May 6, 1974. The day of Lixia.

"You dead little brat, quit putting on an act in front of me! Get your backside up!"

The sharp curse had barely finished when a foot came down hard on Vivienne Goodwin, who was lying on the ground.

It was a heavy kick. Vivienne was already weak all over, and a low groan slipped out of her before she could stop it.

Standing nearby, the middle-aged woman Vivian Goodwin quickly put on a fake show of scolding. "Fiona, easy now. Don’t go too far and really hurt her."

Fiona Marsh didn’t care in the least. "Mom, it’s not like I’d kick her to death. If you ask me, she’s doing this on purpose, trying to let people outside see."

Vivian Goodwin shot a look toward the front gate and lowered her voice. "Forget that for now. Drag her inside first. Don’t let the neighbors catch sight of this."

Though Fiona Marsh was a hundred times unwilling, she still bent down and reached for Vivienne Goodwin.

But the moment her hand touched her, she suddenly felt something was off.

By instinct, she stretched a hand under Vivienne Goodwin’s nose. Her face changed at once, and even her voice started shaking. "No... no breath."

A chill ran straight through Fiona Marsh’s body. With her voice trembling in panic, she blurted out, "Mom, she... she can’t be dead, can she?"

"What?"

The second Vivian Goodwin heard that, she shakily reached out to test Vivienne Goodwin’s breathing herself. When she found there really was no breath left, her eyes went wide and her face turned white as paper.

"Mom, what do we do now?"

Fiona Marsh had completely lost her nerve. She looked at Vivian Goodwin in a fluster, near to falling apart.

The words made Vivian Goodwin’s heart drop hard.

But she forced herself to calm down fast. "Drag her into the room first. Once it’s properly dark, we’ll think of a way to dump her outside. We’ll just say she never came back at all."

Hearing that, Fiona Marsh hesitated. "But she only just got home. What if somebody saw her?"

Vivian Goodwin paused, then said, "That’s easy. We’ll say she came back, grabbed something, and left again."

"Fine. Then let’s get her inside."

Fiona Marsh and Vivian Goodwin grabbed Vivienne Goodwin from either side and hauled her toward the room like she was a sack of grain. The second they got there, they flung her aside, and she hit the floor hard.

Her body slammed against the boards, and the pain made Vivienne snap her eyes open. The first thing she saw was Fiona standing right in front of her. The two of them froze on the spot.

"Ah—"

Fiona let out a shrill scream, so scared her hand jerked loose at once.

Taking that chance, Vivienne pushed herself upright and stared at Fiona with a cold, sharp face.

Fiona came back to herself soon enough. Realizing Vivienne had been faking it, she flew into a rage and spat, "You little bitch, so you were pretending to be dead!"

The moment she finished cursing, she raised her hand and swung for Vivienne's face.

Vivienne's eyes turned dark. She moved even faster and snapped a slap right back across Fiona's face.

With a loud smack, a red handprint bloomed on Fiona's cheek at once.

It had all happened too fast.

The instant Vivian Goodwin saw her daughter get hit, her temper shot straight up, and she lunged at Vivienne.

Vivienne did not hesitate. She lifted her leg and drove a kick straight into Vivian Goodwin's stomach.

With a heavy thud, Vivian Goodwin was sent flying backward into the cabinet, letting out a squeal like a hog being slaughtered.

"You filthy little slut, you dare hit me!"

Fiona had been stunned by the slap. Once she got her wits back, she went mad and threw herself forward again, clawing and flailing.

Vivienne got to her feet in one smooth motion, shifted to the side, and easily dodged Fiona's rush.

The very next second, she struck fast, grabbed Fiona, and slammed her to the floor. Then she pinned her down and started smacking her across the face again and again without mercy.

"Go on, curse me! Keep cursing! Let's see if you still dare run that filthy mouth! You're the cheap one! Your whole damn family is rotten!"

Vivienne spoke as she hit her.

Every word was like a blade, stabbing straight into Fiona's chest.

Fiona Marsh had been beaten so hard she couldn’t fight back at all. All she could do was let out one heart-ripping scream after another.

The moment Vivian Goodwin saw that, she went weak with fright. Her whole body shook. Then her eyes landed on the chair by the side. Without even thinking, she lunged over, grabbed it, and hurled it straight at Vivienne Goodwin.

