I was at the hospital with my mother-in-law for a check-up when a frantic woman charged out of nowhere and stabbed her eighteen times. Every blow was lethal. Blood pooled on the floor, a gruesome tide, and she was dead before the paramedics arrived. Staring at her mutilated body in the morgue, my vision turned red with hatred. I swore I would make the killer pay in blood. But when I had gathered the evidence and the case went to trial, my husband, who was supposed to be on a business trip abroad, appeared in the courtroom—as a witness for the defense. A psychiatric evaluation, personally signed by my husband, Justin Bright, became the key piece of evidence. The murderer, Vivienne, was acquitted. “Luna, your mother-in-law was sixty. She lived a full life,” Justin said, his tone dismissive as he slid a blank check across the table. “Vivienne is only twenty-four. We can’t let one little mistake ruin her entire future.” “Name your price. How much will it take for you to sign the pardon?” I snatched the check from his hand and ripped it to shreds, my eyes burning. “Justin, that was your mother!” 1 Justin’s brow furrowed. He picked up his coffee cup. A searing, hot liquid cascaded down my head and neck as Vivienne, the woman beside him, emptied the cup onto me before smashing it on the table. “His mother is enjoying the sunshine in France, darling,” Vivienne sneered, her voice dripping with venom. “You should really think before you speak. Besides, even if I did touch Justin’s precious mother, he would only ever help me…” CRACK! I didn't let her finish. My hand flew across the space between us, the slap echoing in the quiet café. Justin shot to his feet, his eyes like chips of ice. “Luna, don’t push it.” He moved to shield her without a moment’s hesitation, his gaze completely ignoring the angry, red blotches blooming on my skin from the burn. I tried to match his cold composure, but my fingers trembled as I spoke. “Justin, don’t you dare forget how the Bright family got back on its feet!” His expression froze. He grabbed Vivienne’s arm just as she was about to smash a wine bottle over my head. She wrenched free and brought the bottle down on his skull instead. “Justin, you bastard! You’re defending your wife?” she shrieked. “I was wrong about you! Go to hell!” The bottle shattered. He calmly brushed the glass from his hair, his hand gently circling her wrist to soothe her. Then, his cold eyes found mine again. “I’m giving you one last chance to reconsider.” His assistant immediately held a phone in front of my face. The screen showed my father, alive only thanks to a rare experimental drug, lying in a hospital bed. A man’s hand held the bottle of life-saving pills over a drain. He tipped the bottle. A few precious pills tumbled into the darkness. “Sign the pardon, or decide how many more days you want your father to live. Your choice.” The blood in my veins turned to ice. I tried to stand, but Justin’s hand clamped down on my shoulder, forcing me back into the chair. “Luna, are you really going to sacrifice your living father for a dead woman?” His words were like shards of glass, tearing me apart. Years ago, because of his and Vivienne’s reckless behavior, the Bright family had been targeted by a dozen rival companies. He was kidnapped. When the Bright family was powerless, it was his grandfather who came to my family, begging for help. My father, unable to stand by while his old friend’s son was in mortal danger, offered himself as a replacement hostage. He was shot by the captors, the bullet severing nerves and leaving him permanently disabled. To repay that debt, Justin, a brilliant biochemist, had personally developed the drug that kept my father alive. I remembered him kneeling by my father’s bedside, his hand gripping mine as he made a solemn vow. “I, Justin Bright, will love and protect Luna for the rest of my life.” Three years into our marriage, he had broken that promise. The day Vivienne returned from abroad and smashed the windshield of his car in a fit of rage, all his love and protection for me vanished. I trembled, my lips quivering as I stared at him. “Justin, do you remember that my father is like this because of you?” He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Vivienne is practically your sister. There’s no need to be so vicious.” “Sign it. You and your father will be fine. Besides, your mother was over sixty. The maximum compensation you could get in court is less than a million. I’m letting you name your own price. You’re coming out ahead here.” The air was punched from my lungs. “It doesn’t matter whose mother she was! She gave birth to us, raised us! Is a bit of money supposed to make it okay to let her killer walk free while she can’t rest in peace?” “Just take the damn money,” Vivienne drawled, leaning against Justin and shooting me a malicious glare, utterly devoid of remorse. “This is the most cash a poor bitch like you will ever see in your life, unless another one of your relatives dies.” It was as if she hadn’t killed a human being, but had merely squashed an ant. Before the entire Bright clan