At my own lavish, once-in-a-lifetime wedding, my sister drugged herself with an aphrodisiac and begged me to “lend” her my new husband, a decorated military major general.

I called her childhood friend to help.

But when my sister, Julia, woke up and realized it wasn’t Captain Hayes beside her, she threw herself from a balcony in a fit of shame and fury.

James Hayes didn’t blame me. He treated me the same as he always had. Racked with guilt, I sang his praises to my father, the Commander in Chief of the armed forces.

But the day he was promoted to General, the very first thing he did was have his men force-feed me the same drug and dump me in an enemy encampment.

“If it weren’t for you, Julia would never have suffered like that,” he hissed, his face a mask of hatred. “You’re going to pay for it a thousand times over.”

I was tortured to death, my body and the baby inside me cremated as a sacrifice on my sister’s altar.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on my wedding day, my sister weeping at my feet, begging me to give her James.

1.

“Please, Ava, I’m begging you. If word of this gets out, how could the Thorne family ever show its face in public again? And it happened at your wedding, of all places. We’re family, just… just lend me your husband this one time…?”

My sister’s face was flushed a deeper red than a boiled lobster. She clung to my leg, her pleas a desperate, shameless whimper.

I stared down at her, my disgust a cold, hard knot in my stomach as I wrenched my leg free.

In my last life, her tears had thrown me into a panic. I’d been desperate to protect her reputation, to spare her the embarrassment of facing James again. So I had called her childhood friend, the man she’d secretly loved for years, to help.

But when Julia woke up the next morning, she flew into a rage, blaming me for everything before making a grand, public spectacle of leaping from a balcony.

James had said nothing. I thought he was unaffected.

But on the day of his promotion to General—a promotion I had helped him secure—he gave the order. His men forced an aphrodisiac down my throat and threw me to our enemies.

As I was defiled, my flesh carved from my bones, I saw him watching, his face twisted with a sick, triumphant hatred.

“After what you did to Julia,” he spat, “no amount of suffering is enough for you.”

The sound of hurried footsteps pulled me back to the present. James, still in his groom’s tuxedo, appeared in the doorway. His eyes, when they fell on Julia, were filled with an unmistakable ache.

The moment Julia saw him, she scrambled across the floor, sobbing, and clutched his leg. “Help me…” she whimpered, her face burning with a mixture of shame and desperate need.

A dark blush crept up James’s neck. He shot a glance at me, his jaw tight. “…Ava and I just finished our wedding ceremony. This isn’t right.”

He said the words, but his tone was a lie. He was practically vibrating with the desire to pounce on her. He tugged at the collar of his uniform as if it were a noose, and the look he gave me was filled with resentment and disgust.

A cold, humorless laugh escaped my lips. They were so obvious. How had I been so blind?

This time, I would give them exactly what they wanted.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, my voice flat. “We’re both the Commander’s daughters. Marrying one is the same as marrying the other. You can always have another wedding.”

James’s head snapped up, his eyes wide with shock. He clearly hadn't expected the woman who had been so ecstatic to marry him just hours before to say something like this. He opened his mouth, but no words came out.

He didn't have time to think. Hearing my permission, Julia grew bolder, wrapping herself around his neck like an octopus and pulling him down for a kiss.

James shot me one last, fleeting glance before his face turned beet red. He swept Julia into his arms and carried her into the adjoining room, shutting the door behind them.

I stared at the closed door, my expression blank. My reflection in the nearby mirror showed a woman in a magnificent white gown.

A laugh bubbled up from my chest.

Hilarious. Utterly, ridiculously hilarious.

I turned to my assistant, who was frozen in place, speechless with shock. “Help me out of this dress,” I said. I pulled out my phone and sent a single, public message announcing that the wedding was off.

Then, after months of nonstop, frantic wedding preparations, I let the exhaustion claim me. I collapsed onto the bed and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

I had no idea that when I woke up, the world would have turned upside-down.

2.

My assistant shook me awake, her face pale with panic. My phone was buzzing nonstop. Seventy-seven missed calls from my father, each more frantic than the last, culminating in a single, terse text: “GET TO THE MANSION. NOW.”

“Ma’am… the Commander said I need to bring you to the family estate immediately. Your sister and… your ex-fiancé… I think they went to see him,” she stammered.

My mind raced. What have those two done now?

I rushed to the Thorne family mansion and was stunned by the scene. The grand hall was packed. I’d never seen so many relatives in one place, not even for a funeral. They were all sitting in stiff, perfect rows, and as I walked in, every single head turned toward me, their faces grim and accusatory.

A teacup shattered at my feet. My father’s roar of rage broke the silence like a clap of thunder.

“You disgraceful child, get over here! Look at what you’ve done to your sister!”

Julia immediately burst into crocodile tears. A great-aunt I barely knew looked me up and down with a sneer.

“Well, well, Ava. Look how you’ve upset your father. Tsk, tsk. This was your wedding, planned entirely by you. How could you let Julia drink something so… indecent?”

Julia shot the aunt a look, then let out a theatrical wail, as if the words were too much to bear. “I can’t live like this!” she shrieked, making a show of running for the door.

A flurry of relatives jumped up to stop her, cooing and pleading.

