A cold, inward smirk was all I could muster.

Too spineless to show his own sister basic kindness in front of his darling cousin—what a pitiful man.

My fingers, however, flew across the screen: [I want the Bugatti.]

That hypercar cost over five million after taxes, was one of five in the country, and was worth more than any antique necklace.

It was my brother's crown jewel. He frowned, hesitated for a long moment, then finally gritted his teeth.

[Fine.]

As we were texting, the university's leadership arrived.

The dean took one look at the glaringly out-of-place funeral wreath.

"What is the meaning of this?"

One by one, eyes turned to me. I calmly met my cousin's gaze.

The dean didn't wait for an explanation. He motioned for campus security to remove both the wreath and my cousin from the event.

"Completely inappropriate!"

Watching several officers escort her out, my brother and father panicked.

"Audrey, go talk to the dean!" my brother shouted. "Cathy didn't mean anything by it! She's just from a different world—she doesn't understand!"

I wore a mask of regret, my face full of sympathy for my cousin.

But I didn't move an inch.

"Dad, this isn't back home in Tempas," I said calmly. "Here, I'm just another incoming graduate student—not the daughter of the state's wealthiest family."

The implication was clear: my hands were tied.

Hearing this, my brother shot me a furious glare.

"Then why did you insist on a school clear across the country? This place is practically uncivilized!"

I remained unmoved, watching the two of them hurry after my cousin's retreating figure. My heart didn't so much as flicker.

They were supposed to be my family. Yet in the end, the only things I could truly rely on were the share transfer agreement on my phone and the million and a half already in my account.

Over the next week, I used the money to get fully settled on campus and finally began living the life I should have had in my previous life.

Meanwhile, a cell phone video of my cousin being escorted out that day made its way online and gained some traction.

Furious, she bought a last-minute ticket and flew straight back to Tempas City.

Just like last time, she trashed my room.

Back then, it was because I'd slapped her down the stairs.

My brother and father had even stood by, telling her to toss all my things out of the family estate if it made her feel better.

The only photo album I had of my mother and me—she tore it to pieces, then took pictures and sent them to me as a final jab.

This time was no different.

I stared at the image of shredded photographs scattered on the floor and swallowed down the ache in my chest.

In my previous life, I'd booked the first flight home and confronted her violently.

My father had been in the middle of closing a major international merger. The scandal broke his focus, and he lost a deal worth billions.

When Grandmother found out, she declared she never wanted to see me again and had her security detail put me on a plane back to school.

With Grandmother's protection revoked, my brother quietly worked behind the scenes until I was expelled.

This time, I only sent a calm voice note.

"Be careful, Cathy. Don't cut yourself. Dad and Nick would be so worried."

Then I forwarded the chat history to the family group: [Cathy made it home safely. Dad, Nick, no need to keep searching for her.]

In my last life, it was my father who'd told her to wreck my room to blow off steam.

This time, she'd done it entirely on her own.

A faint, cold smile touched my lips as I put my phone away and walked into the research lab.

The next morning, I received a call from my father.

"Sweetheart…"

He rarely called me that. When he did, it meant something was very wrong.

"Cathy destroyed your room," he said, his voice rough. "She went after your mother's things, too. I'm sorry. This is my fault."

He offered to compensate me with another three percent of the family trust shares.

I let my voice break, struggling to get the words out.

"If she… if she wanted me gone, that would be one thing. But… those were the only things I had left of Mom."

"That will never happen!" My father's guilt was palpable. "You are my daughter. This is your home! Cathy just lost control. She's already facing the consequences!"

As he spoke, he sent me a photo.

In the dead of a cold snap, my cousin knelt on the stone floor of the family chapel in nothing but a thin sweater. Her cheeks were livid, the slap marks so harsh they'd broken the skin—the capillaries beneath likely shattered.

Grandmother had intervened. She despised nothing more than those who sowed discord in the family.

"I'm asking you, please—say a word to your grandmother for her," he pleaded. "Cathy has a weak constitution. She can't handle kneeling in this cold!"

So, after all that, it was still about Cathy.

