My Husband and Sister Stole My Life,So I Stole It Back

A car accident on the morning of the college entrance exam. I missed an entire subject.

I should have scored above 680. I got 530barely enough for an ordinary university.

I married my first love, Landon Henson. Had a child. Ten years of what I thought was a good life.

Until I brought my five-year-old son to a party.

And found my husband with a girl pinned against a wall, his face buried against her neck.

She tilted her face up. "Landon, who do you actually love? Me, or your wife?"

He kissed her forehead, that besotted look never leaving his eyes.

"You, of course. Why do you think I set up that car accident ten years ago so Dora Sullivan would miss the exam?"

"I only married her so you could land the Gilbert heir. Otherwise I wouldn't have touched her."

He said it so casually, like breathing. My whole body went cold.

The accident on exam day.

Landon had arranged it.

My fists clenched until my nails broke skin. The girl in front of me was no stranger. She was my half-sister, Leonora Pruitt.

The year of the exam, because my score fell short of Leonora's, I lost the right to inherit our father's assets.

She'd scored 535, five points above mine, and walked away with an oceanfront villa and a private island, both gifts from our father.

And because I lost that bet,

our father threw me out of the house.

Cut my mother and me off without a cent.

For years I'd wondered. Why then? No accidents any other day of my life, but on the morning of the exam, a collision out of nowhere.

I'd even blamed my own bad luck.

All of it. Every last bit of it. Landon's doing.

"Mommy"

My five-year-old son, Ryan Abbott, tore his hand free from mine and ran toward Leonora, his face lit up with excitement.

The commotion drew their attention.

Leonora eased Landon aside, unhurried, and tilted her head at me. "Well. What a coincidence, sis."

Landon's body locked. He spun around.

He saw me.

Shock first, then panic, then something I couldn't read at all.

"Dora."

He started toward me. "How much did you hear?"

I didn't look at him. I just wanted to take Ryan and go.

But the next second.

Ryan ran straight to Leonora and wrapped his arms around her leg. "Mommy, hold me"

His voice was small, but it hit my skull like a nail hammered in.

I couldn't move.

Five years old. I'd raised him with my own hands, held him every night and told him storiesand now that same little boy was clinging to Leonora's leg, face upturned, eager to please, calling her

Mommy.

Leonora looked down and stroked Ryan's hair, her smile impossibly tender. Then she raised her eyes to mine, and the triumph in them didn't even try to hide.

"There's my good boy."

Her voice was soft. She glanced at Landon. "Mommy was just talking to Daddy, sweetie. You couldn't wait for Mommy to pick you up, could you?"

The color drained from Landon's face.

He crossed the room in two strides and pulled Ryan away from her.

"Ryan, you got it wrong. That's your aunt."

"But Auntie told me to call her that."

Ryan blinked, all innocence. "Auntie said she's my real mommy. She bought me tons and tons of toys and said if I called her Mommy, I'd never have to go back to that stupid house."

The blood in my veins ran backward.

"Landon."

I heard my own voicehoarse, barely mine. "You've been taking Ryan to see her?"

Landon swallowed. He said nothing.

Leonora laugheda bright, shaking, delighted laugh that carried across the room.

She crossed the floor toward me one stiletto step at a time and dropped her voice low.

"You still don't get it, do you?"

"Ryan is mine and Landon's. You were just a free womb."

"The college entrance exam destroyed you. The marriage? You were nothing but the substitute. And now even the son isn't yours. Dora Sullivan, you really did lose everything."

My whole body was shaking. My nails dug into my palms.

"You're lying!"

I shoved her aside and lunged for Ryan, pulling him into my arms. "Ryan is mine! I carried him for ten monthsI was on that operating table having a C-section while you were out drinking at a bar, Leonora! How dare you say that to me"

"Dora!"

Landon's brow knotted hard. "Don't make a scene in front of the child."

I looked at the man I had loved for fifteen years, and the tears finally fell.

"Tell me. Is Ryan my child or not?"

Landon's gaze flickered away. He hesitated.

That hesitation made my stomach turn.

He was figuring out how to spin it.

Or maybe, even now, he was looking for another lie to feed me.

"Landon."

Leonora tugged his arm, her voice syrupy. "Just tell her. She'll find out sooner or later."

"He's ours, after allour blood, our child. She's the outsider here she deserves to hear it."

The flaunting triumph in that look, the open provocation, sent a chill straight through me.