But Vivienne Goodwin had clearly seen it coming. The instant the chair flew at her, she shifted sideways quick as a cat and dodged it cleanly.

The chair didn’t miss, though.

It slammed right into Fiona Marsh instead.

There was a heavy thud.

Fiona Marsh dropped to the floor on the spot, letting out a shrill scream so sharp it made people’s ears ache.

Right after that, her body went limp. She sprawled on the ground without moving, eyes shut, no sign of life.

"Xiaofang!"

Vivian Goodwin saw it and nearly popped her eyes out of her head.

Her face turned white with shock. She screamed and threw herself at Fiona Marsh like she’d gone mad.

She clutched Fiona Marsh tight and kept shaking her, muttering in a trembling voice, "Xiaofang, wake up. Xiaofang... wake up..."

The neighbors next door heard the commotion and came over to knock on the door, calling from outside, "Weiwei? Weiwei, are you in there? What happened?"

Weiwei?

Were they calling her?

Her parents and her master used to call her that too.

Whether it was meant for her or not, she had to calm things down first. "Nothing. Those two are fighting in the room."

It went quiet outside for a moment. Then someone said, "If anything’s wrong, just holler."

"Mm."

Vivienne Goodwin turned it over in her mind. So she was probably the Weiwei these people were talking about.

After that whole mess, she could feel her strength had just about run dry.

Her whole body felt like it had been taken apart and thrown back together wrong. Her legs were so weak she could barely stay standing, and more than once she almost collapsed.

She gulped in big breaths, back pressed to the wall, trying to steady her breathing while staring at Vivian Goodwin slumped on the floor and Fiona Marsh, who wasn’t moving at all.

Her mind kept turning the same question over.

Who the hell were these two women?

Why did they come at her like they wanted her dead the second they laid eyes on her?

Right now her head felt blank, as if she couldn’t dig up a single clear memory about either of them.

Vivienne Goodwin lifted a hand and pressed her fingers hard against her temple, trying to force herself to wake up properly.

Then all at once, one thought hit her.

Wasn’t she already dead?

In her memory, she had been eating fish when a bone got stuck in her throat. She couldn’t get it out, couldn’t breathe, and in the end she had suffocated alive.

What a miserable way to die.

Just thinking about other people finding out made her scalp prickle.

What would the papers write?

["Billionaire Female CEO Chokes to Death on a Fish Bone!"]

And there’d definitely be a huge exclamation mark tacked on at the end.

At that thought, Vivienne Goodwin got so mad she nearly sprang back from the dead on the spot.

She swayed her way to the bed and sat down, wanting to give her body a moment to recover.

But the instant her backside touched the edge of the bed, her mind suddenly cracked open like lightning. Scene after scene burst out inside her head.

Those scattered fragments of memory were like loose beads rolling everywhere, then slowly threading themselves together into one line, helping her piece together what kind of situation she was in.

Too much had rushed into her head at once. The pain was so fierce it felt like her skull might split apart, and her ears kept buzzing.

On top of that, Vivian Goodwin’s crying from the side was enough to drive anyone mad, sharp and shrill like a rusty blade scraping across metal, making her skin crawl.

Vivienne Goodwin couldn’t take it anymore. She turned and barked, "Shut up!"

The shout rang out so hard the whole room seemed to shake with it.

Not only was Vivian Goodwin not frightened, she twisted around, glared at Vivienne Goodwin, and spat out, "Vivienne Goodwin, you jinx, sooner or later you’re going to die a rotten death!"

Her eyes were full of spite and hate. "Why didn’t you die with that short-lived mother of yours? She died early, and you won’t live long either!"

The second she heard her mother being cursed, Vivienne Goodwin’s face went cold. She gritted her teeth, gathered what little strength she had left, lifted her leg, and kicked Vivian Goodwin hard.

This kick was far heavier than the last one. Vivian Goodwin didn’t even get a sound out before her whole body flew like a torn sack. With a loud thud, she hit the ground and blacked out on the spot.

Vivienne Goodwin looked at the middle-aged woman sprawled on the floor, and only then did the fire in her chest ease a little.

She drew in a long breath and forced herself to settle down.

At last, some peace and quiet.

Now she could finally think straight about what exactly was going on.