"Bitch!"

"Spread your legs wider!"

The moment Victoria Caldwell came to, a woman's sharp, nasty voice stabbed straight into her ears.

"Who else but me can patch that little membrane of yours?"

"What a shameless tramp. Just to hook a man, you'd even fake being a virgin. Hurry up and open your legs. What, acting all chaste now?"

The noise made Victoria's head throb.

She forced her eyes open and then realized her lower half was bare. A woman in her forties or fifties was bent over in front of her, clutching needle and thread, impatience written all over her face.

The way she looked, it was like she meant to sew right into her body.

Victoria's heart jumped. She quickly pushed herself back.

The woman saw her move and got even more annoyed, her tone turning harsher.

"What are you doing now? If Helen Caldwell hadn't come begging me, I wouldn't bother with your mess. No shame at all. Your man is serving in the army, and you went and fooled around with somebody else. Once I fix you up, you can pretend you're still untouched. Nobody'll be able to tell."

Only then did Victoria fully come back to herself.

She had been reborn.

She was back on the very day from her last life, the day she came to have her hymen "repaired."

In her previous life, right after her wedding with Nathan Whitfield, before they had even shared a bed, Nathan was called back to the army.

After that, for years, she stayed with the Whitfield family doing all the work. Everybody in the village praised her as a good, dutiful daughter-in-law.

Back then, she had treated Nathan like a hero. She thought marrying him was the luckiest thing that had ever happened to her. She was willing to serve his parents, and even though he'd been gone for three years without showing his face once, she never complained.

But later, in the sorghum field, she somehow ended up sleeping with another man. She panicked and went to her cousin Helen Caldwell for help.

Helen pretended she was doing it for Victoria's own good and gave her an idea: repair the hymen.

If it was fixed, Nathan would never find out.

Victoria had been out of her mind with fear and agreed on the spot. But that woman didn't know a thing about this kind of procedure. She was just butchering her.

She sewed her up almost shut down there, and afterward the infection got so bad it was unbearable.

Not only did Victoria end up with a severe gynecological illness, she even lost the child she had accidentally conceived. Soon after that, she died.

That was when Nathan finally came back from the army.

By then, the whole village had already heard the rumors Helen spread about her fooling around with men.

Not one person stepped up to speak for her. Every single one pointed at her and called her shameless.

The Caldwell family thought she had humiliated them. They wouldn't even buy her a coffin. They just wrapped her in a broken reed mat and buried her like that, done and over with.

A few days later, Nathan came back with a woman from the army.

Victoria's soul had still been floating there, and only then did she finally see the truth. The marriage certificate she'd gotten with Nathan all those years ago had been fake from the start.

The reason he never came home in those three years was simple: he'd already married another woman near the army post, and that woman's belly was already big.

Her father-in-law and mother-in-law knew it all along.

They knew perfectly well and still kept it from her, using her like a free servant.

It was clearly the Whitfields who had wronged her, but in the end, they were the ones who shoved her face into the mud.

She watched Nathan later have a son and a daughter, and then even become an official.

That whole family lived in comfort and happiness.

The hatred inside her nearly burned her apart.

And now, somehow, once she opened her eyes, she was back on this very day.

In her last life, she had been numb all over. She truly thought she had betrayed Nathan, and guilt ate her alive.

But now that she thought about it, guilt my ass.

The marriage certificate was fake. That meant she and Nathan had never really been husband and wife. Back at the wedding, Nathan hadn't even paid a bride price. She'd been the one putting money in.

She had served those two old Whitfields for three full years for nothing. If anyone owed anyone, it was the Whitfield family owing her.

And as for her body being ruined by somebody else, that had nothing to do with the Whitfields at all.

There had never been any real marriage.

At worst, it was just a question of morals.

This time, she was going straight to the army unit and exposing every rotten thing Nathan had done. She'd make sure everybody saw what kind of man he really was.

As for the child in her belly, she had to find the real father.

The auntie saw Victoria's face turning pale, then dark, then pale again, and got irritated.