had pressured me into this marriage, I had heard stories about Vivienne. She was Justin’s childhood friend, his rabid shadow. In the five years before our wedding, their relationship was a storm of pure, destructive obsession. He once chopped off her boyfriend’s fingers and sent them to her as a birthday gift. She retaliated by gouging out the eyes of a woman who got too close to him and presenting them as a New Year’s present. Other people’s lives were just stepping stones for their twisted love affair. Their families cleaned up one mess after another, a cycle of violence that had driven Justin’s own grandfather to a stress-induced stroke. I used to find the stories hard to believe. Now, I was trembling with the reality of it. “Justin, that was your mother’s life. A living, breathing person.” “Her body is still in the morgue. You can go see for yourself!” 2 Vivienne snorted, flicking her hair. “Why would I want to look at a dead body? Don’t try to stall, waiting for those old Bright sycophants to come and save you. They all died abroad yesterday trying to find some miracle cure for the old man.” Her words were disgusting, but Justin didn't even flinch. He showed none of the cold fury he reserved for me when I stepped out of line. Instead, he just tapped the table and pushed the pardon toward me. “Sign it first, talk later. Otherwise, your father won’t live to see tomorrow.” On the phone screen, more pills disappeared down the drain. If this continued, my father wouldn't last until the next batch of medication could be synthesized. My heart felt like it was being pierced by a dozen needles. The document in front of me was already signed by Justin. He didn’t care about the truth; he only cared about exonerating Vivienne. I forced the air back into my lungs, my voice laced with the bitter taste of disappointment as I signed my name. “Justin, I hope you don’t regret this.” “There, see? I knew you’d be reasonable.” A rare smile touched his cold lips as he snatched the document from my hand. “Tell my assistant whatever you want. He’ll buy it for you.” I laughed, a hollow, mocking sound. As if I wanted his money. Ever since Vivienne returned, I was nothing more than a gold digger in his eyes. He threw money at me to solve every problem, but for Vivienne, he gave his time, his resources, his loyalty—even his life. Now, with two lives on the line, his favoritism was sickeningly blatant. The thought of divorce, once a fleeting idea, now became a burning certainty. “Justin, you can come with me to the morgue now—” “The morgue? Are you trying to jinx me?” Vivienne cut in. “I was just wrongfully accused in court. The last thing I need is the bad luck of a morgue. It’ll ruin my whole year.” She turned to Justin, a challenging glint in her eye. “How about a race to celebrate my new lease on life? You and me?” Justin tucked the signed pardon into his jacket and raised an eyebrow. “For you? Anytime.” He turned to leave, tossing a final, careless sentence over his shoulder. “I’m busy today. You handle the funeral. Tell my assistant if you need anything. I’ll stop by on the anniversary if I have time.” He was always busy after Vivienne came back. Too busy to remember my birthday, our wedding anniversary, even the anniversary of our child’s death. And now, he was busy enough to go racing with the woman who stabbed his mother eighteen times, but not busy enough to see his mother one last time? I stood frozen, the world tilting on its axis. With the heads of the Bright family gone, it fell to me to handle the arrangements. At the morgue, the body was a mangled ruin of flesh and bone, barely human. The tears I had held back for so long finally fell. I remembered hearing how my mother-in-law had almost died giving birth to Justin, how she had screamed at the doctors to save the baby, not her. Now, she was a butchered corpse, and her son wouldn’t even look at her. “Prepare the casket. We’ll take her home,” I told the assistant. “And notify the rest of the Bright family abroad. Tell them to come home to pay their last respects.” The wake was set up quickly in the main hall. A photo of my mother-in-law, her expression kind and gentle, sat on the altar. Just then, my phone buzzed with a priority notification. It was a new, pinned post from Justin. He had ignored the message I’d sent him five hours ago, but he’d had time to post this: a video of Vivienne, behind the wheel of a five-million-dollar McLaren he’d bought her, winning a race. On the podium, she grabbed his tie and pulled him into a ferocious kiss. The look on his face—breathless, passionate, utterly consumed—was something I had never seen before. The crowd around them roared with approval. The caption read: To my rose’s new beginning. Washing away the bad luck! The words stabbed at my eyes. I unpinned his contact from my favorites and sent another message. Justin, the very least you could do is come home and see your mother one last time. The earliest the other family members could arrive was tomorrow morning. I couldn't be the only one to sit vigil on the first night. Instead of a text back, I got a call. It was Vivienne. “Will you ever give it a rest?” she snarled. “Your mother-in-law is dead. Get over it and stop ruining our good time!” “Let me speak to Justin,” I said, my voice flat. “Or I will keep calling.” “Fuck, you persistent bitch! Hey, Bright! Your scheming, pathetic wife is on the phone again. Get rid of her!” A moment later, Justin’s irritated voice came through the line. “Luna, my mother is perfectly fine. Stop trying to curse her!” I sent him a photo of the funeral hall and spoke calmly. “The family’s oldest servants prepared this wake. Do you really think they’re blind enough to mistake my mother for yours?” 