My arms tightened without thinking, and Ryan began to whimper against my chest.

"Mommy you're hurting me"

Then he burst into wailing sobs, reaching both hands toward Leonora. "Mommy, save me! I don't want her! She's mean!"

It felt like someone had carved a piece out of my heart.

"Ryan, look at me."

I cupped his face, my voice breaking.

"Mommy's right here. I'm your mommy."

Ryan froze for two seconds, then let out a piercing cry and shoved my hands away.

"You're not! Auntie told me! You're the bad one! You stole me!"

Leonora's eyes went red on cue.

"No matter how much you hate me, the child is innocent. You can't keep him from his real mother just because you and Landon have problems."

The chill that ran through me went all the way to the bone.

"I want a DNA test."

The results came back fast. Ryan was not my child.

His biological parents were Landon Henson and Leonora Pruitt.

Leonora lifted her chin. "Believe me now?"

"Fine."

I let go of Ryan. I stood up slowly and wiped my face dry.

"I'm giving him back to you."

I turned and walked away without looking back.

Behind me, Landon panicked.

"Dora, where are you going? Don't do anything rash."

He tried to rush after me. I stopped and looked him in the eye.

"Landon, let's get a divorce."

His pupils contracted.

"Dora, stop this."

"Just go home. We'll talk when I'm ready."

I turned away without another word, but the tears were already pouring.

Not my child. I carried him for ten monthsmorning sickness so violent I was hospitalized, a C-section where I hemorrhaged and nearly died on that tableand the child I loved more than my own life was never mine. Leonora's egg, borrowed womb. That was all I ever was to them.

What did they think I was?

Thoughts crashed over me, one after another, drowning out everything else.

I never saw the car speeding toward me.

The next second, I was flying.

When I opened my eyes again

I was back. The morning of the college entrance exam.

"Dora, don't forget your milk and bread. It's exam dayno getting nervous, okay?"

The moment I heard those familiar words from my mother, my head snapped up.

Ten years ago.

Not long after my mother said that exact sentence.

I'd been crossing the intersection when a car ran the red light and slammed into me.

This time, I would not let it happen again.

I grabbed my mother's hand so hard my knuckles went white.

"Mom, walk me to the exam hall today."

She blinked, then smiled.

"What's gotten into you? Yesterday you said you didn't need"

"I'm begging you."

My voice was shaking.

Her smile fell. She saw my eyes and whatever was in them made her go stillbecause no girl shaking like this was shaking over an exam.

She pressed the back of her hand to my forehead. No fever. She nodded anyway. "Alright. Mom will take you."

We reached the familiar intersection before long.

I stood at the edge of the crosswalk, my heart hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat.

My mother was chattering beside me about something. I didn't catch a single word.

This was the crosswalk.

In my last life, a silver van had come tearing through here and sent me flying three meters.

Fractured right leg. Concussion. Missed the math exam entirely.

I'd spent ten years remembering that plate number. JC-7K362.

There it was.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught the silver van easing up to the left-side intersection, idling at the corner.

The driver wore a baseball cap pulled low, face hidden, but the engine was still running.

He was waiting.

Waiting for me to reach the middle of the road.

"Mom," I said, my voice eerily steady, "record on my phone. Right nowdon't stop."

Before she could react, I'd already pressed the phone into her hands, hit record, and pulled her onto the crosswalk with me.

Three steps in, the van's engine screamed and it launched straight at me.

Now.

I spun around, raised the phone at the van, and the flash fired.

The driver threw a hand up instinctively to shield his eyes. The steering wheel jerked. The van grazed the hem of my school skirt and plowed into a fire hydrant on the curb.

Screams erupted all around us.

I stood frozen in place, the voice recorder I'd been gripping slick with sweat.

"Dora!"

My mother screamed and threw her arms around me. The phone clattered to the ground, still recording.

I crouched down, picked it up, and aimed it at the smoking van, capturing the plate number in perfect clarity.

Then I dialed 110.

"Someone just tried to run me over on purposeI'm a student, it's exam day. Plate number JC-7K362. He's still here."

I hung up. Ten minutes later, a police car arrived.

The driver tried to run. An officer tackled him to the ground before he made it five steps.

The officers ended up putting me in the squad car themselves and driving me straight to the exam hall.

"Thank you, officers."

I stepped out, thanked them, and turned to my mother.

"Mom, I'm going in."

A long line had already formed at the entrance.

My gaze swept the crowd and stopped at one corner.

