Chapter 3

Andrew stepped between Olivia and me, putting himself in the middle.

He said, "Charlotte, I know you've been tired since giving birth, but that's no excuse to disrespect someone like this.

"Olivia is here because I asked her to. You're making things really awkward for me today.

"For my sake, just stop picking fights with Olivia, okay?"

I shot him a sideways glance. "For your sake? You can't even protect your own wife. Why should I stop?

"This is the Sterling family, not the Grant family. We don't let the help talk back to us like you do.

"If she dares to walk in here and give me attitude today, tomorrow she'll be making decisions for me without even asking.

"If I just let this slide today, pretty soon, people will be walking all over me.

"It's not like I'm forcing her to lick it clean. If she can't get over it, she can leave right now."

Olivia held onto Ryan, tears filling her eyes. "Ms. Sterling, are you really going to ruin me like this?

"If you kick me out, what about the baby? Are you really going to let your own child suffer just because of some small argument? He's your own flesh and blood!

"Didn't Mr. Grant just say you should be more understanding? Why are you making such a big deal out of something so small? Is this how little you care about your son?"

I sneered inwardly. Olivia was something else, playing both the victim and the hero at the same time. She couldn't stand being nitpicked, but she also couldn't stand leaving her own son. Now she was pulling out all the stops, trying to guilt-trip me to stay.

Andrew thought he had everything under control, but he didn't see this coming. The moment Olivia saw her kid, she completely snapped and started standing up to me in front of everyone.

They still thought I was the same good-natured Charlotte from my previous life. Too bad for them, they couldn't have been more wrong. The woman standing in front of them now was a force to be reckoned with.

"Don't use the baby as an excuse," I said coldly. "Sure, pretentious housekeepers like you are hard to come by, but reliable nannies? They're a dime a dozen. You're not the only one who can take care of a kid."

I pointed straight at the filthy diaper on the floor again. "Lick it clean, or leave. It's up to you."

*****

The power of a mother's love was truly unstoppable. Olivia spent the entire night retching in the guest room, while Andrew just kept sighing nonstop.

Even with her stomach in knots, Olivia still stubbornly carried Ryan, who loved crying at night, back into her own room.

Sometimes, when I heard her retching, I almost felt sorry for her.

She pushed through her nausea to lick that dirty diaper to stay for her son.

After all, she was a mother. She couldn't bring herself to abandon her child.

But as I lay in bed, watching soft and sweet Sophie sleep beside me, all the hatred and anger inside me just exploded, like thorns growing out of control, burying any trace of softness.

Looking at my baby girl, I couldn't help but remember how Sophie looked in my previous life. Her body was torn apart by those cruel hooks, her face so swollen it was almost unrecognizable.

Olivia's son with Andrew was their precious little prince, but did that mean my daughter, the one I gave birth to for Andrew, was just supposed to die in the prime of her life?

Why should Sophie and I pay the price for their son's future, just so those two could live happily ever after?

Just because Sophie was in Ryan's way of inheriting the Sterling family, she had to be pushed into the river and drowned by her so-called brother?

Just because my existence kept Andrew from being with his mistress, did I really deserve to be burned alive in my own villa, my ashes scattered with the rubble like garbage?

Cuckoos lay their eggs in other birds' nests, tricking the birds into raising their chicks. Their eggs would hatch first, and then the chicks would push all the other eggs out, leaving themselves the only ones fed. If there was not enough food, they would even attack the birds trying to care for them.

What they were doing now and what they would do to me and Sophie in the future was exactly like a cuckoo laying its eggs in someone else's nest.

Now that this cuckoo couple laid their egg in the Sterling family's nest, it was up to me to decide how this chick would be raised. They didn't get a say in it anymore.

Since there wasn't enough breast milk for both kids, Olivia, who was worried about her son, suggested we give Ryan some formula.

She'd taken weaning pills after giving birth, so she couldn't produce any milk now.

I agreed to her suggestion, but I secretly messed with things so that Ryan had a severe allergic reaction, swelling up and ending up in the hospital the same day.

While they were away at the hospital, I had the whole villa wired with hidden cameras, and even the bathrooms and showers got bugged.

The workers worked quickly, and by the time everything was set up, Ryan was already out of the hospital.

He was diagnosed with a seafood allergy, just like in my previous life. He couldn't go near seafood at all.