Chapter 3

The Winslow family townhouse on the Upper East Side was shrouded in an oppressive silence.

The sky was sullen, leaden clouds hanging low as if ready to crush the city. I pushed open the heavy carved wooden door, but the expected scene of servants stepping forward to take my coat did not happen.

The foyer was empty. Only my mother, Isabella, stood alone in the center of the living room on the Persian rug.

She was wearing a creamy white cashmere cardigan, her back to me, her slight shoulders trembling with a subtle, uncontrollable tremor.

My heart plummeted.

According to the trajectory of my previous life, my mother should currently be thirty thousand feet in the air, on a private flight to Zurich. That Gulfstream G650 was destined to hit extreme clear-air turbulence over the Atlantic, suffer structural failure, and crash into the freezing ocean with no survivors.

That was the first domino to fall in the collapse of my life, and the most fatal.

"Mother?" I called out tentatively, my voice raspy with tension.

I was braced for her tears, her interrogation, or a sigh of disappointment. After all, in everyone's eyes, I was an unreasonable lunatic who had just destroyed a marriage alliance crucial to the interests of two major families.

Isabella spun around.

Her emerald eyes were red and swollen, tear tracks still wet on her face. But the moment she saw me, those eyes, usually as gentle as water, suddenly erupted with a light I had never seen before—a mixture of ecstasy, lingering terror, and a hard, diamond-like resolve.

She rushed over like a gale, not to question me, but to pull me into a crushing embrace. The force of her hold was shocking, nearly squeezing the breath out of me, as if I would vanish the moment she let go.

Immediately after, she did something that made my blood run cold.

She released me, turned quickly, and locked the double doors leading from the living room to the foyer with a sharp *click*. Then, she slid the heavy solid wood bolt and engaged the security chain that had almost never been used.

"My Emilia..." She called me by my baptismal name, her voice hoarse and broken, trembling with the shock of survival. "That plane... I didn't board it."

*Boom—*

It felt as though thunder had exploded in my brain.

I looked up stiffly, gazing into my mother's eyes—brimming with tears, yet burning with clear hatred and bone-chilling clarity.

No explanation was needed.

I knew that look. It was the look of someone who had crawled back from the abyss of hell and seen through all illusions.

Because the person in my mirror looked exactly the same.

"Mom, you also..."

"I had a dream." Mother's cold, trembling hands cupped my face, her fingertips tracing my features with extreme care, as if confirming my reality. "A long, cold, desperate dream. I dreamed you were lying in the snow, your blood staining the white red... I dreamed Richard and Kevin took my massive insurance payout and raised a glass to celebrate with that woman on a yacht in the Caribbean..."

Scalding tears instantly breached my defenses.

I had thought this path of revenge, paved with thorns, was one I was destined to walk alone in the dark.

It turned out God hadn't completely closed His eyes.

"No, don't cry, my darling." Isabella took a deep breath, forcefully wiping away her tears. In an instant, her gaze became sharp as a blade—the edge belonging to the heiress of the Winslow family, which she had deliberately hidden for thirty years. "We don't have time to cry. Your father and Kevin could return at any moment."

She pulled me to the soft sofa, speaking rapidly and clearly, beginning to lay out her deployment.