Qianshan Twilight Snow Only Shadows Towards

Having decided to leave, Shirley visited the cemetery alone, paying her respects to her daughter Sharon and her mother-in-law, Natalie.

She returned deep into the night.

Not wanting to disturb anyone, she groped her way upstairs in the dark.

The bedroom door stood ajar. With a sharp *click*, the light snapped on.

“Heather, I had that dream again...”

Christopher held Heather, who wore only a tight camisole. His long, bony fingers rested on the slight swell of her stomach.

“Christopher... Heather is pregnant? With your child?” Shirley’s eyes widened, her composure crumbling.

She remembered when she had miscarried in her seventh month. Christopher had held the stillborn fetus the doctors induced and named it ‘Sharon’.

Eyes bloodshot, he’d whispered to the lifeless child in his arms, over and over:

“Sharon, my little princess. Daddy will only ever be your daddy, okay?”

He’d clung to that tiny, perfectly-formed body all night, refusing to let go no matter who tried to reason with him.

Once, a friend suggested Shirley could simply have another child for him. Christopher’s bodyguard broke the man’s arm on the spot.

And now... now he’d gotten Heather pregnant?

Shirley stared, disbelieving, as Christopher tenderly stroked Heather’s belly, a thin, mocking smile curling his lips.

“Wrong. She’s carrying *your* child,” he said.

“This baby is Sharon’s reincarnation. She came to me in a dream, insisted on being my daughter, so she chose Heather’s womb.”

“That’s insane!” A roaring filled Shirley’s ears.

Heather giggled, taking Christopher’s hand and sliding it up her pale thigh.

“Chris, I had the same dream. Sharon said she wants to see her daddy.”

Christopher leaned back, a predatory glint in his eyes as he bared his muscular chest. His voice dropped to a low, deliberate drawl. “Oh? And how does she want to see me?”

“From the inside, of course...” Heather’s voice dripped with syrup. She bit her lip in a show of shyness that was utterly transparent.

Christopher ground his teeth. Snatching a metal lighter from the nightstand, he hurled it at Shirley. “Get the hell out! Or are you going to help me with my pants?”

Clutching her bleeding forehead, Shirley fled to her own room. In her panic, she knocked over a framed pregnancy photo on her nightstand.

Memories crashed over her like a tidal wave.

While pregnant, she’d secretly gone to surprise Christopher at a project site for his birthday—only to wake up in the arms of a complete stranger.

A shocking, dark pool of blood had soaked the sheets beneath her.

And in that exact moment, her mother-in-law pushed the door open, took one look, and died of a heart attack on the spot.

After losing two of his closest family members in one night, Christopher became a different man.

It started with the cold shoulder. At society galas, he’d treat her like thin air.

He let people pour wine on her, call her a slut, push her into pools littered with broken glass. He’d stand on the edge, applauding, as the water tinted red around her.

Then he began allowing Heather, with blatant disregard, to wear Shirley’s nightgowns and climb into his bed.

After that night, he transferred all the affection he’d once shown Shirley to Heather, forcing Shirley to indulge Heather’s every outrageous whim.

Heather would cry over a frozen cat she’d found, demanding it be brought back to life. He’d throw the stiff corpse at Shirley, ordering her to tuck it inside her clothes to ‘warm it back’.

A mosquito bit Heather? He’d dunk Shirley in a tub of pungent, medicinal oil, using her as a human mosquito repellent.

For two years, Shirley had begged for a divorce, to get out of their way. But Christopher blocked her adoptive father’s urgently needed heart surgery, holding it over her head to force her compliance.

And now this—using Sharon’s reincarnation as some crude, cruel joke to humiliate her!

Blood still dripped from her forehead. Shirley fetched the iodine to disinfect the wound. The cotton swab emerged from the bottle with a huge centipede clinging to it, which dropped onto her leg!

Terrified of centipedes, she lost all reason. She screamed, flinging the bottle away.

In her panic, she stepped on the rolling bottle, lost her footing, and fell hard.

The commotion startled the housekeeper and triggered one of Heather’s performances.

Provoked by the scream, Heather began wailing. “Christopher! She fell on purpose! She doesn’t want Sharon to see you!”

“Fine! Then I won’t let you see Sharon either!”

Disheveled, she rushed to the balcony, flung the window open, and tried to climb over the ledge.