I watched her performance with cold detachment. She was always good at playing the victim. In my last life, she’d used the same tactic, her dramatic suicide attempt nothing more than a show. She’d had a parachute hidden and had spent the next few years living it up in Europe, only to return after my death to claim my inheritance.

I looked at her, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “If you really want to die, the window is faster.”

A vicious slap cracked across my face, sending me sprawling to the floor. The pain was a white-hot flash. I felt a warm trickle from my nose and brought a hand to my face. It came away covered in blood.

My father’s face was contorted with fury. “You think you’ve done nothing wrong? How dare you provoke your sister! Will you be happy when you’ve driven her to her death?”

“Now,” he bellowed, his spittle hitting my cheek, “get on your knees and apologize! If you don’t, you are no longer a Thorne!”

Behind him, nestled in the arms of our relatives, Julia looked at me, a flicker of triumph in her tear-filled eyes.

This was a drama of her own making. Why was I the one being punished?

Facing their universal condemnation, I clenched my jaw, a bitter taste rising in my throat. “Dad,” I asked, my voice shaking, “would Mom be proud of you right now?”

3.

My mother was his lawfully wedded wife. I was supposed to be his only, cherished daughter.

But when I was ten, there was an assassination attempt. At the last second, my mother threw herself in front of him, taking the bullets meant for him.

She died. My only mother was gone.

I remember my father holding me, his usually stoic face streaked with tears, promising he would take care of me for the rest of his life.

The very next year, he brought home an illegitimate daughter—Julia. A year older than me. And just like that, I was forced to call her “sister.” The knot of injustice in my stomach was just the beginning. I had no idea how much worse things were going to get.

…

My eyes filled with tears as I looked at my father, my voice choked with unshed sobs.

For a moment, his expression softened. He frowned, a flicker of memory in his eyes.

But Julia, sensing the shift, broke free from the huddle of relatives.

“Father, I’m so sorry, it’s all my fault,” she cried, her eyes swimming with tears. “It would be better if I had never been born! My sister hates me so much… I might as well just die!”

She lunged for the decorative sword mounted in the entryway and held it to her own throat.

“Good heavens, child!” The relatives, seeing the alarm on my father’s face, scrambled to disarm her.

In the ensuing chaos, my father rushed to Julia’s side. As he passed me, he aimed a vicious kick at my ribs, sending me crashing back to the floor.

It was the signal for the pack to descend.

“Arrogant little brat, causing all this trouble!”

“I never liked you, Ava… and now this scandal at your wedding! It’s a disgrace!”

“Look at her, with that sly face… always bullying poor, sweet Julia!”

Fists and feet rained down on me. My dress was torn, my skin covered in bruises. They scrawled insults on my arms in lipstick. A sharp pain shot through my throat, and I coughed up a mouthful of blood. “You hypocrites…” I rasped, my vision blurring. “Don’t you have daughters of your own? Aren’t you afraid of karma?”

I pulled out the jade seal my grandmother had secretly given me. “I dare you to touch me again!” I screamed.

It only made them angrier. A distant male cousin brought his heel down on my ribs with a sickening crack. “Who are you cursing, you unloved little bitch?” he sneered. “You think that little trinket scares anyone?”

Pain exploded through my body. As my consciousness started to fade, I saw Julia, in the middle of the chaos, “accidentally” stomp on the jade bracelet on my wrist.

It was my mother’s. A multi-million dollar piece she’d given me, taken from her own wrist in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. They say jade has a spirit, that it protects its wearer. I had always thought of it as my mother’s guardian angel, sent to watch over me.

And now it was shattered.

How dare she? How far was she willing to go?

A surge of adrenaline shot through me. I scrambled to my feet, grabbed Julia by the collar, and slapped her with all my might.

The next second, a brutal kick to my stomach sent me flying. It was James.

“What do you think you’re doing to Julia?” he roared.

4.

I stared up at him, a hysterical laugh bubbling in my throat. “Have you forgotten? You were supposed to be my husband.”

My family’s cruelty was one thing. But this, from the man I had once loved more than anything… this was a wound that cut deeper than any physical blow.

He looked away, his hand tightening around Julia’s.

My body ached, but my heart was frozen solid.

I let out another cold laugh and, with trembling fingers, sent a text to a contact I hadn’t spoken to in years.

Another piece of porcelain shattered near my head. “I told you to kneel!” my father screamed. “And you’re playing on your phone?”

“I’m telling you, if you don’t kneel right now, you can forget you ever had a father!”

A piece of my mother’s broken bracelet was still on my wrist. I ripped it off and threw it at him.

“Fine by me,” I said, my voice devoid of emotion.

“And I don’t have you for a sister!” my ten-year-old brother shrieked, running to hide behind Julia.

My head throbbed. This was the child I had practically raised, and he was now throwing things at me, his face twisted in a mask of hatred.

“Leo… you too?” I whispered, a bitter smile on my lips as I closed my eyes.

It was as if my surrender was a signal. The beating started again. Soon, the pain faded into a dull throb. I lay there, limp and broken, like a corpse.

Suddenly, my father’s phone rang.

A relative who was standing nearby glanced at the caller ID and his face went pale.

“It’s… it’s him! He’s calling!”

“What do we do? He never calls unless it’s something serious!”