chapter 1
My sister and I were born enemies.
When it was our turn to reincarnate, we were supposed to be twins. But she wanted the title of little princess of the richest family in America all to herself. So she kicked me straight into the womb of a washed-up C-list actress and climbed into the billionaire wife’s belly instead.
Too bad she had no idea that family was completely insane.
The father was a ruthless tycoon with one fatal weakness: he loved his wife so much it bordered on madness. The mother was sweet, sheltered, soft-hearted to the point of dangerous innocence. And the adopted older brother? Cold, brilliant, possessive, and quietly unhinged.
In our last life, my sister was crushed by that house. Broken down piece by piece until she was barely recognizable. Her legs were ruined. Her pride was gone. She became a shadow dragging herself through a golden cage.
Meanwhile, my actress mother clawed her way up from nobody to Hollywood royalty, and she dragged me with her. I started as a child star. By the time I was grown, I was one of the hottest young actresses in the country.
But the glitter came with chains.
In the end, my sister couldn’t stand it anymore. On an awards stage, drunk on hate and jealousy, she dragged me into death with her.
When I opened my eyes again, she moved first.
She shoved me aside and dived headfirst into the C-list actress’s womb.
“This time,” she sneered, “I’ll be the one everyone worships.”
I laughed.
She had no idea that the real monster was never that rich family.
The real monster was the actress.
Back in the underworld, my sister grabbed my shoulder and flipped me away from the mirror portal, scrambling toward the pregnant actress glowing on the other side.
“Then this time,” she said with a vicious grin, “you can go be tortured by that crazy family instead, sis.”
I hung from the edge of the mirror, refusing to fall.
A young, impossibly handsome King of Hell looked down at us with tired amusement.
“Is your sister always this impatient?”
Last time, when we’d been selected for some bizarre reincarnation research project and given the right to choose our next lives, my sister had gotten too excited to listen. Before the King of Hell could even finish explaining the rules, she’d kicked me away and screamed that she refused to be born as my sister again.
He’d had no choice but to change the setup on the spot and let us choose separate families.
My sister, terrified he’d change his mind, had immediately crawled into the billionaire wife’s womb.
So in our last life, we both died without ever hearing the rest of what he’d been trying to say.
And I had always known that unfinished sentence mattered.
Now, seeing me still clinging to the edge instead of jumping, the King of Hell smiled.
“You’re smarter than she is,” he said. “Fine. I’ll tell you the extra conditions.”
After hearing him out, everything finally made sense.
When he changed the research design, he’d added two gifts to make things more interesting.
One: a directed inner-voice ability. We could project our thoughts into specific people’s minds.
Two: extraordinary beauty and talent, enough to change the fate of the life we entered.
My sister had never known. Which meant when she discovered the billionaire family was unstable, she must have lashed out inside her mother’s womb, using that ability by accident and insulting them over and over. No wonder they had hated her from the start. No wonder the adopted brother had eventually turned on her so brutally.
As for me, I had benefited from the beauty and talent in the actress’s world. It was why I had risen so high so fast.
But all that glory had hidden a nightmare so dark I still woke up feeling it under my skin.
I stared at the pregnant actress in the mirror and smiled coldly.
Congratulations, little sister. You just took my place in hell.
This time, I would use every gift I had. From the moment I was in the womb, I would make that rich family treasure me.
“Thank you,” I whispered to the King of Hell.
Then I let go.
And dove into the billionaire wife’s body.