The second the pool water rose over my lashes, I heard Beth’s stiletto heels crush the crystal champagne tower. “Loyalty?” She crouched at the pool’s edge, the tip of her scissors pressing against the neckline of my wedding gown—its silver gleam stabbing my eyes. “You stole Edward from me for three years, and now you hide behind a chastity monument?” Foam dripped from my chin into the water—green-tinged, like tears gone sour. Guests formed a half-circle around the pool, phones raised, lenses fixed on my soaked lace bodice—where a small patch of dark red bloomed: skin torn open by her fingernails moments earlier. “Look closely.” I seized her wrist—and yanked. The scissors plunged with a dull *thunk* to the pool floor. As Beth shrieked and tumbled in, I whipped off my veil and looped it tight around her throat. At the explosion of water, every livestream feed flickered—three seconds of static snow. A backdoor I’d planted last night, deep inside the villa’s security system. She thrashed, choking, pearls flying from her ears just before vanishing down the drain. I leaned in, lips brushing her burning ear: “Stepmother dear… In your husband’s study safe—the third compartment—you’ll find seven paternity reports.” A sharp, rhythmic *click-clack* echoed from the doorway—leather on marble. Not Edward’s usual Oxford shoes. Boots. Military issue. I wiped foam from my eyes and looked up. Framed in the arched entryway, backlit by the sun, stood a man in black tactical gear. A rusted copper bell dangled from his left ear. The faded eagle insignia on his shoulder patch matched—exactly—the one pinned to the lapel of the officer who stood beside my father’s casket fifteen years ago. Beth froze. Her nails dug deep into my forearm. “...Colonel Lin? You were declared KIA in Afghanistan.” He didn’t glance at her. His gaze locked onto my left hand—my ring finger. Where a diamond should have glinted, only a faint pale line remained. “Anna.” His voice was raw, like sandpaper dragged over corroded iron. “Your mother’s last words were this: *So long as that ring remains, the one who took the fall for you hasn’t died yet.*” The pool water shimmered—an unnatural, electric blue. I looked down. Beneath my waterlogged wedding skirt, glowing digits rose slowly from the depths: **07:23:11** Seven hours, twenty-three minutes, eleven seconds—left on the countdown.

The instant I plunged into the pool, Isabella’s scream lodged in her throat—like a violin string abruptly snapped. Three meters underwater, her skirt billowed like black seaweed, tangling around my wrist. I seized her ankle and hauled her upward; my fingertips brushed an old scar along the inside of her calf—the one she’d gotten at seven, when she shoved me into a glass door to snatch the strawberry cake from my hands. Breaking the surface, she choked and coughed, curling into a shrimp-like hunch, her mascara smeared into two bruised streaks beneath her eyes. On the poolside, my mother gripped her champagne flute until it clicked and groaned in her hand. My father stood crookedly, his tie askew, his gaze locked onto the mole behind my left ear—the exact spot marked “distinguishing mole” on his twenty-year-old sperm donation records. “Asher?” My mother’s voice trembled. “You… you were placed in foster care at five…” “By you,” I said, wiping water from my face. My soaked work vest clung tightly to my chest, revealing an old, worm-like scar just below my collarbone. “That day, Isabella wore a new dress—and tossed candy wrappers at me through the car window.” Sirens pierced the party music. Two officers stepped forward, cuffs glinting. Before they could speak, Isabella grabbed my arm: “Wait—he saved me!” Before the words fully left her lips, her phone slipped from her drenched skirt pocket. The screen lit up with an unsent text draft: [Dad, Asher broke in again today—to steal the ring. This time I caught him on camera opening your safe…] I looked down at her. Water dripped from her jawline into the pool, rippling outward in quiet, concentric circles. Turns out the sharpest blade is always hidden inside the sweetest wrapper.

