Chapter 1The Choice I Make This Time

When I was seven, my older brother was too busy chasing a scholarship girl to watch me, which resulted in me being kidnapped.

By the time I finally escaped and made it back home years later, that same scholarship girl had essentially taken my place, living as the fake heiress of our family.

Wearing an outrageously expensive princess dress, she pinched her nose and looked at me with undisguised disgust.

"She smells terrible. Do you think she has some kind of infectious disease?"

And just like that, the way my parents looked at me shifted. My brother’s face was filled with outright revulsion.

"Why did you have to come back and ruin our perfect lives?"

That was the moment I realized the fake heiress was also my brother's fiancée!

In the end, I was tortured to death by her, while my parents and brother watched, completely indifferent to my suffering.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back to being a five-year-old.

This was the exact year my parents' corporate rivals targeted my brother, intending to kidnap him to force my parents into surrendering a massive contract.

This time, I chose to be selectively blind.

My useless brother and my heavily biased parents can all go straight to hell!

* * *

"Little girl, go tell your mom and dad to drop the current project, or they'll never see your brother again."

A middle-aged man wearing a baseball cap and a surgical mask growled at me viciously.

His hand was clamped tightly around my brother's arm.

At this time, my brother was just a little kid—not tall, not strong, and not yet the malicious monster he would become. The look he gave me wasn't filled with hatred, but with pure terror and desperate pleading.

A large, dark wet spot was spreading across the front of his Spider-Man jeans. My brother had peed himself.

I feigned an expression of utter horror, nodding my head frantically like a woodpecker.

Satisfied, the kidnapper scooped my brother up and swaggered away, tossing him into a black Honda. He didn't even bother to cover or remove the license plate. What kind of amateur kidnapper was this?

"Wow, that smells so good! What is that?"

I sniffed the air, following the sweet scent until I found myself in front of a small convenience store. The colorful cotton candy looked absolutely delicious.

By the time I happily waddled home clutching my cotton candy, my parents had already returned. Seeing me alone, they looked confused.

"Where's your brother?"

I took a small lick of my cotton candy, answering in my sweetest, most innocent toddler voice: "I don't know~ The cotton candy is so yummy! Do Mommy and Daddy want a bite?"

My parents searched the house for a while, then combed the neighborhood multiple times. Finding absolutely no trace of my brother, panic finally set in, and they called 911.

But in an era before security cameras were on every corner, finding human traffickers was like finding a needle in a haystack.

The police officer looked puzzled:

"This doesn't make sense. Your gated community has excellent security. How could kidnappers even get in? I just spoke with the guards, and they didn't see anyone suspicious entering or leaving."

My mother collapsed onto the floor, wailing uncontrollably. My father was yanking his own hair out, consumed by grief.

I sat on the edge of the planter box, swinging my little legs, watching them unblinkingly with my wide, innocent eyes.

They looked so heartbroken, so devastated. So why, in my past life, when they watched me being tortured to death right in front of them, were they so utterly indifferent?

Right. My brother's life mattered to them. Mine didn't.

Since that's how it is, then none of you deserve to have a good life.