Chapter 1

"Eleanor? Sweetheart, wake up. The test results are here."

Julian’s voice drifted through the door, carrying that same gentle warmth I had once been so blindly infatuated with.

I sat rigid before the vanity mirror, my fingertips pressing against the slight swell of my stomach. The face staring back at me was still young, its features not yet hollowed out by absolute despair. In that agonizing instant, reality slammed into me: I had come back to life.

I had regressed to the exact day we were supposed to host our baby’s gender reveal party.

In my previous life, this was exactly how the nightmare began.

From the moment I found out I was pregnant, Julian had treated me like fragile glass. A highly respected pediatrician, he had practically bought out entire baby boutiques and spent every night whispering lovingly to my stomach. But that perfect facade shattered the second the doorbell rang that morning.

"Sign here, please," the courier had said.

I had stood in the hallway, smiling as Julian tipped the guy and shut the door. He turned around, holding up an envelope—our unborn baby’s genetic screening report.

"Let’s see just how perfect this little genius is," Julian had joked, tearing through the seal.

But the moment his eyes scanned the printed text, his smile froze. His hands began to violently shake.

"Julian? What’s wrong?" I stepped forward, reaching for the paper. "Is the baby okay?"

He severely yanked the page away, staring at me with a look of pure dread.

Right at that moment, the front door swung open again. Mom and Dad breezed into the foyer, arms loaded with beautifully wrapped gifts.

"Where is our gorgeous girl!" Mom cooed, her face beaming with pride. As top-tier geneticists, my parents demanded perfection in everything, and a flawless grandchild was their ultimate trophy. "We bought the cutest little—"

Without a single word, Julian shoved the crumpled report hard against Dad's chest.

Dad's warm, fatherly smile evaporated the instant his eyes locked onto the page. His jaw clenched so tight, his eyes practically bulging with a horrifying realization. His grip went slack, and the expensive gifts crashed onto the hardwood floor.

"Richard? What is it?" Mom frowned, snatching the paper out of his trembling hands.

"Mom?!" I sobbed. "What's wrong with my baby?!"

Her eyes darted across the medical jargon. In a fraction of a second, the warm, loving mother I knew died right in front of me. When she finally looked up at me, her gaze was as sharp and cold as shattered ice.

"Cancel the party," she ordered Julian, her voice dead and entirely devoid of emotion. "Keep your mouth shut. We are handling this right now."

"Mom, please! Explain this to me!" I reached out to grab her arm, but she viciously shoved me backward, sending me crashing hard against the wall.

"Take her out the back door," Dad snarled ferociously.

They ignored my desperate pleas. Within an hour, I was forcibly dragged into a clandestine suburban medical lab.

"Hold her down!" a masked man in a white coat shouted as I thrashed wildly on the freezing steel operating table.

"No! Please! Don’t hurt my baby!" I shrieked, crying hysterically as heavy leather restraints snapped tightly around my wrists and ankles. "Julian! Mom! Help me!"

No one came to my rescue. They forced my legs apart and pumped me full of drugs while I screamed until my throat bled.

The very next morning, while I was still shivering on blood-stained sheets, Mom calmly walked into the recovery room.

"Time to go home, Eleanor," she said with a sickeningly sweet smile, as if she had just taken me in for a routine dental checkup.

Something inside my brain simply snapped. "You murdered my baby!" I screamed, lunging at her like a lunatic, my hands clawing wildly at the air. "Why?! Why would you do this?!"

Instead of answering, Dad delivered a brutal backhand across my cheek.

"You disgusting bitch!" he roared.

Mom didn't even blink. She just stared condescendingly at my bleeding lip, entirely devoid of pity. "She’s completely lost her mind," she told Dad seamlessly. "Commit her to Pine Valley Asylum."

From there, the nightmare only spiraled. I was locked inside a padded cell, where Julian quietly paid men to visit my room in the dead of night. I endured three agonizing months of endless torture, humiliation, and violation, until my broken body finally gave out.

I died in unimaginable agony, never knowing what the hell was written on that flimsy piece of paper that warranted such a barbaric death sentence for both me and my unborn child.

I violently gasped for air, a ragged, tearing sound ripping from my throat. The phantom pain of my past life slowly receded, leaving me panting heavily in front of the vanity mirror.

My hands gripped the edge of the table so hard my knuckles turned a stark white. My blood boiled, coursing with a cold, unforging hatred.

The door pushed open, and Julian stepped into the bedroom.

"Eleanor? Are you okay? The courier is here. We need to open this together!"

As he wrapped his arms around me from behind, the sheer terror of my previous life crawled up my spine like ice water flooding my veins.