About

The champagne tasted like ash. My daughter, Lily, beamed beside my beaming husband, David, celebrating her university graduation-a picture-perfect moment I' d relived before. In my previous life, it was on this very day that she had shattered me, screaming, "You're not my real parents!" after draining my retirement, all to fund the biological family who' d thrown her away. That betrayal, that sickening realization of my life's savings gone, had led to my death in a car crash, a distraction of overwhelming grief. I didn' t understand how the sweet girl we had doted on for twenty-two years could be so cruel, so utterly devoid of gratitude, bleeding us dry for people who saw her as nothing but a walking ATM. But then, I woke up, back in my own bed, on the morning of this exact party. This time, there would be no selfless mother, no victim. This time, I was a survivor, and I was ready for war.

Introduction

The champagne tasted like ash. My daughter, Lily, beamed beside my beaming husband, David, celebrating her university graduation-a picture-perfect moment I' d relived before.

In my previous life, it was on this very day that she had shattered me, screaming, "You're not my real parents!" after draining my retirement, all to fund the biological family who' d thrown her away.

That betrayal, that sickening realization of my life's savings gone, had led to my death in a car crash, a distraction of overwhelming grief.

I didn' t understand how the sweet girl we had doted on for twenty-two years could be so cruel, so utterly devoid of gratitude, bleeding us dry for people who saw her as nothing but a walking ATM.

But then, I woke up, back in my own bed, on the morning of this exact party. This time, there would be no selfless mother, no victim. This time, I was a survivor, and I was ready for war.