The glass doors of the hospital lobby shattered inward just as I crouched in the corner of the pediatric IV area, swabbing the palms of a little girl with a fever using an alcohol pad. She was delirious with heat, clutching the cuff of my white coat. Her voice was faint: “Sister… are you the one who gave me the injection last time—the one that didn’t hurt?” I didn’t answer. Just pressed the pad even more gently. Then—screams tore through the air. “Lin Wan! You actually have the nerve to show up here?!” My ex-husband, Chen Zhe, seized his former wife’s arm. His wedding ring still gleamed on his finger, blindingly bright. “You’ve brought *him*—some random man—to steal our child?!” Behind him stood a man in an Armani suit, his gold watch catching the light as he calmly adjusted his cufflinks—her current husband, Xie Yan. “Steal?” Xie Yan smiled faintly—soft-spoken, yet the entire hall fell half a beat silent. “Dr. Chen, the third coronary bypass you performed? I stepped in and completed it. Dare you claim your daughter is standing here today because of *your* hands—hands that have trembled for three years?” A murmur rippled through the crowd. I kept swabbing the girl’s palms. The sharp scent of alcohol spread like a silent fuse. Then—she seized. Not from the fever. It was status epilepticus—the EEG report had just flashed in. The monitor shrieked. Red alarm lights pulsed across the tiled floor, like blood beating. The head nurse rushed over, shoving me aside: “Hurry—call Chief Lin!” No one answered. Because Chief Lin wasn’t in the lobby. She was inside the ICU, gowned in full isolation gear, kneeling on one knee—barehanded, steadying an ECMO pump on the verge of failure. The seventh-generation artificial heart-lung system she’d personally modified. The only person in the hospital qualified to recalibrate its parameters. Meanwhile, in the center of the lobby, Chen Zhe pointed straight at me: “*Her!* That new night-shift nurse! She altered my daughter’s medication records yesterday—*in secret!*” Xie Yan turned—and locked eyes with me. Three seconds passed. He removed his watch and tossed it to his assistant. “Clear Operating Room One. Then call Director Shen—and tell him: ‘Qingluan is awake.’” Silence crashed down—absolute, suffocating. Even the monitor’s shrill beep seemed to stutter. I finally released the girl’s hand, rose, and smoothed my white coat—its hem stained with fresh, glistening alcohol, shimmering cold-blue under the lights. I pulled off my mask. At my left earlobe, a silver earring shaped like a needle caught the light—the insignia of the National Young Neurosurgeon Championship, melted down and recast by my own hands. Xie Yan walked toward me. His dress shoes crushed rumors beneath each step. He stopped before me, bent, and picked up the alcohol pad I’d dropped—his fingertip brushing mine, damp with antiseptic. Then, in full view of everyone, he gently traced the old scar running across the back of my hand—the one carved by splintered bone three years ago, in a field hospital in Africa, when I’d held open a child’s neck wound with my bare hands to extract shrapnel lodged in the carotid artery. “Dr. Lin Wan,” he said softly—yet the chandeliers above hummed in resonance. “It’s time you returned to the operating table.” The LED screen mounted high in the lobby flickered once. Then switched automatically—to live surgery feed. The surgical lamp flared. A pair of gloved hands lifted the titanium neuro-dissector—the only three such instruments in existence. The camera panned slowly upward. Revealing a face calm to the point of austerity. And eyes—washed clean with alcohol, yet forever stained with blood.

