Chapter 7

When Victoria got home, her mother was in the kitchen making soup.

"Vicky's back? Have you eaten yet? I'll get you a bowl of soup." Mary Lane's voice floated out from the kitchen, warm and full of the smell of rib and lotus root soup.

Victoria stood in the kitchen doorway, looking at her mother's apron-clad back, and her eyes turned red all at once.

In her last life, on the third day after her father's suicide, her mother had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. By the time she got to the hospital, it was already too late. Victoria had knelt outside the ICU begging the doctors, and all they told her was that they'd done everything they could. She never even got to see her one last time.

"Mom." Victoria's voice trembled a little.

"What is it?" Mary turned around carrying the soup, and the moment she saw her daughter's red eyes, she was startled. "Who bullied you? Was it that bastard Stephen Foster?"

"No." Victoria took the bowl and lowered her head to sip from it. It was hot, really hot, so hot the tip of her tongue went numb. But that heat made her feel grounded. She was still alive. Her mother was still alive. There was still time to fix everything.

"Mom, Stephen and I got divorced."

The spoon in Mary's hand hit the floor with a loud clang.

"Divorced?"

"Yeah."

"Did you leave with nothing?"

"No. I took everything I was supposed to take."

Mary stood there in shock for a while, then sighed, bent down, picked up the spoon, and rinsed it under the faucet. "Good. Good that you left him. I never liked Stephen Foster anyway, always walking around with that dead face like somebody owed him 27 million dollars. And that secretary of his is no good either. Last time she came to our house for dinner, her eyes kept drifting toward your dad's study. What a piece of work."

Victoria couldn't help laughing. "Mom, you could tell back then?"

"I've seen more in life than you've even had hot meals." Mary filled another bowl of soup and sat down. "Vicky, be honest with me. Was the divorce your idea or his?"

"Mine."

"Yours?" Mary looked surprised. "Weren't you always crazy about him?"

Victoria stirred the soup in her bowl and stayed quiet for a moment.

Had she liked him? Of course she had. The first time she'd seen Stephen was at a business gala when she was eighteen. He'd been standing in the crowd in a black suit, like a drawn sword, cold and sharp. Back then, she hadn't understood what it meant to be from matching families. She hadn't understood business marriages. All she knew was that he was handsome, he was brilliant, and he was the man she wanted to marry.

Only after she really married him did she learn that being handsome and brilliant solved absolutely nothing.

"Mom, liking someone for three years is long enough." Victoria set down her bowl. "Starting today, I'm only going to care about the people who deserve it."

Mary reached out and touched her daughter's head like she used to when Victoria was little. "Vicky, you've grown up."

Victoria leaned against her mother's shoulder and closed her eyes.

She thought about the last stretch of her life in the previous timeline. The walls of her rental place had grown moldy, and she couldn't afford to fix them, so she pasted old newspapers over the spots. The windows leaked air. In winter, it was so cold she couldn't sleep. She piled all her clothes over herself and still shivered. Her phone service got cut off because she couldn't afford to pay it, and that was how she lost contact with the outside world. One day, she was so hungry she couldn't stand it anymore, so she turned the whole room upside down and finally found two coins under the sofa cushion. She took them downstairs and bought the cheapest pack of instant noodles she could find.

That pack of noodles had already been expired for three months, and she still ate it.

She told herself she would never let her life become that again.

"Mom, has Dad's company run into trouble lately?"

Mary's hand paused for a moment. "Your dad wouldn't let me tell you."

"Mom, I'm divorced now. I'm back with my own family. So this is my business too." Victoria straightened up and looked at her mother seriously. "Tell me the truth."

Mary hesitated for a while before finally speaking. "A couple years ago, your dad partnered with someone on a project and put a lot of money into it. Then the partner took off, the project got abandoned, and now the bank loan can't be paid back. The cash flow is about to snap."

"How much are they short?"

"About 27 million dollars."

Victoria's heart sank a little. It was more than she'd expected. But she didn't panic.

"Got it." She stood up. "Mom, the soup's great. I'll have it again tomorrow."

She went upstairs to her room. It looked exactly the same as it had before she got married. Posters of the celebrity she'd adored in high school were still stuck by the bed. The bookshelf was packed with random books. And on the windowsill sat a pothos plant that had long since dried out.

Victoria picked up the dead plant and looked at it. The roots were rotted. There was no saving it. She set the pot aside, sat down at her desk, opened a notebook, and started writing.

On the first line, she wrote: Foster Group Acquisition Insider Report. Former finance director Mr. Carter knows the following...

On the second line, she wrote: Claire Sinclair. Former TV anchor. Exact start date of relationship with Stephen Foster still under investigation...

On the third line, she wrote: Lane Trading Debt Restructuring Plan...

She wrote for a long, long time. Until her fingers started aching. Until the sky outside the window began to turn pale.

When she finally closed the notebook, she looked at the words on the cover: Debts from a Past Life.

This time, she was going to settle every last one of them.

It's not that payback doesn't come.

It's just that now, the time has come.

On the third day after Victoria moved back in with her parents, Edward finally cracked.

The trigger was a call from the company's finance director, sounding frantic like his hair was on fire. "Mr. Lane, the bank called again. They said the 10 million dollars in interest has to be paid by the end of the month, or they'll take legal action."