Sarah woke to the pain. It felt like someone was smashing her lower belly to pulp with something blunt, over and over, until she was shaking cold all over.

Inside the operating room a nurse's voice came fast and sharp:

"Massive hemorrhage! Her pressure's still dropping! Where's the blood bank? Someone call the blood bank, now!"

Another voice answered her, taut with panic:

"I already called. They said all the blood's been transferred out!"

"What?"

"There's a Miss Winfield over in obstetrics with some light bleeding, and Mr. Sanchez had the entire blood supply diverted to her. He said Miss Winfield comes first."

Sarah lay on the operating table, her mind sinking and surfacing in slow waves. She wasn't surprised. She was only very tired.

Beside her ear, that frantic, trembling voice: "How can they do this? This patient is critical!"

"Nothing we can do. Everyone knows how precious that one in obstetrics is. We don't have the pull to get blood released right now."

Sarah didn't even have the strength left to cry out. The world went black in front of her. With the last thread of strength she had, she found the nurse's hand.

"Please, call the emergency contact on my phone. He can get blood."

Her emergency contact was her assistant. With her connections on the north side of the Capital, getting blood was something they could manage.

She didn't need Ralph Sanchez to survive. But this debt, she would remember.

When she woke again it was the following afternoon. A nurse gently slowed her IV drip. "The surgery went reasonably well. Rest properly and there won't be any lasting damage."

"Creak."

The door swung open. Jocelyn Winfield walked in and mildly saw the nurse out.

"Sorry to trouble you. I'm just here to see my sister."

She leaned against the door, her lower belly slightly rounded, tilting her head as she looked at Sarah. Her voice was sweet. "Sister, how are you still not dead?"

Her expression didn't change, still pretty and coy, as if she were asking after Sarah's health. "The whole blood supply was with me. I really thought you wouldn't pull through."

"Are you waiting for Ralph? He's not coming. Calling the police already set him off. Sister, you really are naive. No proof, no evidence. Who's going to believe those men were hired by me?"

Sarah lay back against the pillow, her face pale to the point of near translucence, but her expression was cold.

She picked up the voice recorder and pressed play.

The thug's voice came, low. "The second Miss Winfield paid me to put on a show with her."

Sarah smiled, calm. "Care to provoke me again?"

Jocelyn's grip tightened on the door handle. "You wouldn't dare... and even if you release it, no one will believe you!"

"Heh." Sarah gave a small, unhurried laugh. "Then let's try."

Jocelyn's face went white. She spun around and ran out.

Sarah leaned back against the pillow and closed her eyes for a while. Ten minutes later, Ralph came.

He looked exhausted. "Sarah, Jocelyn told me everything."

"The kidnapping." Ralph paused. "She hired those men herself."

Sarah shot back, "And? What are you trying to say?"

Ralph was silent for a long time, so long that Sarah thought he wouldn't answer at all.

"She's only an adopted daughter. If this gets out, if Mr. and Mrs. Winfield hear of it, if outsiders hear of it, she won't be able to stay in the Winfield family, or on the north side of the Capital, at all."

Sarah nodded. "So you're going to keep covering for her."

Ralph lifted his eyes to her, his gaze tangled with something she couldn't read. "Sarah, Jocelyn didn't mean it. She was just too scared, scared we'd stop looking out for her. She's young, so couldn't you just—"

"Ralph." Sarah cut him off, her tone flat. "This recording, I'm willing not to release it."

"But you'll have to sign something."

The day before, she'd had Lawyer Simmons draft a share transfer agreement overnight. She wanted five percent of the Sanchez Group shares held in Ralph's name.

When Ralph saw the agreement, he let out a breath of relief. He signed quickly, without even reading the terms carefully. In his mind, five percent in exchange for a recording that could ruin Jocelyn was no loss at all.

And more than that, Sarah wanting money set him at ease. What he feared most was her wanting nothing at all.

After he signed, he reached out to touch Sarah's face. She turned her head aside and avoided it.

"Rest well."

Sarah said nothing. She already had what she wanted. This five percent would, one day, deal Ralph a fatal blow.

The next morning, Sarah got an anonymous text: “Want it back? Meet me in the freezer.”

Attached was a photo of a bracelet. A bracelet she knew all too well. Her grandmother's keepsake.

She'd guessed right. Jocelyn really did have it.

Sarah stood up. She knew it was a trap, and she went anyway. Not because she was a fool, but because she needed Jocelyn to take the bait.

Sure enough, the moment she stepped into the walk-in freezer, the door slammed shut behind her.

The cold seeped in through every seam. Sarah wrapped her arms tight around herself. She'd told the assistant before coming in. Half an hour more, and he'd bring people to open the freezer.

What she didn't expect was that the one who came wasn't the assistant. It was Ralph, his face taut with panic.

She heard him calling her name over and over, a raw, frantic edge in his voice she'd never heard before.

Ralph held her close to warm her, his fingers shaking worse than hers.

“She tricked you into coming here, didn't she?”

Sarah's lips were a bruised purple. She couldn't speak.

“I've already punished her.” His voice dropped low. “Jocelyn went too far. I locked her in the storeroom. She's terrified, Sarah. Just forgive her this once, all right?”

Sarah's frozen lashes trembled. So his panic hadn't been for her at all. It was fear that Jocelyn might be punished for this.

She slowly pushed Ralph away, dug her phone out from under the pillow, and pressed three keys.

“Hello, I need to report a crime.”

Ralph froze. “What are you doing?”

Sarah spoke each word slowly and clearly. “Someone deliberately hurt me and locked me in a freezer. I have her IP address.”

She hung up and watched the color drain from Ralph's face, inch by inch.

“Sarah…”

“Ralph.” She let out a soft laugh. “When you do something wrong, you should be punished.”

Jocelyn was still crying when the police took her away. “I was just messing around with my sister!”

Ralph planted himself in the doorway, shielding Jocelyn, but the evidence was airtight. He couldn't stop them.

The next day, to Sarah's surprise, Jocelyn was released. Ralph had hired the best lawyer, had the whole thing reclassified as a family dispute, and with Jocelyn being pregnant, she walked free that same day.

That night, Jocelyn slit her wrist in the bathroom. Not deep, just enough to make the blood look terrifying.

She threw herself into Ralph's arms, her face ghost-white. “The holding cell was so dark, I was so scared. I was only playing a joke on my sister. How could she be so cruel! I'd be better off dead!”

And in the middle of Jocelyn's sobbing, Ralph made his decision.

He looked at Sarah, his expression grave. “Jocelyn's in a fragile state. Two days from now, I want to hold a wedding for her, to help her steady herself.”

“Don't worry, Sarah. I won't register the marriage with her. I just want to make her happy. After all, what you did really was a bit too much.”

“What does that have to do with me?” Sarah's voice was flat.

“I want you to be the bridesmaid at the wedding, to give Jocelyn a good showing. Let everyone see that Mrs. Sanchez herself attended in person, proof that we're not having an affair, that Jocelyn isn't the other woman.”

The hard lines of Ralph's face softened.

“Sarah, you have to help her.”

“You're insane.” A thin ache pricked at Sarah's chest. She couldn't understand it, no matter how she tried, how Ralph could say something like this.

Once she had her emotions under control, Sarah nodded. “Fine.”

She was planning to leave anyway.

Ralph froze. He'd expected Sarah to make a scene, to refuse. He hadn't expected her to agree so readily.

So readily that an uneasiness he couldn't name rose up in him. But the urge to comfort Jocelyn quickly pushed it back down.

Two days later, the wedding went ahead as scheduled. Once the ceremony was over, Sarah and Jocelyn sat together in the dressing room, removing their makeup.

Jocelyn's smile was smug and taunting. “So, sister, how does it feel?”

Sarah had her back to her. Before she could get a word out, she heard a scream.

“Ah!”

The door burst open. A hand clamped over Sarah's mouth and nose, and she blacked out within moments.

When she woke again, she and Jocelyn were lashed tight to chairs. Before them stretched an abandoned warehouse, and a scar-faced man with a cigarette clamped between his teeth, his whole face twisted with menace, shouted toward the door: "Ralph Sanchez, last year you cost me two of my brothers. Today we settle the account."

"I'm a fair man. You killed my brothers, so I touch your people. Even, isn't it? Today, your wife and your mistress — you only get to walk out with one."

Ralph's gaze wandered between Sarah and Jocelyn.

Jocelyn's face was frozen in terror, as if she might faint at any second.

Sarah, by contrast, stayed calm, her expression serene.

Ralph pressed his lips together and looked at Sarah. Something like guilt flickered in his eyes.

"I want the one on the right."

The one on the right was Jocelyn.

All at once Sarah remembered something Ralph had said to her in her last life: "Why don't you just go die?"

But why should she be the one to die?

Just as the kidnappers moved to untie Jocelyn, Sarah spoke, cool and even. "Since you're Ralph's enemy, you should strike where it hurts him most. And clearly, I may be his wife, but I'm not the person he cares about."

The scarred man froze for a beat, then clapped his hands and roared with laughter. "Well said. You've got some nerve."

He raised a hand, signaling his men to release Sarah.

Sarah worked her wrists loose, walked out of the abandoned warehouse, and left Jocelyn's terrified screams behind her.

"No! Don't come near me!"

"Jocelyn!"

Watching Jocelyn take the blows, Ralph lost his composure and charged in with his men.

Sarah watched only for a moment before she left. They had brought all of this on themselves.

The police arrived in time. Ralph got away with a broken arm, and Jocelyn with nothing worse than minor injuries.

Her flight left the next day. Sarah returned to the Sanchez house one last time, and after confirming there was nothing she wanted to take, she pushed open the door only to find bodyguards, fully assembled, blocking her way.

Ralph stepped out of the shadows, his voice low and heavy:

"Sarah, Jocelyn lost a big patch of skin off her arm. She hasn't stopped crying. Could you, could you give Jocelyn a graft? The doctor says out of all the available donors, only you and she are a match."

Sarah refused without hesitation. "No."

She let out a short laugh, her voice like a blade. "Ralph, when she locked me in that freezer, why didn't you tell her to stop? She gets one cut and you're so heartbroken you want me to patch her skin? Why don't you tell her to give me back my child?"

Ralph's expression turned cold. "Sarah, Jocelyn suffered in your place. You owe her this."

At his signal, the bodyguards pinned Sarah down, hauled her into the hospital, and got her onto an operating table.

"Get off me!"

"Ralph, this is unlawful confinement! Have you lost your mind?"

Ralph tried to soothe her. "Sarah, I'll make it up to you."

Sarah fought with everything she had, but it changed nothing. When the graft blade came down, all she felt was cold and numb.

After the long procedure, Sarah drifted under the anesthesia until the next day.

Her last thought before going under was that this time, unlawful confinement plus deliberate bodily harm — this time no lawyer, however good, could save Ralph.

When she woke, she was on her feet at once, rushing toward Jocelyn's room, only to reach the doorway and find it empty.

Ralph's assistant walked in and explained. "Mrs. Sanchez, Mr. Sanchez took Miss Winfield to the temple to pray for blessings."

Sarah gave the faintest nod. "Fine."

She lingered no longer and turned to leave.

"Mrs. Sanchez, where are you going?"

Sarah didn't look back. "Stop calling me Mrs. Sanchez," she said flatly.

On the way, she sent the wedding footage to Ralph's archrival.

"Want a chance to knock Ralph down a peg? Here you go."

Then she set up a scheduled social-media post. The recording of Jocelyn throwing herself down the stairs, the full account of the freezer incident, the recording of the thugs, that whole session of the family's rattan cane — all of it would go public.

Because she knew that the moment this broke, Jocelyn would play the victim to milk sympathy.

One life over again, and she had Jocelyn figured out down to the bone.

There was no reason she should be left torn to pieces while those two walked away untouched.

Then she opened her chat with Lawyer Simmons. "Lawyer Simmons, I want to sue Ralph for unlawful confinement and deliberate bodily harm. The evidence is in your inbox."

Last of all, Sarah sent to Ralph's inbox a paternity test showing that the child in Jocelyn's belly belonged to another man.

Outside the hospital, Sarah flagged down a taxi.

"To the airport."

Her flight was about to leave. Before boarding, she switched off her phone.

The freshly grafted skin on her arm was still oozing blood, but it no longer hurt. Sarah walked into the cabin and did not look back.