"So are you doing this or not? Don't waste my time."

Victoria swung her legs off the bed, got up, and yanked her pants back on in one smooth motion.

"No. I'm not doing it."

The moment the woman heard that, she flew into a rage.

"What, you playing me now? After all this fuss? No way, you can't just leave like this."

A cold smile tugged at Victoria's mouth.

Helen Caldwell not wanting her to leave? Please. She just wanted to gather the whole village to come watch the show.

It had been the same in her last life. Once the villagers all found out, she was so ashamed she wished the ground would swallow her. Even though her body hurt, she still went back and waited hand and foot on her in-laws.

She had even washed those two old things' feet and underwear.

If she guessed right, there was already a crowd outside the door.

Sure enough, the moment she pushed the door open, there were people everywhere outside, packed so thick it looked dark. Every single one was staring at her, pointing and whispering.

"What a disgrace. Nathan's in the army defending the country, and she's fooling around with men back in the village. If I were Nathan, I'd have dumped her long ago!"

"Exactly. Total vixen. No shame at all!"

"..."

Faced with all those poisonous looks, Victoria smiled instead.

"What does any of this have to do with you? Mind your own business."

In her last life, she had cared too much about saving face, and that was exactly why she died so early.

This life, she was going to live on her own terms. Let people say whatever they wanted.

For now, she still couldn't reveal the fake marriage certificate. She was afraid her in-laws might warn Nathan ahead of time.

She would wait until she had settled the score with Nathan first, then come back and clear her own name.

Victoria shoved aside a few gossiping aunties and strode straight back to her in-laws' house.

The moment her father-in-law and mother-in-law saw her come back, their faces turned black as pot bottoms. Her mother-in-law even raised a hand like she was about to hit her and opened her mouth to curse her for being shameless.

"Oh, what a sin! You've dragged the whole Whitfield family's name through the dirt!"

Listening to the old woman howl, Victoria put on a pitiful face and said softly,

"Mom, it's all my fault. Please don't make yourself sick over this. Didn't you want me to help find work for Lily Whitfield? I'll do it. Just give me some money, and I'll go to the county town to find that old lady I saved last time. I'll ask her son to help arrange something."

The moment her mother-in-law heard that, she stopped crying.

"Really? You're willing to ask about that?"

Victoria nodded. "Of course. I did something wrong, so I should find a way to make it up to the family."

As soon as she heard that, her mother-in-law quit crying for good. Anyway, her son never liked this useless woman in the first place. It didn't matter who she slept with, as long as she stayed home and worked like always.

The old couple muttered to each other for a while, then hurried back into the room and brought out thirty yuan.

"Didn't you save that old woman before? Thirty is the most we'll give. And it better be a secure iron-rice-bowl job, or Lily won't go."

Victoria nodded so fast it was almost eager and told them to wait for good news.

She went inside, took the fake marriage certificate, then got a letter of introduction from the village secretary. After changing buses several times, she made it to the county seat and bought a train ticket to Haicheng.

Just thinking about arriving at the army base tomorrow and tearing Nathan's fake face right off made Victoria almost laugh out loud.

Nathan's unit was stationed out in the outskirts of Haicheng. By the time she got there, it was already fully dark.

Victoria found somewhere to grab a bite, then went straight to the guesthouse to stay the night, planning to head out early the next morning.

While she was checking in, two men walked in through the door. They were tall and straight-backed, not the kind ordinary people would mistake for common laborers.

Victoria glanced at them once without really looking, took her key, and hurried off to find her room.

But one of the men stared at her back for a while.

He was a strikingly handsome man, with a straight nose bridge and a pair of deep, dark eyes. But there was a coldness between his brows that made him feel hard to approach, the sort of presence that naturally pressed down on people.

"Commander Mercer, what is it?"

Ethan Mercer came back to himself, his brows drawing together slightly. For some reason, that figure from behind looked oddly familiar.

But then he remembered that he had already found the woman from that night, so he figured he was probably overthinking it.

"Nothing."