Chapter 3

I honored my parents. I was a good daughter, a good sister, a good wife. And this was what it got me.

Cheated for decades, I stood there crying, asking my parents why they had done this to me.

Instead they turned it on me. "You've been jealous since you were little. You could never stand seeing your sister happier than you. Of course you'd never have handed your fiancé over to her."

"But you knew the two of them were in love, so we had no choice but to keep it from you. What if you lost it again and shoved your sister off a balcony?"

"Kay's all grown up now. Things are what they are. It's time you gave your sister's daughter back. Stop clinging to people and things that were never yours."

Since when was I the one who stole Laura's child? They were the ones who favored her from the start.

From the day Laura was born, she got the best of everything, and I got whatever she didn't want.

I voiced one complaint to my parents, and in their eyes that made me jealous, made me the sister who couldn't stand seeing Laura do well.

And I never pushed Laura down any stairs. They'd all seen the video. She threw herself down to frame me.

Yet somehow, in the end, every last thing was my fault.

Dustin gripped my hand, gazing at me with all that tender feeling.

"Baby, the investment failed. That was my mistake. I promise you, I'll work hard and earn it back. I'll give you and our child a good life."

"From now on I'll do exactly what you say. You point east, I won't go west. You tell me no more investing, and I'll never touch it again."

"For Kay's sake, baby, forgive me this once. Give me one last chance, and let's build a good life together."

I looked into those eyes, so full of feeling.

Those same eyes had looked at me that way for decades in my last life.

I truly believed he loved me, that he was the one person who would never betray me.

Five years together. He knew my parents favored Laura, knew how hard my childhood had been.

So he promised me all his love would be mine, promised to be good to me for the rest of my life.

And in the end, before we ever married, he got tangled up with my own sister.

He hid it from me, went and got a real marriage certificate with her, and had a child.

And to make me raise their child, he teamed up with my parents to fake a medical record for me.

The whole thing was almost funny.

I thought it to myself, bitter.

The best friend I thought I had, and the husband who swore me a lifetime, were all in on it with my family.

Looking at it now, they were the ones who were family.

But I saw it clearly now.

Even if I stood in front of them and tore off their false faces, they would never admit it.

I'd only tip them off and put them on their guard.

I wanted my money back.

I wanted to throw the evidence in their faces and drag their dirty deeds into the open.

They didn't want me to have a good life. They didn't care about me.

So why should I keep thinking about them? Why go on being the fool they cheated?