I lay down and quietly replayed the last life in my head.

Fiona moved into my house.

At first, she was super hardworking and sweet-talking, and she slowly won over Lara.

She said her family was poor, and she'd dropped out in her junior year because they couldn't pay tuition.

In my past life, Lara and I admired her grit and optimism, so we felt comfortable having her stay with us.

That was until three months later, Fiona found a used rubber in the trash that I'd thrown away.

A little later, she told me her mother was seriously ill and borrowed 20 thousand from me.

She took the money and went to a fertility clinic. Using my sperm for IVF, she got pregnant quickly.

I had no idea. I even gave her two months off so she could go home and take care of her mother.

After she went back home, she disappeared without a trace.

A year later, she showed up at my precinct with a baby in her arms. She accused me of rape to my chief.

She cried and wailed on camera, claiming Lara had drugged her, and that she'd been taken to my bedroom to satisfy my desires.

She also said I'd abused and assaulted her during the time she worked as our nanny.

Fiona went live and publicly named me, broadcasting the whole story.

"No woman jokes about her honor," she told viewers. "I just want justice and to get this scum out of the police force."

Because of her, I was officially investigated and stripped of my badge.

I protested and demanded a paternity test. But when the lab presented the results, Fiona smiled as if she'd won.

Her child was actually mine.

Overnight, I fell from a respected officer to a criminal.

My parents emptied their savings to pay Fiona a massive settlement for emotional damages.

But the online attacks kept coming.

People smeared my parents' house with filth, sent them death threats, and even followed them with weapons.

They couldn't bear the pressure and drowned themselves.

Meanwhile, Lara was labeled an "evil witch" online and was beaten in the street. She also died in a short time.

As for my sister, guilt drove her insane; she was hospitalized before vanishing from the public eye.

I ended up in jail as a rapist and suffered all kinds of abuse.

Fiona visited me there, gloating as she revealed the whole truth.

I couldn't take it anymore. One night, I hanged myself with a towel in my cell.

I thought about it all night and realized I didn't really know Fiona.

Everything I knew about her came straight from her own mouth, and none of it held up.

The next morning, Fiona showed up right on time.

Just like before, she was hardworking, capable, and knew exactly how to say the right things.

In just two days, Lara's opinion of her completely flipped.

What Lara didn't know was that Fiona was a two-faced snake: sweet on the surface, but rotten underneath.

When Lara was around, Fiona would gush about her beauty and good taste.

But when Lara wasn't there, she'd show her real self.

"Lara sure has a lot of makeup," Fiona said once. "I don't usually wear any."

"She wears makeup to highlight her beauty," I shot back. "You wearing makeup is just a waste of product."

"Why is Lara still working while pregnant? If it were me, I'd stay home and focus on the family," she said another time.

"She's a modern woman," I replied, "not some relic stuck in the past with an outdated mindset."

"Wow, these fruits Lara bought are so expensive. She should really be more thrifty," Fiona muttered once.

"I love it when she spends my money. If you think buying fruit is too much, then you might as well stay single forever," I told her.

-

Eventually, Fiona realized her plan didn't work on me, so she stopped throwing shade at Lara.

I kept working at the precinct, and whenever I had a break, I'd pull up the cameras I'd set up at home.

It was summer break for Peter, our four-year-old boy. Fiona was supposed to be looking after him.

But what I saw in the recordings made my blood boil.

Peter, usually so mischievous, was timid and scared around Fiona.

He broke a glass once, and Fiona screamed at him, even kicking him twice.

I nearly picked up the phone right then to fire her.

When we weren't home, she acted as if she owned the place.

She slipped into Lara's silk pajamas and sprawled on the couch.

At lunchtime, she didn't cook. She just ordered two takeout meals, one for herself and one small box for Peter.

Two-thirds of the grocery money I gave her went straight into her own pocket.

And that wasn't even the worst of it.

I caught her sneaking into Lara's walk-in closet, taking jewelry and purses Lara hadn't used in a while. She sold them off and replaced them with cheap knockoffs.

She even helped herself to the expensive supplements I had bought for Lara.

I downloaded all the footage and stored it on my work computer for future use.

After that, I used Fiona's ID info to ask a buddy at a local precinct for help.

He pulled up her real records.

I took a work trip to her hometown and went with him to the small town where she lived.

That was when I found out Fiona had never gone to college at all. She had dropped out of high school after getting pregnant out of wedlock.

Later, she married a man who was a hopeless gambler and beat her constantly.

We visited her home in our capacity as local officers. While no one was looking, I planted a tiny hidden camera in her house.

When I got back, Lara told me Fiona had taken two days off to visit her parents.

I almost laughed.

What parents? Her file clearly listed her as an orphan.

But I didn't mind Fiona going back. It gave me a chance to see what kind of person she was at home.

The next day, I watched the footage from Fiona's place.

Her husband, Don Shepard, was whipping her with a belt.

"Why the hell did you come back? And empty-handed, too?" he snarled. "If those loan sharks don't get paid, I'll hand you over to them to cover the debt!"

Fiona collapsed on the floor and wailed, "Please stop hitting me! I'm really trying, but the guy who hired me this time is a cop! How could I pull anything off?"

Don paused and narrowed his eyes. "Are they rich?" he asked.

Fiona drew a breath and whispered, "Not really, but his parents have savings. They're retired officials, and they get a decent pension."

Don plopped down on the sofa. Seeing that, Fiona tried to stand, but Don snapped, "Did I tell you to stand up? Get back down!"

She immediately shrank back.

"If his family is loaded, then we can work with that. His wife's pregnant, right?" Don said as he laid out a plan. "Men are easiest to trap during this period. You're young and pretty. If you get pregnant with his kid, you can get much from him, easy."

Hearing that, Fiona gave a helpless, bitter laugh. "You think I haven't tried? He'd never go for me. I almost stripped and crawled into his bed."

As soon as she said that, Don slapped her hard. "You idiot. Who says you need to sleep with him? You could just steal one of his used rubbers and do IVF. That way, when the baby comes, he can't deny it."

Watching the two of them on the screen, plotting to bleed my family dry, I felt a cold chill through me.

So that was how we were slowly lured into Fiona's trap in my past life.

After Fiona came back, she acted extra diligently. Our usual agreement was for her to work from 9 AM to 6 PM, but lately, she'd been arriving before 7 AM, claiming she had nothing better to do.

Her first task each day was to go through the trash.

Lara was nearly five months pregnant at this point, and sometimes, we'd still get intimate.

Fiona found out about it and tried to find a used rubber.

This time, I was prepared. After Lara and I were done, I always wrapped the rubber and put it in a separate bag to throw out.

That was when a nasty little idea took shape in my head. I arranged to get a used rubber from a registered offender in town.