Keeping The Eight Million For Myself

When her husband Richard crushes out his cigarette and asks for a divorce, Elena feels the phantom smell of bleach—a ghost from the life she already lived. In that first life she screamed and clung on, nursing him through a decade of illness only to be cast aside, while their daughter Natalie blamed her for everything. This time she simply says okay, asking only for the old cottage in the valley her parents left her.

Richard is stunned, then relieved, already dreaming of Skye, Natalie's classmate. Natalie smirks and records her mother's consent, siding with her father and his money. Elena eats her lunch with an appetite she hasn't felt in years, refusing to fight for a daughter who has already chosen.

Outside, Skye taunts her about the villa in the hills, offering her a job as their cleaning lady. Elena walks past them as if they were invisible, then hires six men and drives out to the abandoned farmhouse where, in her previous life, she died.