The day she signed the divorce agreement, she wore a white dress—like attending a funeral. The pen hovered over the signature line for three seconds. It didn’t descend. The doctor pushed open the door: “Mrs. Lin, your husband’s prenatal exam report is ready—the fetus is perfectly healthy.” She lifted her gaze—and at the end of the corridor, he was crouched before the pregnant woman, one hand resting gently on her swollen belly, the other tying her shoelace. Sunlight slanted through the glass window, gilding the undersides of his lowered lashes—tender, blinding. In her hand, the ultrasound slip bore a diagnosis from the same hospital, same time, another examination room: 【Advanced Endometriosis; Natural Conception Probability < 0.3%】 【Urgent surgery recommended—otherwise, permanent infertility is inevitable】 That slip—she’d clutched it yesterday in trembling silence, walked out of the gynecology clinic alone. No one knew. Not even him. She folded the divorce agreement neatly and tucked it into the deepest compartment of her bag. When she turned, her stiletto heel shattered a mosaic of light across the floor. No one saw her pause at the corner pharmacy after leaving the hospital and buy three boxes of ovulation-inducing injections. No one saw her return that night to the hollow shell of their marital home, open the safe, and lift out a sandalwood box—inside, seven DNA comparison reports, each dated across different years. The earliest, stamped 2018, bore the stark title: *“Negative Biological Parentage Conclusion Between Mr. Lin Yanzhou and Ms. Su Wan”* And “Su Wan”? His current fiancée—the woman hailed across the internet as his “life-saving angel” after his car accident-induced amnesia. Her phone vibrated. An unknown number sent a photo: A storm-lashed night. An ambulance’s rotating red light. He, drenched in blood, lifted onto a stretcher. And standing beneath an umbrella in the rain—her profile, sharp as a blade carved in obsidian— Not Su Wan. Me. I lowered my head and wrote a single line on the bathroom mirror with crimson lipstick—fresh, vivid as blood: **His Goddess Didn’t Wait — She Rewrote the Script.** At the birthday gala, the crystal chandeliers burned so fiercely they stung the eyes. He entered on Su Wan’s arm. The entire room rose, applauding. I glided forward, champagne flute in hand, skirt sweeping over scattered roses—stopping three paces away. He smiled. “Qingyi. Long time.” I smiled back—soft, effortless—and raised an old pocket watch. Its lid sprang open. No hands inside. Just a tiny chip, pulsing faint blue light. “Lin Yanzhou,” I said, voice low—but the ballroom fell utterly silent, breath held, “guess why that voice memo you recorded for Su Wan… never sends?” His face went pale. I tilted my head, the smile freezing, then fading. “Because I hear every word you say.” “From the very first lie.” *“God made me His puppet—but He forgot to teach me how to kneel and love a liar.”* The rim of the champagne flute touched my lips. I tipped my head back and drank it all. Behind me, the main screen flared to life— Footage from *every* secret meeting he’d had with Su Wan over the past three years: timestamps, locations, real-time subtitles, precise to the millisecond. The final frame froze on last night’s private monologue in his study: *“As long as Qingyi doesn’t investigate—this marriage stays unshaken.”* I snapped the watch shut. Turned. Walked away. Each heel struck the marble like a countdown hitting zero. —Revenge isn’t the end. It’s her shattering the altar herself—then picking up every shard, and assembling them, piece by deliberate piece, into a throne.

Aidan is dumped by his girlfriend on their wedding day and quickly marries Flora, the CEO of the Vale Group. What seemed like a peaceful life turns chaotic when Flora suspects Aidan might be the lost heir, Wyatt. As their fates intertwine, Aidan gets caught in family power struggles... What secrets lie beneath this sudden marriage?

Emma was working the night shift at the convenience store when the glass door slammed open. A blood-soaked man staggered in and locked the door behind him. She recognized those eyes—three years ago, at the crash site, he had held her dying body and wept until his voice broke. Back then, she was called Lena Walker. Now she’s Emma Kim, living under a new identity, even her heartbeat trained to lie. "Don’t call the police," he gasped, knuckles pressing against the counter. "They’re trying to kill me… because of you." Footsteps echoed outside. Three shadows passed across the window. Without hesitation, she lifted the counter flap and pulled him into the back. She brought antiseptic, gauze, a needle and thread. Her hands were steady—not like someone saving a life, but fulfilling a fate. He stared at her. "You’ve changed." "And aren’t you alive too?" she shot back coldly. "Didn’t you swear to die with me after I was gone?" Before the words faded, gunfire exploded outside. Glass shattered. A man kicked the door open, gun aimed at her head: "Walker bloodline—you're due to pay." Lucas lunged. A struggle erupted. A bullet grazed her cheek. Blood dripped onto his lips. He suddenly smiled. "Remember this taste? You once said blood was your favorite perfume." When the police arrived, they found the two of them sitting in a pool of blood, laughing at each other like lunatics. The media captured it all. The headline rocked the city: *Behind the Nightclub Shooting: Lovers or Accomplices?* But only Emma sensed something was wrong. In the moment before he lost consciousness, he slipped her a note that read: *You’re not Lena. Who are you?* And on the last page of her diary, written in unfamiliar left-handed script: "This time, I’ll kill you."