Chapter 2

I stared blankly, frozen in confusion.

Anthony Reed didn't care that I was wearing nothing but a thin nightgown. He grabbed my arm and dragged me out of the bedroom forcefully.

Panicked, I clutched my chest to keep myself covered, my heart pounding so hard it felt like it might burst.

No matter how much I screamed or begged him to stop, he didn't listen. He was like a man possessed, his grip unrelenting as he pulled me through the house.

The mansion was fully lit, and the household staff stood in two neat rows, their faces tense and uneasy.

Anthony flung me down the stairs. I tumbled, rolling down step after step, until I finally hit the cold, hard floor.

Disoriented and aching all over, my hand brushed against something icy and wet.

Ignoring the pain, I turned my head to look. What I saw made my breath catch in my throat.

It was… my mother-in-law.

She lay in a pool of blood, her lifeless eyes wide open, her pupils dull and dilated. Her face was twisted in terror, as if even in death, she couldn't find peace.

How was this possible?

The wedding had gone perfectly. She had survived that day.

How could she be dead now, in our home?

I couldn't understand. Why, despite my second chance, had she still died?

Suddenly, a sharp pain shot through my scalp.

Anthony grabbed a fistful of my hair, yanking my head back to force me to look at him.

His eyes were bloodshot, his jaw clenched so tightly I thought his teeth might crack.

"Quinn Taylor," he hissed, "don't you have anything to say for yourself?"

"My mom had finally come around to accepting you. She even gave you the family heirloom bracelet to show she welcomed you into the Reed family. What more could you possibly want? How could you be so cruel?"

I sobbed, shaking my head violently.

"It wasn't me, Anthony! I swear, it wasn't me! I was asleep! When you left, I was already asleep—I couldn't have done anything to her!"

The Reeds were a prominent family, wealthy and powerful. My family, by comparison, was ordinary—completely out of their league.

At first, my mother-in-law was vehemently against our relationship.

Anthony, however, was determined to marry me. He defied her, rejected every woman she tried to set him up with, and even threatened to give up his position as the heir to the Reed family fortune.

This only made her hatred for me grow stronger. She once declared that I would only enter the Reed family "over her dead body."

But Anthony's resolve didn't waver. If anything, her opposition only strengthened his commitment to me.

Later, when his mother fell ill and needed a bone marrow transplant, I turned out to be a match.

When she learned that I was her donor, her attitude softened. Slowly, she began to accept me.

I had saved her life. How could I possibly be the one to harm her?

Anthony let out a bitter laugh and shoved my head away.

"Oh, really? So you're saying the security footage is lying to me?"

He glared at me with disgust, his voice dripping with venom.

"Quinn Taylor, I never thought you'd be the kind of person to stab someone in the back. To act so respectful and obedient in front of my mom, only to turn around and kill her behind closed doors. Look at this, and tell me it's not you!"

My head hit the floor with a thud, leaving me dizzy and in pain.

Anthony held up his phone, showing me a surveillance video.

On the screen, a woman wearing a nightgown identical to mine appeared. Her build, her face—everything about her screamed that it was me.

In the footage, the woman said something to my mother-in-law, causing her expression to change drastically. She raised her hand as if to strike the woman, but the woman shoved her instead.

My mother-in-law stumbled backward, falling down the stairs. She landed hard at the bottom, groaning in pain.

But the woman didn't stop there. She picked up a vase and smashed it over my mother-in-law's head. Again and again.

Finally, my mother-in-law's neck twisted at an unnatural angle, and she stopped moving.

The woman stood there, disheveled and cold-eyed, before calmly walking back upstairs to the master bedroom.

I watched in horror, my body trembling uncontrollably.

Anthony grabbed me by the throat, his grip tightening as he leaned in close.

"Look at yourself," he snarled. "There's blood on your nightgown—my mom's blood. And it matches exactly with the video. Are you still going to deny it, Quinn? Are you still going to pretend you didn't kill her?"

My eyes dropped to my white nightgown, and sure enough, there was a large stain of dried blood on it. It was in the exact same spot as the bloodstain on the woman's nightgown in the video.

How… how could this be?

Was it possible that I really had killed her?

I clung to Anthony's shirt, tears streaming down my face as I broke into uncontrollable sobs.

"Anthony, I… I think I'm sick. I don't remember anything—I don't remember! I'm sorry… I'm so sorry…"

In my first life, I had been so sure of my innocence.

Even after being reborn, I had clung to that belief.

But now?

Now I wasn't so sure.