"Stella, we’re getting on the train any minute now. Carrying cash on you isn’t safe. Hand it over, I’ll keep it for you."
"Trust me. Once you’re with me, I’ll make sure you live well from now on!"
The harsh, noisy voices hit her head-on. Stella Mercer snapped her eyes open, dazed.
What she saw was an old train station straight out of the seventies. People were everywhere, wearing imitation military caps, knockoff army jackets, and Zhongshan suits.
Where was this? Wasn’t she in the hospital, dying of late-stage cancer?
A man stood right in front of her, greed written all over his face.
"Hurry up and give it to me!" Chuck Merritt stuck out his hand, looking openly impatient.
What was wrong with this woman? She was already running away with him, and she was still this guarded?
Stella Mercer was completely lost, but some instinctive alarm rose in her chest. She refused coldly, "No need. My money stays with me."
Getting turned down in public, Chuck Merritt’s face darkened at once. "Don’t be so shameless when someone’s trying to be nice to you!"
He reached straight for her, trying to snatch the money off her by force.
"What are you doing?" Stella Mercer recoiled in fright.
Just as Chuck Merritt’s hand was about to brush her clothes, a sharp gust of cold force swept in.
A tall, straight-backed man strode over fast. His movements were clean and ruthless. Even with a crutch, his strength didn’t weaken in the slightest. He drove a brutal kick straight into Chuck Merritt.
There was a heavy thud. Chuck Merritt was sent flying and crashed to the ground, unable to get back up for a long while.
Stella Mercer was scared stiff. She stood rooted to the spot, her whole body locked up.
The man who had appeared out of nowhere had a tall frame, severe brows, and a face cold enough to cut. The pressure coming off him was intense. Even leaning on a crutch, he carried the kind of menace that warned strangers to stay away.
And who was this now?
Chuck Merritt lay sprawled on the ground, scared and furious all at once. He pointed at Stella Mercer and shouted, trying to clear himself, "Victor Harlow! This has nothing to do with me!"
"It was your wife who couldn’t behave herself! She came on to me first! She insisted on dragging me away with her! I just lost my head for a second and almost did something stupid! It’s all her fault!"
People nearby all turned to look.
Stella Mercer’s heart pounded so hard it felt like it would burst. For one wild second, she honestly thought she’d been trafficked by some kind of scam ring.
No. She had to run.
She instinctively turned, planning to slip away from this mess while nobody stopped her.
But the moment she took one step, a strong hand shot out, grabbed her arm with perfect accuracy, and yanked her back.
The force was sudden and fierce. She lost her balance and lurched forward, her forehead slamming hard into Victor Harlow’s solid chin.
A sharp pain exploded through her body. Her vision went black, and she lost consciousness on the spot.
And this time, the moment she fainted, the missing memories crashed into her head all at once.
So that was it. She hadn’t been kidnapped by scammers.
She had transmigrated.
She had been an orphan to begin with, and with terminal cancer, she hadn’t had long left anyway.
She had just donated her fortune—tens of millions—to the state, and then, in the blink of an eye, she’d ended up inside a period novel called Rebirth in the Seventies: Tea Talk for the Stepmother.
She had become Stella Mercer, the wife of the story’s major villain, Victor Harlow. Funny enough, her own original name had also been Stella.
In that period novel, neither Victor Harlow nor the original Stella had wanted this marriage.
Victor Harlow’s family was dirt poor, poor enough that the house practically rang hollow. There were elderly people, sick people, and a whole heap of mouths depending on him alone. Some days they ate, some days they didn’t.
Being poor was bad enough, but the Harlow family was also a complete mess. One couldn’t tell right from wrong, one was so biased it was absurd, another was selfish to the core...
The whole household was like a pit full of bitter water.
The original Stella was already in her twenties and still unmarried, all because she’d been dumped by a fiancé years ago. The blow had hit her hard, and she got stubborn, dead set on finding someone better than the last man.
She picked and picked and missed every good option, and in the end, she picked herself right into becoming an old maid.
Then someone set her up and she fell into the water.
Victor Harlow had also been trapped in the same scheme and fallen in, and while he was there, he pulled her out too.
Stella’s mother was probably desperate to marry her daughter off, so she turned around and forced the original Stella to marry him, while also forcing Victor Harlow to take her.
But the original Stella had only one thing on her mind—making her former fiancé regret losing her. A man like Victor Harlow, with no family wealth and a crippled leg that needed a crutch, wasn’t even close to what she wanted.
So after the wedding, she never let Victor Harlow touch her.