Landon Henson.

Eighteen-year-old Landon.

He was wearing a white T-shirt, holding a bottle of water in one hand and a box of sweet bean pastry in the other, smiling at me.

That smile was clean and warma completely different creature from the man who would corner a woman against a wall ten years from now.

He walked up to me, still smiling, his voice gentle.

"Dora, have you eaten? I made you some sweet bean pastry. At least have a biteyou'll crush it today."

I didn't reach for it.

I just stared at him.

"No thanks. The college entrance exam is too important. I'm not eating anything handed to me by a stranger."

I stepped past him and walked away.

The smile on Landon's face froze solid.

"A stranger?"

He frowned and followed after me. "Dora, what's wrong? Why are you suddenly being so distant?"

He looked genuinely confused.

Because before the exam, we'd made a promise: once we got into the same university, we'd be together.

I'd always believed it was mutual. That we both felt the same way.

I never imagined I was just a pawn in his hand.

A stepping stone to help Leonora Pruitt get everything she wanted.

I didn't even spare him a glance. I lengthened my stride toward the exam hall, trying to shake him off as fast as I could.

"Dora, my stomach it hurts, all of a sudden!"

Landon clutched his stomach, his face twisted in pain, and grabbed my arm.

"I can't take it. Can you take me to the hospital?"

I stopped. Turned around and looked at him.

His face was pale and drawn, and he really did look like someone in the grip of some sudden attack.

I almost laughed.

So the car crash didn't work. Time for Plan B, is that it?

I said nothing.

A flicker of guilt passed through Landon's eyes, but he kept up the agonized act.

"Dora, please. I'm begging you. It's one testif it doesn't work out, we can just retake next year together."

"I think it's the hereditary thing, the one that runs in my family. If I don't get to a hospital soon, I could actually die here"

I smiled, cold, and pointed toward the staff at the entrance.

"If you need help, go ask them. Why are you coming to me? I'm a student about to sit an exam."

"Landon."

I locked my eyes on his and spoke word by word.

"What makes you think I'd throw away my one shot at this exam for you?"

Something cracked in his expression.

He clearly hadn't expected me to say that.

The old Dora Sullivan loved him so deeply she would have dropped her exam pass and carried him to the hospital herself.

"Dora, you've changed."

He clutched his stomach, his voice shaking. "You weren't like this before. So cold. So heartless."

"You're right. I've changed."

I glanced at my watch. "There are forty minutes until the math exam. You have two choices."

"One: go find a staff member. They'll call you an ambulance. Two: keep performing out here, and I call the police and report you for disrupting the exam."

Every trace of color drained from Landon's face.

I smiled and added one more thing.

"Besides, nobody knows better than I do that you, Landon Henson, don't have any hereditary condition."

After all, in my past life we were married for ten years. Every single physical came back clean. This whole act was just another way to stall me until the exam started without me.

More and more students were pouring into the exam hall. I had no interest in wasting another second on him. I turned and walked away.

"Dora Sullivan, how can you be this cruel? You're just going to abandon me?"

I kept walking, pace quick and unhesitating, when a body slammed into me from the side.

"Ow!"

"God, do you not have eyes? Watch where you're walking!"

Leonora rubbed her shoulder, all wounded indignation, and glared at me.

"I mean, sure, we're in the same exam hall, and everyone knows you're the big geniusbut do you really have to barrel in here like you're trying to kill me?"

I stared at Leonora, cold, and stepped back on instinct.

She smiled.

"What's with the look, sis?"

"Relax. It's exam dayI'm not going to mess with you the way I used to."

"That can wait until after."

Leonora let the words hang like a gift, then turned on her heel and walked away. I narrowed my eyes at her retreating back.

This time, I finally made it into the math exam hall.

The room was dead silent.

I sat at my desk, and the sunlight through the window hit so hard it stungI had to blink the tears back before they could start.

The math papers were handed out.

Every problem I never got to answer in my last life stared back at me now like an old friend.

Derivatives, conic sections, probability and statisticsall of them, right there.

I could have done them with my eyes closed. In another life, I'd sat up through countless midnights with the answer keys to these exact questions, crying over them until the print blurred, reading them again until I cried again.

I picked up my pen and started writing, steady, deliberate, one answer at a time.

I was deep in concentration when hurried footsteps broke through from outside.

A female proctor walked up to my desk, her expression severe, and stopped.

"Dora Sullivan. Put your pen down. Someone has reported that you brought cheat notes into the exam."

