Rewind_ I Don't Love You Anymore

I jolted awake with a gasp, my heart hammering against my ribs as if trying to escape. For a moment, I couldn't breathe, couldn't move, couldn't process where I was or what had happened. My eyes darted frantically around the small, familiar room—the peeling wallpaper, the narrow bed, the worn wooden dresser with its cracked mirror.

This was... my room. At the Rothschild estate. The servant's quarters.

With trembling hands, I pushed myself upright, my coarse cotton sheets a stark contrast to the silk I'd grown accustomed to in my previous life. I stumbled toward the mirror, hardly daring to look.

The face that stared back at me wasn't the haggard, broken woman of twenty-seven who had taken her own life at her son's grave. This was me at eighteen—young, innocent, untouched by the horrors that would come.

"Impossible," I whispered, touching my smooth cheek with fingers that no longer bore the calluses of hard labor and desperate struggle. "This can't be real."

But the memories crashed over me like a tidal wave—every moment of pain, every betrayal, every loss. Damien Rothschild's false promises of love. The cruel way he'd cast me out when I became pregnant. My beautiful son Michael, his tiny hand in mine as he slipped away from an illness I couldn't afford to treat. And finally, the cold earth of his grave against my cheek as I ended my own life.

I gripped the edge of the dresser, my knuckles white with strain. "No," I said, my voice stronger now. "Never again."

I straightened my simple gray dress—the uniform of a Rothschild maid—and stared at my reflection with new eyes. This time would be different. This time, I knew what was coming.

"This time," I vowed to my younger self in the mirror, "I will destroy them before they can destroy me."

---

Hours later, I moved silently among the glittering guests at the Rothschild dinner party, a bottle of wine in my hand. The grand dining room was a symphony of crystal and silver, candlelight dancing across the faces of London's elite as they laughed and schemed behind polite smiles.

"Elena, more wine for Lord Harrington," Mrs. Winters, the housekeeper, whispered as she passed.

I nodded curtly and moved toward the head of the table where the elderly lord sat engrossed in conversation with Matilda Rothschild, Damien's mother.

"More wine, my lord?" I kept my eyes downcast as I poured, my movements precise and mechanical.

"Yes, thank—" He paused, studying me with unexpected interest. "Haven't seen you before. New girl?"

"Just started last week, my lord," I replied evenly.

He frowned slightly. "Odd. You don't seem like the usual type they hire here."

I didn't respond, moving on to the next guest with practiced efficiency. Inside, I seethed at the dismissal in his tone—the assumption that I was just another ambitious girl hoping to catch a wealthy man's eye.

Mary, another maid who had been kind to me in my previous life, glanced at me