They Buried Me in Their Family Diamonds

Clara's POV

The day he proposed, Atticus knelt before me, holding the Hale family's heirloom necklace.

I thought I had finally survived the ordeal.

After eight years of unrequited love, being humiliated by his sister, nitpicked by his mother, and mocked by the city's socialites for being unworthy of the Hales... Until this very moment, when he personally fastened the heirloom around my neck. Everyone saw it. I, Clara, was finally accepted by the Hale family.

Tears in my eyes, I said yes, thinking it was the happiest moment of my life.

But just days after putting on that necklace, bizarre red rashes crawled up my neck. My pale skin rotted away piece by piece, and my internal organs went into irreversible failure.

The most absurd part? The exact same day I started rotting, his dying mother miraculously cured her terminal illness, and his sister's half-destroyed face was restored to flawless perfection.

Disfigured and barely looking human, I threw myself off the Harbour Bridge—

I opened my eyes, and I was back on the day of the proposal.

"Marry me, Clara."

Atticus knelt on one knee, holding a faded emerald velvet box. Inside lay an enamel pendant necklace.

"Oh my god! That's the Hale family heirloom!"

"Wearing that means she's officially accepted by the Hales... I'm so jealous!"

A violent shudder ran through me. It wasn't ecstasy. It was pure terror and nausea.

I had been reborn.

In my last life, I stood right here, ecstatically accepting this very necklace. But what awaited me was an endless nightmare: rashes spreading across my neck, skin ulcerating, and my organs shutting down.

Meanwhile, the gentle, caring fiancé kneeling before me played the perfect husband for the cameras, yet stood outside my hospital room watching coldly as I rolled on the floor in agony. He watched until I was so disfigured I no longer looked human, eventually jumping off the Harbour Bridge.

Met with silence, the perfect smile on Atticus's face stiffened almost imperceptibly. He looked up, a trace of perfectly calculated confusion on his flawless face. "Clara? Do you not want to?"

"What, now that the Raymond family went from scavenging trash to becoming hardware tycoons, our good girl who tried so hard to climb into Atticus's bed thinks the Hales aren't good enough?"

A sharp, mean-spirited woman's voice cut through the silence, making no effort to hide her malice.

It was Vivienne, Atticus's biological sister.

She stood in the crowd, half of her face tightly covered by an expensive silk scarf—hiding the horrific disfigurement from that "accident."

"Vivienne, I won't allow you to speak to Clara like that!"

Atticus's mother, Lavinia, stepped out from the crowd to cut off her mockery. Chronically ill, she carried an aura of decay, but her blade-like eyes locked onto me dead center. She turned to the whispering guests, her voice loud and brimming with "maternal love":

"Clara is gentle and kind, and Atticus loves her deeply. In my heart, she is already the exact daughter-in-law I want! Anyone who dares slander her is making an enemy of the entire Hale family!"

Applause and cheers instantly erupted. "Say yes! Say yes!"

But I felt plunged into a bucket of ice water. Looking at Lavinia's supposedly loving face, my stomach churned.

I took a deep breath, ruthlessly suppressing every cell in my body screaming at me to run. I lowered my gaze, letting tears well up in my gray-green eyes.

"I'm sorry, Atticus..." I forced my voice to tremble with pitiful, choked sobs. "I'm just... so happy. It's all so sudden, I feel like I'm dreaming. My mind went blank, I even forgot how to breathe."

This explanation—perfectly fitting my "naive sweetheart" persona—made Atticus let out a barely noticeable sigh of relief.

From the corner of my eye, I caught sight of my "best friend" of twenty years, Savannah. Standing in her lavish gown, her crystal-blue eyes were locked onto the necklace, her jealousy practically bleeding out.

Atticus seamlessly slipped his intoxicatingly devoted mask back on, gazing at me tenderly. "Silly girl, don't cry. For you, let alone an heirloom, I'd gladly give up everything I have."

In my last life, it was this exact line that shattered my defenses, making me believe I had finally found my happy ending.

But now, looking into his hypocritical eyes, all I felt was bone-chilling cold and disgust.

"I will, Atticus," I said, forcing a deeply moved smile as a tear slid down my cheek right on cue.

Amidst the roaring applause and cheers, I reached out my trembling hands to take the velvet box.

Just a millimeter before my fingertips touched the cold enamel—

I violently jerked my wrist.

The Hale family's antique heirloom slipped from my grasp and smashed violently onto the floor.