Chapter 1
As memories flooded back, my head felt like it was about to split open. The last image that flashed before my eyes was Olivia Parker’s smug face.
“Emily, don’t blame me. If you have to blame someone, blame yourself for being in the way.”
“Alexander loves that face, and I look more like her than you do, don’t I?”
“So, just die already.”
She laughed as she pushed me off the 30-story building. Seconds later, I was engulfed in darkness.
So, I was never more than a shadow of Alexander Carter’s idealized first love.
A cheap substitute that could be replaced at any time.
A dull ache spread through my chest.
I struggled to sit up, looking around the unfamiliar and dilapidated room.
The walls were peeling, and the only furniture was an old wooden table and a chair with a broken leg.
I stumbled to the only mirror hanging on the wall.
The person in the mirror made my pupils constrict.
My arms were covered in purple bruises, old injuries layered with new ones.
But the facial features were clearly seven or eight tenths similar to mine before I died.
Only younger, and more… battered.
Who was this?
Why was I here?
“You lazy brat! What are you dawdling for? Have you washed the dishes yet?!”
A woman’s shrill, harsh voice came from outside the door, accompanied by loud banging.
I instinctively shrank back, my body’s reflexes carrying deep-seated fear.
An obese figure burst through the door, hands on hips, spittle flying as she pointed at me.
“Always slacking off! Get your ass to the kitchen and wash those dishes! Do you want to starve?!”
I looked at her, my gaze cold.
It seemed the heavens hadn’t let me die completely.
They had given me a new identity.
The original owner of this body was called Mia Foster, an adopted child in this family.
The fat woman was her foster mother, Linda.
There was also a foster father, Frank, who spent his days idling and either beating or scolding her, and a good-for-nothing brother, Tyler.
In this family, Mia was treated like an unpaid servant, living a life worse than a dog’s.
Her personality was timid, submissive, even numb.
This made it convenient for me to hide my true self.
Until that day, when I found an old notebook under the floorboards.
It was Mia’s diary.
Out of curiosity about the original owner of this body, I opened it.
The handwriting was messy, recording years of darkness.
“Got beaten again today. My arm hurts so much. Mom said it’s because I was disobedient.”
“Tyler stole the five dollars I had secretly saved up. Dad saw and just laughed at me.”
“They said I’m an abandoned bastard, eating for free, so I should do all the work.”
“I want to die so badly. Would death finally set me free?”
Page after page, line after line, all were cries of despair and pain.
Long-term physical abuse and mental torture had left her unable to see any light.
The last few pages of the diary detailed her plans for suicide.
So, I had been reborn because she had actively given up her own life.
My chest felt tight.
I continued flipping through, and several photos slipped out from the diary.
One was a family photo of young Mia with her foster parents and brother. She was timidly hiding in the corner.
There were also a few photos of a gentle, beautiful woman holding a baby.
That woman’s face…
My breath caught sharply.
It was my deceased mother!
In her diary, Mia had written that she was abandoned, with only a photo of her mother holding her as a keepsake.
Combined with this face so similar to mine…
A ridiculous thought struck me.
Mia Foster was my long-lost twin sister!
We were actually twins!
I held the photos, tears silently falling.
So I wasn’t alone after all. I once had a sister.
But she had died in this hell, tortured to death.