Rebirth: Snatching Back My Stolen Luck

Dawn.

Creak.

For the first time in a long while, the locked guest room in a forgotten corner of Villa Olive opened-on its own.

A wheelchair rolled forward from inside, its wheels echoing gently across the marble floor.

The woman seated on it was morbidly thin, her bones jutting against pale, fragile skin. Her eyes, once full of warmth and life, now looked vacant-numb and lifeless.

Dressed in a plain, unflattering white dress, she looked as though she'd stepped straight out of a ghost story.

In the deafening silence, her bony hands trembled faintly as she wheeled herself forward-through the hallway, past the dining room after a left turn, then past the living room and the family portrait on the wall. A portrait that served no other purpose than to mock her very existence.

She seemed to catch a glimpse of her younger self-sweet and innocent-smiling gently in the same places she'd just passed through. The weight of those memories, once dear and precious, now pressed down heavily on her chest, making it hard to breathe.

Faster. Faster.

She urged herself silently, pushing the wheels harder, disregarding the way her brittle skin has begun to tear and bleed-and the pain that came with it.

Finally, she made it there-the sunroom.

Her favorite spot in the entire villa.

She used to like to sit there with a cup of her personal blend of coffee, watching the sunrise and sunset in peaceful solitude.

It had been her favorite pastime.

Her dim eyes brightened slightly as she crossed the threshold.

Six months ago, her entire world had crumbled into absurd chaos.

She had discovered that her childhood sweetheart-turned-husband of over thirty years was having an affair-with her dearest best friend, Claire Brooks. A woman she'd grown up with and treated no different than a biological sister.

Though devastated and heartbroken, Lilith knew better than to stay and endure it. Despite their earnest pleas and assurances that it was a one-time mistake, she insisted on divorce.

She never imagined that her refusal to believe their lies would drive them to such extremes.

They took away her access to every electronic device and locked her in the most secluded guest room. Then they began feeding her a cocktail of antidepressants and muscle relaxants. Over time, her body and mind deteriorated.

But the final blow came when she tried to reach out to the one person she thought would save her, someone she believed was oblivious to what she was going through-her sixteen-year-old son.

Only to be met with a derisive sneer. And a sentence that shattered what was left of her soul.

"You're not my mother."

That same day, she'd learnt a horrible truth from Claire's own lips, gently spoken with a smile that chilled Lilith to the bone.

"I'm sorry, Lily," she said sweetly. "But your baby was stillborn. Brandon worried you'd be too heartbroken, so he switched your baby with mine. But they were both his, so... it didn't really matter, did it?"