in that freezing hospital room, with her eyes still open?

Then why… why could she still feel pain?

Not the gnawing pain of cancer, either, but… a different kind. Familiar. The sort of pain that felt like her body was being torn apart from the inside, rising from below.

Genevieve blinked in a daze and slowly moved her eyes around.

What she saw was a dim kerosene lamp, swaying faintly, its yellow light falling over a mud wall with patches peeling off.

The room reeked of blood, mixed with that damp, moldy smell old houses always carried.

This… wasn’t this the shabby room in the old Whitmore house from thirty years ago?

Back then, the Whitmores in Panjia Village had been poor—poor enough to rank at the very top.

A whole family of more than ten people, all crammed into a few mud-brick rooms.

It was only later, after reform and opening up, when Genevieve went out to do business and made money, that she tore this wreck down and built a big villa in its place.

Only after that did the Whitmores finally start walking tall in Panjia Village.

Could it be… she had been reborn?

Had heaven taken pity on how miserably she died in her last life and given her one more chance?

Before she could sort out what in the world was happening, another wave of agony tore through her from below. The pain hit so hard her vision went black, and her teeth clenched so tight they nearly cracked.

"Victor Whitmore’s wife, don’t you fall asleep now. You mustn’t drift off at a time like this... come on, push harder. I can already see the baby’s head. It’ll be out in a moment..."

By her ear came the flustered, urgent voice of Seventh Aunt, the midwife.

Seventh Aunt.

Genevieve Whitmore snapped fully awake.

Seventh Aunt was the village midwife in Panjia Village. All four of Genevieve’s children had been delivered by her own hands.

So she had not only come back—she had come back to the very moment of childbirth.

She just didn’t know which child she was giving birth to now.

At that moment, only one thought filled Genevieve’s mind—if this was her first child, then Victor Whitmore and the Whitmore family hadn’t started their dirty tricks yet.

But now that she knew the truth, there was no way she could keep living with Victor Whitmore as husband and wife.

And if that was so, the three children after this would never be born, and she would never get the chance to make it up to them.

But if this wasn’t the first one, that meant one of her children had already been switched out by Victor Whitmore.

The instant that thought hit her, a wave of panic and hatred fiercer than the pain in her belly rushed straight through her.

No! No matter what, she could not let it happen again!

Genevieve drew in a hard breath. Her body was weak all over, limp as water, but this life of hers had been dragged back from thirty years later. She had weathered too much, crawled back from that hellish place, and the strength locked in her heart was still there.

She hurriedly forced down the chaos in her mind and made herself steady.

As for giving birth—she had done it four times. Thirty years might have passed, but her body still remembered.

Following the waves of pain in her stomach, she pushed downward again and again.

Sweat soaked her hair through. Her lips were bitten raw. But what burned in her eyes was not just the pain of labor—it was the savage resolve to protect her child, and the fury of someone ready to settle accounts.

This time, no one was laying a hand on her child.

No one was going to fool her again, scheme against her again, or tear her flesh and blood away from her again.

She, Genevieve Whitmore, had clawed her way back from that place.

Everyone who owed her—she would make them pay back double.