Chapter 1

My seventy-year-old father-in-law moved his thirty-year-old girlfriend into my house, claiming they were prepping to have a baby boy.

When I voiced my objection, my wife tore into me with vicious insults.

In the end, not only did his girlfriend fail to get pregnant, but she also ran off with every cent he owned.

He immediately turned around, went live on TikTok, and played the victim, framing me for hitting on his girlfriend and driving her away.

Clueless netizens bombarded me with cyber violence, while my parents back home were publicly humiliated by whispering neighbors.

Consumed by twisted devotion for that woman, my father-in-law even brought a gang of thugs into my bedroom while I was asleep and beat me to death.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the exact day he brought her through our front door.

"Is that useless bum still sleeping in there?! Get him up right now to buy Tiffany some fresh lobster! If she doesn't eat good food, how is she supposed to give me a baby boy?!"

The phantom agony of being beaten to death in my past life hadn't even faded, yet that enraged bellow from outside shattered my throbbing skull.

SLAP!

A stinging slap landed hard across my face.

"Lucas, didn't you hear my dad? Get your lazy ass out of bed and go buy him that lobster!"

I opened my eyes in a daze, staring in disbelief at the scene before me.

The familiar voice, the familiar face, the familiar bedroom—all of it crashed into my senses.

Seeing me zone out, my wife, Chloe, kicked me with pure annoyance.

"What the hell are you staring at, Lucas? Are you brain-dead? Didn't you hear a word I just said?!"

I stared at Chloe. She looked radiant, brimming with energy—the very parasite who had drained my blood drop by drop. Pure, bottomless hatred welled up inside my chest.

More than half the credit for my tragic end in my previous life belonged to the woman standing right in front of me.

From the day she married me, Chloe had despised me. She always mocked me for being a small-town nobody who wasn't worthy of a spoiled city princess like her.

Even after I climbed the ladder and became a senior executive at a major firm, she still looked down on me, saying I reeked of rural dirt.

After our wedding, she refused to sleep in the same bedroom.

Only after I begged her repeatedly and promised to hand over my entire paycheck did she agree to sleep in my bed once a month.

Even then, whenever we were intimate, Chloe would pinch her nose with utter disgust.

One time, she snapped and screamed right in my face.

"Lucas, sleeping next to you makes me want to vomit. Could you just stay the hell away from me?!"

After that day, my self-esteem was thoroughly crushed, and I stopped trying to initiate anything.

That was also the reason why, after years of marriage, we still didn't have a child.

Arthur, my father-in-law, loved telling outsiders that I was "shooting blanks," constantly sneering that I couldn't give him a grandchild.

Looking back, the only reason Chloe had married me in the first place was because back when I was hit rock bottom, Arthur had given me a measly thousand dollars in seed money on one condition:

I had to marry his plain-looking daughter, who had a prominent birthmark on her face and whom everyone called bad luck.

I never believed in shallow superstitions. I figured as long as a person had a good heart, looks didn't matter.

I genuinely wanted to build a quiet, decent life with Chloe as equals. But she had always put herself on a pedestal, firmly believing she was inherently superior to a small-town guy like me.

Even after I paid her family back over thirty thousand dollars with massive interest, they still acted as if I owed my entire existence to them—as if without them, I would still be a pathetic stray for everyone to kick around.

Out of gratitude, I had swallowed their cold shoulder and condescending insults for years.

Yet in my past life, simply because I objected to Arthur moving his thirty-year-old girlfriend into my house to try for a baby, Chloe and her father cursed me out and kicked me out of my own home, forcing me to live in a cheap motel for an entire week.

In the end, they only let me come back because they had run out of cash.

From the very moment Arthur brought Tiffany into our house, my guard had been up.

I’ve always been good at reading people. The way someone carries themselves says everything about their character.

Tiffany wore the slick, conniving look of a shameless opportunist. To me, it was obvious she was nothing but bad news.

Sure enough, it didn't take long before she cleared out every penny of Arthur's life savings and vanished into thin air.

I wanted to call the police, but Arthur went straight to TikTok live, sobbing that I had hit on his girlfriend and scared her away.

They slandered me without a shred of evidence, spat on my name, and dragged my elderly parents back in my hometown into the mud, leaving them to face cruel whispers from the entire neighborhood.

Unable to take their lies anymore, I prepared to take legal action to protect myself, get a divorce from Chloe, and sever every single tie with her family.

I never imagined that on the eve of filing, Arthur would lead a mob of thugs into my room while I slept, beating me to death.

Perhaps my resentment was so profound that God decided to grant me a second chance, sending me right back to the day it all began.