Chapter 6

You know, men just have more strength.

My ex-mother-in-law, Brenda, was beaten black and blue, her head wrapped in bandages, lying in the hospital bed next to Lily.

They lay shoulder to shoulder, both panting, but not a word between them.

Lily's parents were taken away by the police.

Carly, needing to care for her baby, escaped unscathed.

When she found me again, she was limping.

"You've already retrieved Mark's money, haven't you?"

"Yep."

"Then why did you lie earlier and get us all beaten up?"

Carly's left eye was swollen shut, looking like a bruised child's butt on her face.

I smiled.

"I was just joking with the mistress. Why did you hit her?"

"What right do you have to hit her?"

"I was Mark's wife. Who are you?"

"What does Mark's inheritance have to do with you?"

I rattled off a string of questions, and Carly was speechless.

Exactly. She kept claiming the child she held was Mark's, but she and Mark had no direct legal relationship of inheritance.

Carly was the product of my ex-mother-in-law's wild youth, running off with some random guy. Brenda, unable to handle hardship, ran off again when Carly was five.

She remarried later and then had my husband.

It wasn't until about a decade later that Brenda and Carly reconnected.

Reluctantly, I guess she's my ex-sister-in-law.

"But the child I'm holding *is* Mark's," Carly said with a smug smile.

"She and my mom both have inheritance rights."

Now this was a tricky problem.

Carly inherited her mom's excellent traditions. At a young age, she was messing around with a handsome hairdresser.

When she got pregnant, they planned to get married.

But as they planned, the hairdresser disappeared with his two big pairs of scissors.

By then, Carly's belly was big. Reputable doctors wouldn't perform abortions on healthy fetuses in late-term pregnancies.

She cried to Brenda, begging for money to get an abortion at a private clinic.

Brenda, uncharacteristically, persuaded her to keep the baby, and demanded that the child be registered under Mark's name.

This way, the child would be saved, it wouldn't hinder Carly from marrying a rich man later, and the child could even get official city status.

Three birds with one stone?

No, five birds.

Brenda not only saved the abortion fee but also prevented me from getting Mark's assets in the future.

If I ever dared to stir up any trouble, she could extort child support from me again.

Thinking about it, my ex-mother-in-law truly never loved either of her children; she just gave birth to two tools.

At the time, I was consumed by the grief of my miscarriage.

Mark tried every sweet talk to make me adopt this child.

I refused point-blank.

But when Carly gave birth, he secretly went to the hospital and registered the birth certificate, with "Mark Stone" written in the father's column.

A birth certificate for a child doesn't require a marriage certificate, just the parents' IDs.

But to officially adopt the child and get them registered in our family record, that would need my approval.

Mark argued and pleaded endlessly to register the child under his name.

No matter how much I talked or fought, he wouldn't budge. When the argument got heated, I blurted out:

"You can take the kid and go on dates with your mistress! While you're at it, teach her how to be a stepmom, see if she still brings you your milk!"

Mark froze, then quickly pulled out his phone and called Brenda.

"Mom, Ava said if this child enters our house, she'll choke me to death! I have a meeting, goodbye!"

A problem I'd argued and pleaded with him about for six months, he rejected in ten seconds, just because I mentioned the mistress.

I truly never expected that one day, I'd benefit from the mistress's presence.

It was from that moment on that my heart grew cold.

I started collecting all kinds of evidence of Mark's illegal and immoral activities.

Mark tried to force a divorce several times but failed, until he lost all patience, brought his mistress home to beat me up, and then got hit by a semi-truck while on the toilet.