With the tip of my finger, I brushed away the single tear tracing its way down my cheek.

"Fine. In addition to the three percent in shares, I want to buy a manor villa—paid in full."

I stopped the hysterics. Instead, my composed resignation seemed to move them.

My father agreed immediately and approved a forty-million-dollar budget for the property. My brother messaged to say he'd cover all the interior design and renovation costs. He even praised my generosity.

"Cathy destroyed Mom's things. I really lost my temper with her. I've let her get away with too much. To think she'd dare to trash your room…"

I smiled—coldly—and went to Grandma to plead for leniency.

She felt for me and quietly signed over a small, profitable subsidiary to my control.

"With your own income, you won't have to take so much disrespect. Your father's lost all perspective! Who knows where the family assets will end up?"

Quietly, I expedited the property purchase.

On the day I signed the final papers, my cousin flooded my phone with family photos.

Cathy: [Uncle said the torn pictures don't matter. We can take new ones. You're not upset, right, Audrey? They say four's a crowd—three makes for a perfect family portrait.]

Me: [Okay. Add a little more blush—it'll photograph better. Peach tones suit you, they brighten your complexion. Take another set.]

Cathy: [Nick insisted on taking the whole family on a two-week tour of Aerope to make it up to me. I thought it was just one of those fake Aeropean villages back home. This is just to cheer me up. It's not that we purposely left you out.]

I let out a cold laugh. Two lifetimes, and she was still running the same playbook.

She played the "small-town cousin," all wide-eyed innocence, while flaunting her importance right in my face.

The moment I showed a flicker of anger, she'd turn on the waterworks—sobbing, wailing, acting like she'd been orphaned all over again.

Casually, I used an app to generate a detailed, day-by-day luxury travel itinerary.

Me: [These spots are stunning. Make sure Dad takes you.]

After sending it, I turned off my phone.

Cathy didn't reply again.

That feeling of punching cotton—hitting nothing, no matter how hard you swing—probably left her with nowhere to put her fury.

I'd known that hollowness ever since the accident that shattered her family.

That year, my father and brother were inspecting a high-rise construction site. A falling steel girder nearly killed them both.

It was Cathy's father who shoved them aside and took the full impact.

Her mother, eight months pregnant, couldn't withstand the shock. She went into early labor and hemorrhaged on the table.

In a matter of days, Cathy lost both parents and fell gravely ill herself.

My father, drowning in guilt, took her in and funded every specialist and treatment.

Back then, she was two years my senior—my elder cousin.

It was my father who said the older sibling should watch over the younger, so we swapped what we called each other.

Later, as Cathy's PTSD worsened, she'd have violent episodes. In her rages, she'd scream at me like I was the one who'd stolen everything from her.

The doctors said we needed separation for her recovery. So my father sent me to live with distant relatives out in the countryside.

"An education is an education anywhere," he'd said. "We all owe Cathy a life! If it weren't for her father, you'd be an orphan! You can go keep an eye on your uncle's grave."

I kept watch in the countryside for three years until Cathy was finally declared stable.

Father sent for me then—but I'd become the permanent outsider in my own home.

My brother called her sis. My father called her sweetheart.

In their mouths, I became "her."

But her father died, and Cathy received a million-dollar settlement. And we had cared for Cathy, body and soul, for thirteen years.

All this time, my father neglected my own maternal grandparents' needs. Instead, he supported her paternal grandparents in full comfort until they wanted for nothing.

Relatives from her mother's side—my father found them jobs, too. Anyone even tangentially connected to her family could come to ours for a handout.

My father never complained. He only said we owed them a life.

He'd even earmarked two percent of the family company shares, waiting to transfer them to Cathy when she turned twenty-five.

But that day, four people had been walking together. With a steel beam that size coming down, her father couldn't have outrun it.

Besides, my own mother had died under that same beam. She had shoved Nick to safety with her last breath.

So why does everyone talk about "her father's sacrifice" and never speak of my mother's?

Her father has been thanked for years, showered with posthumous glory and generational wealth.

As for him, I feel no debt.