3 There was a silence on his end, broken by Vivienne’s sharp laughter. “Hahaha, is that the best fake picture you could come up with? His mom literally just sent me a voice message. As much as I might hate you, I would never hurt Justin’s family.” My mother-in-law’s familiar voice played through the speaker. I froze. Vivienne’s voice, dripping with scorn, followed. “What’s the matter? Feeling lonely, you pathetic housewife? Is this the only trick you have to get your man to come home? If you’re that desperate, I can send a few homeless guys over to keep you company.” Justin’s voice was tight with anger when he spoke again. “Luna, you are exhausting. This is what I can’t stand about you. You’re not daring and passionate like Vivienne. You’re not honest about what you want. You’re just… scheming and disgusting.” My hand clenched into a fist. After the accident that had nearly destroyed his family, when Justin Bright had gone from a golden boy to a disgraced drunk, it was me. I was the one who went to my grandfather and begged for the capital to rebuild. I was the one who pulled him out of his alcohol-soaked despair, who stayed up with him through endless nights as we hustled for clients and rebuilt his empire from nothing. Back then, he would hold me tight in the hours before dawn and whisper, “Luna, I can’t live without you.” And now… “Try to be more like Vivienne,” he spat. “Carefree, liberated. Stop being so damn suffocating.” My nails dug into my palms. My heart felt like it had been plunged into ice water. “This is the last time I will ever call you,” I said, my voice dead. “If you don’t come back, don’t you dare regret it later.” Then I hung up. At two in the morning, after kneeling at the wake for four hours, I finally heard the sound of a car pulling up. For a foolish moment, I thought his conscience had finally kicked in. But the person who strode in was Vivienne. “Who let her in here?” I shot to my feet, my voice a sharp command to the household staff. “Don’t you know she’s the murderer?” The servants trembled, their heads bowed. “She has Mr. Bright’s security clearance, ma’am. We had no choice.” Vivienne smirked. She kicked over the incense burner on the altar, smashed the framed photograph on the table, and ground the shards under her heel. “Why so surprised? You only became Mrs. Bright because I allowed it. Now get on your knees and thank me.” I didn’t move. I dialed the emergency number, but before I could connect, Justin rushed in, his head bandaged, and knocked the phone from my hand. “That’s enough. It’s a small matter, no need to involve the police. We can just set it up again. It’s not like the body is going anywhere.” The moment he finished speaking, Vivienne threw open the lid of the casket. She emptied a bucket of reeking, dark liquid—black dog’s blood mixed with urine—all over the corpse. The foul stench filled the hall. My mother-in-law, a woman who prized cleanliness above all else, was being desecrated in her own coffin. I lunged forward, but Justin’s grip on my wrist was like iron, nearly snapping the bone. “Justin, that is your MOTHER!” I shrieked, my voice raw, but he held me fast. “Vivienne went a little too far, I admit,” he said calmly. “But you faked my mother’s death photo. We’ll call it even.” Ptuh. Vivienne spat directly into the coffin, then turned and slapped me across the face. The force sent me stumbling to the floor, the taste of blood filling my mouth. “That’s for what you owe me. Don’t mess with me, or I’ll kill you next.” She raised her hand to strike me again, but Justin caught her wrist, his brow furrowed. “That’s enough. You’ll hurt your hand.” Vivienne spat in my direction one more time. “You’re lucky Justin’s gotten soft these last three years. Otherwise, I’d have your dying father chopped into pieces and fed to the dogs.” “Alright, alright,” Justin said, his tone one of weary indulgence. “I came back as soon as you called, didn’t I? You crashed my car, you trashed this place. Isn’t that enough to make you feel better?” He stood there, his shoes trampling the shattered remains of his own mother’s portrait, placating the woman who had defiled her corpse. Feel better? The memorial tablet was being scrawled with obscenities. The kind face in the portrait was shattered and smeared with filth. His mother’s body was covered in spit and reeking liquid. And this was all just to appease Vivienne’s temper? My throat felt like it was stuffed with wet cotton. “Justin, if you would just look at the hand on the corpse, you would know it’s not my mother!” He paused, his gaze finally shifting toward the open casket. 