"Break off the engagement?"
Serena Caldwell stood there frozen, fingers pinching the letter sent from the army. It took her a long while to come back to herself. She had been reborn.
In her last life, just a few days before she was supposed to marry Spencer Colton, someone had drugged her and dumped her onto the bed of a strange man.
By the time she woke up, she had not even seen that man's face clearly, yet the whole village already knew.
Wherever she went, people pointed and cursed, calling her ruined goods. Only Spencer Colton had held her hand and said, "I don't care about any of that. I still want to marry you."
The Colton family had not said much out loud, but Serena understood it in her heart. She felt she owed Spencer Colton for the rest of her life, so she kept swallowing everything and enduring it.
Not until the Coltons had squeezed the last bit of use out of her and tormented her to death did she finally understand the truth—every bit of it had been a trap laid by the Colton family.
"Serena, Spencer's doing this for your own good too. He was badly hurt in the army. He doesn't have long left. He doesn't want to drag you down. Just think of it as granting his last wish and agree to end the engagement." Harriet Colton wiped at her tears as she spoke, all while holding Serena's hand and trying to persuade her.
Behind her, the rest of the Colton family all wore the same pained, heartbroken look.
Serena watched the whole act and found it laughable beyond words.
In her last life, she had believed them too, believed that Spencer Colton had been badly wounded and died in the army. To fulfill what she thought was his dying wish, she had agreed to break off the engagement.
But because she wanted to help him show filial duty to his family, she willingly supported the whole Colton household and never married for the rest of her life.
Farm work, mining work, construction work, driving freight trucks—anything a man could do, she did.
She raised Spencer Colton's three younger siblings, found jobs for them, helped arrange their marriages, and watched with her own eyes as each one of them went on to live a good life.
And what about her? Her body had long since been worked into the ground. In the end, she got cancer.
The Coltons were afraid she would become a burden, so they threw her out of the house.
It was only then that she learned the truth: that letter had been fabricated by the Colton family. Spencer Colton had never died at all. He had married in the army, had children, earned a promotion, and was living a happy, comfortable life. Without all those hangers-on from home, he had it easy.
Every one of the Coltons had known from the beginning to the end, yet they had kept her in the dark the whole time.
As for her, after being kicked out by the Colton family, she had not a penny to her name. She could not even afford treatment. In the end, she was reduced to begging on the street and froze to death by the roadside, with not a single person left to collect her body.
Maybe heaven had seen just how pitiful her life had been. That was why she had been given one more chance to start over.
The moment Serena Caldwell realized the whole thing had been cooked up by the Colton family, she stared at those sickening faces, hatred burning in her eyes. With a cold expression, right in front of everyone, she tore the breakup letter into tiny pieces.
"He wants to break off the engagement? In his dreams!"
"Oh, Serena, what are you doing?" The second Harriet Colton saw her rip up the letter, her face changed on the spot.
The rest of the Colton family looked just as stunned, like they had seen a ghost. Why did Serena suddenly seem like a completely different person?
Harriet’s heart started pounding too. Now that the letter was gone, how was she supposed to explain this to Spencer?
They had gone behind Spencer’s back and told him Serena had been acting shamelessly in the village, flirting around with men, and that was what pushed him into writing this letter. But to make it sound decent, to leave her a shred of face, they had dressed it up as a polite, respectable cancellation of the engagement.
They had thought that with how deeply Serena cared for Spencer, she would definitely agree to it. Who would have guessed she would tear the letter to pieces?
"Serena, I know you can’t accept it right away, but this is Spencer’s final wish. If you refuse, then when I die, I won’t even be able to close my eyes in peace."
Harriet knew Serena had always been soft-hearted. As long as she cried and put on a miserable act in front of her, Serena would usually give in to anything.
Serena looked at Harriet’s grief-stricken face. She looked so heartbroken it was as if her son had already died, yet Serena’s own face stayed flat and calm.