Exposing My Stepmother

My stepmother, Mary, hated me to the bone.

All because when I was little, I went to a classmate’s house to play and forgot to close the courtyard gate. Her son ran onto the road and was hit to death by a car.

My father loved my younger brother the most. After learning what happened, he was heartbroken.

“Were you jealous of your brother? That’s why you deliberately left the gate open?”

I desperately explained that I had closed the gate, but Dad didn’t believe me. He locked me in the basement and raised me like a dog for the rest of my life.

Until one day, when Dad went on a business trip, Mary didn’t give me any food for three days.

Starving, I crawled upstairs to the kitchen to look for something to eat.

That was when I saw Mary sitting on a man’s lap, saying softly, “If you hadn’t forgotten to close the gate back then, I wouldn’t be living in fear every day of my husband finding out… We’re the ones who killed Ethan.”

Only then did I understand that I wasn’t the one who had forgotten to close the gate and caused my brother to run outside, but my stepmother’s lover.

Just as I was about to sneak back to the basement, my stepmother noticed me.

“What did you hear? No! I can’t let your father find out that I killed our own son!”

In a panic, she grabbed me and threw me down the stairs, killing me on the spot.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the very day the car hit my brother.

I blinked my innocent, childlike eyes and pointed upstairs, speaking in a soft, baby voice, “Dad, I closed the gate. It was the man in Mom’s bedroom who didn’t!”

“Lucy, you’re saying you saw some man leave the yard gate unlocked?!”

Dad stood outside the gate, his bloodshot eyes locked onto me.

I sneered inwardly.

Look at how much he loved my younger brother, Ethan.

In my previous life, I explained over and over that I had locked the gate properly. However, he only believed the pillow talk whispered by my stepmother, Mary, and decided that I was the one who caused the death of his only son.

My mother died giving birth to me. Before the first week after her funeral was even over, he brought a pregnant Mary into the house.

That woman secured her position as the wife of the house by giving birth to a premature baby boy. Because of it, her body was damaged, and she could never have another child.

So, Ethan became my dad’s entire world.

After Ethan died, he treated me like a dog. He fed me dog food, made me sleep in a cage, and forced me to bark just to vent his useless rage and ease his guilt toward Mary.

However, in this life, I won’t be that stupid again.

I would use his suspicion as a man, use his so-called fatherly love, and grind that disgusting pair into the dirt.

That was why the very first thing I did after being reborn was rush home to catch Mary cheating. Yet I hadn’t expected that the moment I turned back, I would see Ethan standing in the middle of the road.

Dad, who was further away, looked like his eyes were about to pop out. As for me, who was closer and wanted to leave a good impression in front of him, I grabbed Ethan and pulled him back.

So Ethan didn’t crack his head open and die on the spot like last time. Instead, his leg was crushed, leaving him crippled.

“Honey!”

Mary’s shrill scream snapped me out of my thoughts. She rushed over, crying messily as she clung to my dad’s arm.

“Don’t listen to this little b*tch’s lies! Her mother died early, and she’s hated the two of us for a long time! She opened the gate on purpose! She wanted to kill our baby, Ethan!”

Before Dad could react, I immediately ran forward on my short little legs, threw myself at his thigh, and hugged it tightly. I lifted my dirty face and looked at him with the purest, most innocent gaze I could manage.

“Dad, I didn’t!” I said in a soft, childish voice, already trembling with sobs, sounding as wronged as possible.

“I want a mom to love me, too, but Mom doesn’t love me. I thought that if I treated Ethan well, you’d like me more…”

As I spoke, I squeezed out a few fat tears and pointed toward Ethan, who was lying nearby with his broken leg, crying weakly.

“I give Ethan my milk every day, and I let him play with my favorite teddy bear… Just now, if I hadn’t pulled him, he would’ve flown into the sky and never been able to play with me again.

“Our teacher says we should respect adults and take care of kids, so I did. Dad, you have to believe me.”

Since I always acted extra nice to Ethan to please my dad, I said all of this without even blinking.

I clung tightly to his leg, using every ounce of strength a child could muster to depend on him, and then finally threw out my bait.

“If Dad doesn’t believe me, you can go upstairs right now and look for that man. He definitely hasn’t left yet!”