I froze, looking up in confusion.

"Ma'am, I didn't."

"We were all searched before we came in, weren't we?"

Leonora's voice cut in from the back row, bright with a triumph she wasn't even trying to hide.

"Ma'am, I saw it with my own eyes. She stuffed a slip of paper in her pocket. The right pocket of her school uniform."

I turned and looked at her.

The look on her face said everything it needed to.

*Go ahead, Dora Sullivan. Talk your way out of this one. Cheat notes in the exam halldoesn't matter if you used them or not, you're done. Zero on every section. Daddy's favor, the inheritance, the oceanfront villagone.*

I pressed my lips tight and looked away.

"Dora Sullivan, please stand up."

The proctor stepped in front of me, her tone brooking no argument. "Per regulations, we need to conduct a search."

I stood and turned my pockets inside out for her, one by one.

Left pocket. Empty.

Right pocket

Leonora's gaze locked onto it, and the curve of her smile climbed higher and higher.

I spoke up. "Ma'am, before the search, can I say one thing?"

"Go ahead."

"There are cameras in this room."

I raised my head and pointed to the corner of the classroom, then to the surveillance camera in the hallway outside.

"If anything is found on me that shouldn't be there, I'll accept every consequence. But if nothing is found"

I paused, letting my gaze travel past the proctor and land on Leonora's face.

"then what happens to the person who made the report?"

Leonora's smirk stiffened for a split second, then snapped back into place.

"Oh please, sis. I'm looking out for everyone in this room. If you've got nothing to hide, why are you so nervous?"

"Besides, I saw it with my own eyes. Calling out my own sister for the sake of a fair examhow is that wrong?"

The other students were already piling on.

"A cheater. In *here*. Get her out!"

"Waitisn't that Dora Sullivan? First in the class at No. 1 High? So what, were all those grades copied too?"

"Quiet."

The proctor silenced the murmuring.

Without another word, the woman reached into my right pocket.

Her fingers hit the bottom of the pocket and circled the lining.

Empty.

She circled again.

Still empty.

Leonora's expression finally cracked. She leaned forward, craning to see.

The female proctor turned the entire pocket inside out. Clean. Not even a loose thread.

"Nothing in this pocket either."

She glanced at the other proctor, who shook his head.

Every drop of color drained from Leonora's face.

"That's impossible!"

Her voice shot up to a shriek. "I put it there my I *saw* it! Right there in her right pocket!"

"You put it there yourself?" I asked.

Leonora's mouth snapped shut. She looked like she might pass out.

"I misspoke."

"Ma'am, she definitely brought cheat notes. She must have moved them somewhere else!"

The proctor frowned, then told me to open my bag and dump everything out.

Pens, eraser, ruler, exam ID

She went through each item, one by one. Nothing.

The entire room was dead silent.

"Ma'am!"

Leonora was frantic now. "She's hiding them somewhere else! Her pants pockets? Her shoes? Come on, actually search her!"

The proctor looked at her. The look wasn't the kind you give a concerned witness anymore. It was the kind you give a problem.

"Dora Sullivan, please cooperate. Take off your shoes."

I sat down and took my time with the laces, pulled both canvas shoes off, and turned them upside down on the desk.

Nothing.

I stood back up, peeled off my school jacket, gave it a shake, and held it open for her.

Nothing.

The proctor's face was getting harder by the second, but not at me. At Leonora.

"You."

She turned to face Leonora, her voice dropping cold.

"You claimed you saw Dora Sullivan carrying cheating materials with your own eyes. When exactly was that? Where did you see it?"

Leonora opened her mouth. Her eyes darted back and forth.

"It was right before we entered the exam room. In the hallway. I saw her stuff something into her pocket"

"There are cameras in the hallway."

I kept my voice level. "Pull the footage and we'll know, won't we?"

Leonora's breath caught.

She scrambled to explain. "Ma'am, maybe I was wrong! Let's just skip the footageit'll eat into everyone's exam time, people still need to finish"

I smiled. "You've already made the accusation. For the sake of exam integrity, you can't just wave it away with an 'oops, my mistake,' can you?"

I turned to the proctor.

"I'd like to request that the footage be reviewed. To clear my name and protect the fairness of this exam."

She nodded, picked up her walkie-talkie, and stepped outside.

A few minutes later, the door opened again. She walked back in with the head proctor behind her.

He was carrying a tablet. On the screen, hallway footage was already playing.