Chapter 1

This Time, My Daughter Lives

A car crash triggered my premature labor, and I was rushed to the ER.

Just as my coworker was about to call my mother to sign the surgery consent form, I grabbed her hand, screaming through the blinding pain.

"Don't call my mom. Call my mother-in-law."

In my past life, my mother had rushed to the hospital. She'd promised to camp out with my sister for the release of a limited-edition designer doll, and she missed it because of me.

Furious, my sister eloped with her deadbeat boyfriend, only to be trafficked overseas and killed.

My mother was shattered, yet she suddenly showered me with an overwhelming amount of love and care.

She told me that for the rest of her life, I was the only daughter she had left to lean on.

Guilt-ridden, I bent over backward to be the perfect, devoted daughter.

I never could have imagined that on my daughter's first birthday, my mother would slam her car into the three of us, crushing my family to death.

As I lay dying, desperately shielding my baby girl with my shattered body, my mother looked down at me, her eyes burning with deranged, murderous hatred.

"Your daughter is a curse! If it weren't for her, my Chloe never would have died! You're a curse too! You both deserve to die!"

When I opened my eyes again, I stopped my coworker from calling her.

This time, she could go wait in line for dolls with her precious daughter all she wanted.

I breathed a sigh of relief, but a searing, agonizing pain tore through my abdomen, feeling as though someone were slicing me open with a blade.

The doctor was performing a C-section on me without any anesthesia!

"Patient's in critical condition! We need to operate immediately!"

"Get her family on the phone. I want a signature before anyone takes her in," the surgeon ordered as they rushed my gurney toward the operating room.

My coworker, frantic with worry, dialed my mother's number over and over.

Nobody picked up.

Tears streamed down her face as she tried to soothe my slipping consciousness. "Hang in there, Valerie! Just hold on a little longer. They're taking you into surgery!"

The trauma from the wreck made natural delivery impossible; an emergency C-section was my only option.

The surgeon kept insisting on a relative's signature. Every time someone asked how much longer we could wait, she ignored them.

My coworker's desperate sobs pulled me back from the brink. The tearing, fiery pain wracking my body made me realize the impossible: I was reborn.

My past life had started the exact same way.

A crash, premature labor, my husband stuck overseas on business. I thought I had no choice but to call my mother.

Who could have known Chloe would run off in a fit of rage, leading to her brutal death, which festered into my mother's murderous vendetta that wiped out my husband, my baby, and me?

In this life, to keep history from repeating itself, I stopped my coworker from reaching out to her.

"Call... my mother-in-law..."

Ever since I got married, my mother-in-law had treated me like her own flesh and blood.

Whenever she traveled, she bought me designer clothes, gourmet treats, and the latest luxury goods, sending them to me immediately.

Worried that public hospitals were chaotic and stressful, she had even insisted on building a state-of-the-art maternity suite right inside the family estate.

She worried standard OB-GYNs wouldn't cut it, so she spent a fortune putting top specialists on retainer.

She always told me that marrying into their family meant I was truly home, and she would never let her darling girl suffer a single grievance.

If it weren't for this freak accident, I would have had a safe, painless delivery right in the comfort of our home.

My coworker snapped out of her panic, scrambling to dig through my phone for my mother-in-law's contact info. But before she could dial, a hand clamped down on her wrist.

The doctor sneered coldly. "I almost forgot, the patient can sign for herself."

"Why bother calling her mother-in-law? Just sign it yourself, and I'll cut you open. It's just popping out a kid, no need to summon an entire crowd."

"If you ruin your mother's weekend with Chloe, are you ready to deal with what happens next?"

"Restrain her coworker!"

"Nobody touches that phone today!"

I watched in horror as my coworker was tackled and pinned to the floor. I fought with everything I had, but the orderlies swiftly strapped my wrists and ankles to the operating table.

The doctor grabbed my limp hand, forcing my fingers to scribble a signature on the consent form, before picking up a scalpel and stepping toward me.

Only then did I notice there were twice as many people in the OR compared to my past life.

And the doctor's face was completely unfamiliar. She wasn't the surgeon from before.

Wait. I had seen her somewhere.

She was my mother's close friend.

Before I could piece it together, she dragged the cold blade across my bare stomach. No epidural. No local numbing. A blinding, razor-sharp agony ripped through my nervous system like wildfire.

My body tried to violently curl into a ball, but I couldn't even summon the breath to scream.

Peeling back my flesh, the doctor smiled down at me, her voice dripping with cruel amusement.

"Don't blame me, darling. Your mother gave specific instructions. No matter what happened to you today, nothing was allowed to interrupt her day with her younger daughter."

"If she hadn't been so determined, she wouldn't have pulled strings to put me in charge of your care, or doubled the staff in this room just to keep you quiet."

In that single instant, it felt as if a thousand knives were slicing into my soul. Covered in blood, the agonizing pain began to crush my will to live.

Had my mother come back too?

I couldn't see how else she could have known when I'd need surgery.

Instead of warning me about the crash, she'd put her friend in charge and made sure I couldn't reach her.

Even without the tragic butterfly effect of the past, she had abandoned me to die without a second thought.