I even believe that if he hadn't called in a favor to get his friend that construction contract—a friend who cut corners—there would have been no faulty operations.

If Cathy's father's friend hadn't cut corners on the site, maybe that I-beam never would have fallen.

That whole tangled "debt of a life" had shackled me for years, forcing me into a permanent bow before my cousin. It felt like swallowing something foul—impossible to reject, impossible to digest.

I took the Bugatti out onto the open highway, pushing it hard for miles before pulling into a station and filling the tank on my brother's account. Only then did the tightness in my chest ease slightly.

When I pulled up to the campus gates, I saw my father's car. He got out and handed me a folder.

"Sweetheart. Look this over."

A flicker of genuine surprise crossed my face.

It wasn't just the ten percent stake.

But because in my last life, my father never once came to see me in this city before I died. Now, he'd flown across the country just to deliver papers.

"It's cold. Your assistant could have handled this," I said, my tone flat.

My tepid show of concern seemed to sharpen his discomfort.

"I… I also came to arrange your leave."

Suspicion coiled in my gut. He wasn't here to drag me onto that "family" trip to Aerope, was he?

"The day after tomorrow is the anniversary," he said. "The custom is that you…"

That I would kneel at the gravesite for three days and three nights, to repay the life that was owed.

That was Cathy's tradition.

I'd done it for a decade. I once believed that if I were dutiful enough, my father and brother would finally see me.

But after dying once, I no longer craved their approval.

"Dad, Cathy is his actual daughter. If she performs the rites, it would mean more," I said calmly.

"I'm in the middle of a critical research phase. Leaving now could jeopardize my entire future in the program."

The moment the words left my mouth, my father's face darkened.

"Cathy was right about you," he said coldly. "All that concern you showed was an act. You're still bitter about the trip."

He threw a signed leave form at me.

"The dean approved this himself! I don't care what 'groundbreaking' work you're doing—nothing is more important than showing respect!"

My heart turned to ice.

For thirteen years, my cousin had never once visited her father's grave, citing her fragile health.

And my father knew perfectly well my principal investigator was a pioneer in genomic research.

It had taken everything I had to earn a spot in that lab.

If I walked away now, I'd be blacklisted in the entire field.

Yet, he chose to sacrifice my future without a second thought.

It seemed that no matter how many times I lived, I would never come first in his eyes.

"Fine. I'll go back with you."

A deep, settling cold filled me. Suddenly, simply fighting for an inheritance felt too small.

We arrived in Tempas City well past midnight.

My destroyed room remained untouched.

"Audrey, I didn't let anyone clean up in here," Cathy said airily. "You should handle it yourself. If anything else goes missing, I can't be held responsible."

I almost laughed. She'd had the nerve to destroy my mother's things, but was worried I'd lose something?

I locked the door behind me without a word.

I'd only meant to clear a small space to sleep, but instead, I found an envelope. Inside was a will.

My mother had prepared it long ago, leaving all her personal assets and her shares in the family trust to me.

Combined with the ten percent from my father, it gave me controlling interest.

But… had she known she was going to die that day?

At first light, I called the attorney listed on the document.

My voice was tight. "Mr. Avery. I need to see you. Now."

So it hadn't been an accident after all.

I stared at the investigator's report, my hands trembling, tears of rage blurring the words.

Then something in me broke. I drove home like a storm, screeching to a halt in the driveway.

"Cathy! You viper! Give me back my mother!"

My brother grabbed me from behind. My father stepped forward and struck me across the face.

When the ringing in my ears faded, my voice was raw.

"Her father was a fraud. That was no accident—it was negligence covered up as a hero's death!"

My father didn't believe me. He raised his hand again.

"You ungrateful child! Three days of kneeling is too much for you? How dare you smear our savior's name!"

"Savior?"

I laughed harshly, my eyes bloodshot as I clamped down on my father's wrist.

Once the inheritance process was complete, I would hold absolute authority over the family holdings.

What right did they have to command me any longer?

"If you owe him a life so desperately," I said, my voice dropping to a deadly calm, "then you go kneel."