4 On the corpse’s finger was the Oppenheimer Blue, a one-of-a-kind diamond ring her late husband had given her. Vivienne’s eyes followed his. A flicker of greed crossed her face, and she shot me a venomous glare. “Aha! I knew it! I told you that you and your mother were nothing but common thieves! You took advantage of your mother-in-law’s absence to steal her ring and put it on a dead body!” Before anyone could react, she reached into the coffin, brutally snapped the dead finger off at the knuckle, and wrenched the ring free, clutching it in her fist. She looked down at Justin with a mocking sneer. “You’ve really lowered your standards, Justin. Marrying a gold-digging thief with sticky fingers. I’ll hold onto this for you, before she pawns it.” Justin, who had been about to look closer, turned his suspicious gaze back to me. “I always suspected your father had an ulterior motive when he saved me. It’s only been a few years, and your family is already showing its true colors. I’m glad I listened to Vivienne and didn’t let you keep that child.” I was being helped to my feet by a maid, but his words froze me solid. I stared at him, my body turning to wood. “Justin… what did you just say?” Vivienne cackled, pointing a finger at me. “What did he say? He’s talking about your dead baby! You thought you could trap him, use a child to swallow the Bright family fortune whole, didn’t you? You already have so much company stock, you greedy bitch.” A gaping wound opened in my chest. Her voice was a relentless drone in my ears. “So, we arranged a little ‘car accident’ for you. Hahaha, you idiot, did you really think he was sending someone to save you? He couldn’t wait for that baby to die!” The room went black. As I collapsed, my mind went completely blank. Justin frowned and hauled me to my feet. “It was my child, too. If you weren’t so manipulative…” CRACK! I slapped him again, my vision swimming in red. “And you knew it was your child?” He turned his head slightly, his jaw tight, his expression cold. “When you learn to behave, we can have another.” Vivienne, who had been laughing, froze. A toxic, resentful look flashed in her eyes. “There won’t be a next time, Justin,” I said, my voice hollow. “You don’t deserve one.” I pulled free from his suddenly tight grip and knelt, mechanically gathering the broken pieces of the portrait. Justin stood over me, looking like he wanted to say something. Suddenly, the doors were kicked open. A group of grim-faced, middle-aged men holding knives stormed in. Justin went pale. He immediately shoved Vivienne behind him, leaving me completely exposed, a blade instantly pressed against my throat. The man in the lead had dark, menacing eyes. “Justin Bright. Is this Vivienne?” “What do you want?” Justin demanded. The man gave a chilling, humorless smile. “My daughter was kind enough to give you directions once. For that, Vivienne had a dozen men rape her! My little girl… she wasn’t even eighteen! They left her to die next to a dumpster!” He slammed his knife into the altar table. The other men closed in on me and Vivienne, their hands reaching for our clothes. “I’m only here for revenge, not to harm the innocent,” the man said, turning on a camera. “Take your wife and get out.” “Honey, save me!” Vivienne shrieked. Justin hesitated for a second, then walked toward me. To my utter shock, he leaned in and whispered an apology in my ear. “Luna, look, you’ve been pregnant before, you’ve had a miscarriage. Your body can handle it. But Vivienne is different. I have to protect her. Just be understanding. I’ll make it up to you later.” With that, he slapped me hard across the face and shoved me into the arms of the waiting men. He turned, wrapping his arms around a trembling Vivienne, and yelled at me with righteous fury. “You did this! You did all those terrible things, and you deserve to have your mother-in-law die and her funeral desecrated!” Vivienne clung to him, a picture of terrified innocence, but the look she gave me over his shoulder was one of pure, ecstatic triumph. “That’s right,” she purred. “Maybe with all these men, you’ll finally stop lusting after my husband.” Seeing the men hesitate, Justin roared, “What are you waiting for? Get on with it! Look at her, she’s obviously been through a few pregnancies. My Vivienne would never be so promiscuous!” I clutched the sharp shards of the portrait in my fist, my heart turning to absolute stone. CRASH! Before the men could touch me, the doors burst open again. A flood of security guards poured in. One of them grabbed Justin by the hair, forced him to his knees, and delivered a brutal slap across his face. Justin was stunned. He looked up, his eyes blazing with fury, ready to retaliate—but when he saw the face of the man standing before him, his pupils shrank to pinpricks. “You!”
? Continue the story here ?? ? Download the "MotoNovel" app ? search for "384580", and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel