"Lydia, you vicious woman!"

A hard slap came flying across her face. Half of Lydia’s cheek went numb at once, and her ear rang so badly it buzzed nonstop.

Victor Harlow stood right in front of her, chest heaving. His eyes were locked on her, full of disgust. "If anything happens to Diana or the baby, you just wait."

After throwing out those words, he yanked the door open and stormed off. The slam echoed through the room for a long while.

Lydia did not move. She just stood there with her head lowered.

She barely tugged at the corner of her mouth, and a sharp pain shot through the injured side of her face. She sucked in a breath and clenched her teeth.

What rotten luck.

Of all things, she had ended up transmigrating into the body of a nasty female side character.

In the past, if anyone so much as laid a finger on her, she would have paid it back double.

But now, she truly had no ground to stand on.

The door opened again.

A middle-aged woman in a blue jacket hurried in, breathing hard. It was Kate Lennox, the mother of this body.

She had obviously rushed over the moment she heard what happened. The second she stepped inside and saw her daughter’s swollen half-face, her heart twisted with both anger and pain. She quickly walked over and leaned in for a closer look.

"Who hit you? How could they strike you that hard?"

Lydia’s throat moved. In a low voice, she called out, "Mom... I..."

"Victor hit you, didn’t he?" Kate Lennox did not wait for her to finish. She pulled her over to sit on the long bench, both hands gripping her daughter’s hand tightly.

"This time, you really went too far. Before this, no matter how much nonsense you pulled, your father and I looked the other way.

But Diana is carrying a child. You went and shoved her. Do you understand how serious that is?

If something had really happened, that would’ve been two lives, not some little quarrel. That’s the kind of thing people go to jail for. No one would’ve been able to save you."

Lydia stayed silent, head lowered, eyes fixed on the floor.

What could she even say?

Say she wasn’t really Lydia Harlow at all?

Say she’d somehow, for no clear reason, ended up inside this body?

Or say she never touched Diana Harlow?

But the original owner’s memories were sitting there plain as day in her head—she had pushed her. She truly had. She’d done it with the child in mind too, hoping Diana would lose it. There was no unfair accusation in this, not one bit.

Seeing her daughter sitting there so wilted, head lowered and spirit gone, Kate Lennox felt a sharp ache in her chest.

She had said these words over and over already, but if it meant keeping her daughter from walking straight into ruin, then she would say them one more time.

"I know you still can’t let Victor Harlow go, but have you ever stopped to think that he never held you in his heart to begin with?

"And besides, Victor Harlow and Diana Harlow got their certificate and set up a proper home together. That’s fate. There was never any such tie between you and him.

"When it’s time to give up, you have to give up. Truth be told, your father and I are at fault too. We should’ve kept a closer eye on you."

"When Victor Harlow and Diana Harlow got married, you came running home saying you wanted to marry his cousin Sebastian Harlow. Your father and I thought you’d finally come to your senses, so we gladly married you off in good order. Who would’ve guessed you were still thinking about Victor Harlow all along!

"For a whole year, instead of living your own life properly, you kept forcing your way into their marriage. And now look at this—you’ve gone and done something this foolish!"

Kate Lennox let out a heavy sigh. In all her life, nothing had ever weighed on her heart like this.

Lydia Harlow sighed too.

Every word Kate Lennox said was the plain truth. That was exactly what the original owner had been.

She had loved Victor Harlow so blindly it was almost madness. She chased him, clung to him, wore herself out over him, and in the end all she got was watching him turn around and marry Diana Harlow. Even then, she still refused to accept it.

She had actually come up with that kind of idea—marry Sebastian Harlow, Victor Harlow’s cousin, move under the same roof, and spend every day watching that couple’s every move. She had done more than a few ridiculous things, the sort that made people shake their heads and sigh.

And once Diana Harlow got pregnant, she seemed to lose her senses even more, carrying nothing in her heart but the wish that something would go wrong.

In the end, she really did lay hands on her.

She pushed Diana Harlow.

"All right, you stay here and rest for now. I’m going to check on Diana Harlow and see how things are over there."

Kate Lennox was already a doctor at the township clinic. She had no idea how much of what she’d just said her daughter had actually taken in. Right now, the proper thing was to deal with what was right in front of them first.

All she could do was pray heaven showed a little mercy, that Diana Harlow and the child would both come through safe. Otherwise, with what her daughter had done, whether she and Thomas Lennox could protect her at all was hard to say.

Kate Lennox got up and headed out. After only two steps, something hit her, and she turned right back around. "Look at me, my head’s gone to pieces. Tell me this—does Sebastian Harlow know you pushed Diana Harlow?"

Lydia Harlow shook her head. "He wasn’t home."

Kate Lennox let out a long sigh. "Maybe it’s just as well he wasn’t. No matter what, he’s one of the Harlows. Stuck in the middle, he wouldn’t have an easy time of it either. In a bit, I’ll have your brother come over, and we’ll all sit down and figure out how to settle this."

She said it plain and practical, every word centered on how to protect their own. Hearing that, Lydia’s chest tightened with a sour ache.

When she thought about all the foolish, shameful things the original owner of this body had done, she could hardly keep her face steady.

Kate Lennox turned to leave, but Lydia finally couldn’t hold it in. She called after her, "Mom, this is all my fault. I’ve dragged you and Dad into this and made you worry."

Kate Lennox’s eyes turned red at once.

Ever since her daughter had set her heart on Victor Harlow, the family had known one uproar after another. She and her husband had been left speechless more times than they could count.

She had nearly forgotten that, once upon a time, this girl had been the kind who didn’t make people worry. "We’re family. Your father, me, and your brother—we only ever wanted you to live well."

"Mm."

Lydia answered heavily, but her mind was still in a mess.

She had not been a good daughter, yet Thomas Lennox and Kate Lennox had never once treated her poorly since she was little.

And it wasn’t as if the original owner had no chance at a decent life. She’d graduated from teachers’ college, been assigned to teach at the village school, and had no worries about food or clothes. Her days should have been smooth and steady.

But Victor Harlow had turned everything upside down. It wasn’t just that she had thrown away her own dignity—even her parents had been dragged down with her, till they could barely hold their heads up.

Lydia lifted a hand and lightly patted her own face, forcing those humiliating memories to the back of her mind.

No matter what, the things the original owner had done were things she could never do herself.

No matter how good Victor Harlow might be, he already carried another woman’s mark on him. He belonged to someone else. He was not something she had any right to touch.

Besides, she had a husband of her own.

At the very thought of her husband, Sebastian Harlow, Lydia Harlow felt a hard knot rise in her chest.

Back then, when Thomas Lennox and Kate Lennox saw how she nearly lost her mind after learning Victor Harlow had gotten married, they were scared half to death.

So when she said she wanted to marry Sebastian Harlow, how could they dare object? They could only grit their teeth and help make arrangements, probably thinking she had finally come to her senses.

Who would’ve guessed she was hiding something that filthy in her heart.

When she married into the Harlow family, she had never once planned to live an honest, steady life with Sebastian Harlow.

Her mind was all on Victor Harlow next door, separated by only one wall. Day in and day out, she kept thinking about the private life of him and his wife.

Even worse, she had actually pushed Sebastian Harlow to seduce Diana Harlow, saying it would create a chance for her and Victor Harlow.

Sebastian Harlow refused, and she fought with him over it again and again, until the whole house was in an uproar.

Sebastian Harlow had probably gone completely cold on her by then.

At first, he still came back once a week. Then it turned into once every half month, then once a month. This time, he simply hadn’t come home for a full two months.

Lydia Harlow thought to herself that for the original owner to do something like this, it had to be the kind of madness only someone with seven or eight years of bad wiring in the brain could come up with.

"Move aside! Tell Lydia Harlow to come out!"

"What, she dares do it but not admit it?"

A burst of noise suddenly came from outside.

What was the point of hiding in here? Lydia Harlow knew very well this mess couldn’t be left to her family to clean up forever.

She took a deep breath and reached out to pull the door open.

The hallway looked exactly like a small-town clinic in the early nineties always did. The lower half of the walls was painted a dull dark green, and the air carried that sharp smell of disinfectant that made people uncomfortable the moment they breathed it in.

But the first thing her eyes landed on was a man’s back.

He was tall and lean, with neatly cut hair. The strip of skin at the back of his neck was pale, and below that was a white shirt. His broad shoulders held it up clean and crisp, the hem tucked into blue trousers. The whole man looked fresh, tidy, and unmistakably clean-cut.

The thought came at a pretty bad time, but Lydia Harlow still had to admit it in her heart.

This man’s whole air about him really was exactly her type.

At that moment, she still hadn’t realized the man in front of her was Sebastian Harlow, the husband she had in name only.

It wasn’t until he turned a little and his clean, sharp-featured face came fully into view that Lydia Harlow cursed in her heart—seriously, how had she never noticed before that Sebastian actually looked this pleasing to the eye?

Sebastian was looking at her too, his brows already knitted tight.

"What are you doing out here? I’m here, aren’t I? Go back inside and stay there."

He didn’t even wait for her to answer. He pushed her straight toward the lounge, then reached back and shut the door behind her in one smooth motion.

Lydia stood there in a daze. A second later, it hit her—just now, had this bargain-bin husband of hers actually stepped in to shield her?