Chapter 3
Zoe arrived just in time and saw Gary pinning me to the floor and beating me. She shouted, “What the hell are you doing?”
Gary was startled and immediately backed away. Zoe rushed over, pulling me into her arms. She looked at me with concern and asked anxiously, “Natasha, are you okay?”
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Seeing the worry on her face, a wave of bitterness surged up my throat.
Tears streamed down my face as I choked out. “Zoe, I want a
divorce.”
She looked at my swollen, reddened face and my disheveled hair. Gently pushing my hair aside, she reassured me, “Good. Divorce him. I support you. If they refuse, we’ll get a lawyer and sue him for assault. He won’t have a choice.”
Zoe’s assertiveness made Sandra visibly unhappy, but just as she was about to speak, Gary stopped her.
He looked pleased as if he had been waiting for this moment. “Fine. Let’s get a divorce.”
I wasn’t surprised. He had wanted this for a long time. His quick agreement didn’t catch me off guard in the slightest.
But the children…
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Gary and I had three daughters.
In my past life, I had struggled endlessly to raise them on my own. Now, with the impending divorce, they were the ones I found hardest to part with.
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I didn’t want to keep this from them, so I called them home and asked them directly—would they choose to stay with me or with
their father?
They were old enough to decide, and if all three chose me, the court would likely grant me full custody.
To me, there was no question about their choice.
Even setting aside my past life, I had been the one by their side all these years, caring for them, raising them. There was no reason for them not to choose me.
But when they finally made their decision, my heart turned
ice–cold.
Not a single one of them chose me.
I stared at them in shock, my forced smile stiffening on my face.
I asked, “What’s wrong? Wouldn’t you be happy with me? Why don’t you want to stay with me?”
Without hesitation, they answered in unison, “We want to stay
with Dad.”
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I thought about my past life. I worked myself to the bone to raise them.
Raising daughters was expensive; they always needed the best. I had taken on endless jobs, working myself to exhaustion just to afford the things they wanted.
In the winter, my hands cracked and bled from the cold. In the summer, I worked under the scorching sun until I collapsed from heatstroke. Even when I was sick, I endured it without medicine, just to save enough money to buy them a dress they had their eyes on.
Gary had been difficult enough, and his family was even worse.
Between fighting against them and struggling to give my daughters a decent life, I eventually developed cancer and died alone in the hospital.
Remembering all of that and looking at the situation before me now, how could I not feel utterly devastated?
Still unwilling to give up, I pressed again. “Why do you want to stay with your father? You’d have a good life with me too.”
But my youngest daughter Tara suddenly rolled her eyes and sneered, “What’s so great about staying with you? We’ll have no money but just hardship. In the end, you’d just end up dying alone in a hospital…”
As soon as she said this, my eldest daughter Anna panicked and
Chapter 3
quickly covered her mouth.
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I caught the nervous looks flashing across their faces and, in that instant, a chilling realization dawned on me.
I had been reborn. Had they… been reborn too? So, that was it…
They simply didn’t want to go through a life of suffering with me again.
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