To rise from being just a mistress to becoming the official wife of the Grant family, I spent five years fighting Samuel's so-called 'beloved' from the northern countryside.
Evelyn Grant, Samuel's grandmother, once declared that whoever became pregnant first would become Samuel's wife.
That very night, Samuel, drugged and delirious, stumbled into my room.
I was in my fertile window, so I got pregnant pretty easily.
After we married, he spoiled me endlessly and personally oversaw my entire pregnancy.
Everyone said I was blessed.
But on the day my water broke, he tied me down and cut my stomach open with his own hands, leaving me to bleed out.
"If you hadn't slipped me the antidote," he said, sounding almost irritated rather than enraged, "how else was I supposed to return to the woman I actually love?"
He didn't even look at me as he spoke.
His attention was entirely on the crying infant he'd torn from my body. "Now that the heir is born," he added, voice turning cold and final, "I'll raise him with her. You can die now."
In my second life, I shoved that equally fertile 'first love' straight into his room.
"Go on. Your blessing is waiting for you."
The next day, I walked away on my own, alive at last.
Yet a year later, while traveling up north, I saw her again. She was begging on the street.
Her face was slashed, her limbs broken. She was freezing to death on the sidewalk.
She grabbed my hand, sobbing, her voice shaking with cold and misery. "Blessing my ass. That bastard only treated me like a breeding machine. He said his lover was born infertile. He stole my kid, didn't give me a penny, and threw me back up north to beg."
The moment she finished speaking, she died.
When I opened my eyes again, in my third life, I was back on the night Samuel had been drugged.
As I stared at the doors of the other sixteen mistresses, the first love and I shared the same dreadful thought:
'Which one of us is the woman who can't have children?'
——
Inside the room, Samuel was groaning nonstop like a tomcat in heat. No matter how loudly he called, Rhian and I clung to the doorknob as if guarding our virtue in some over-the-top melodrama.
It wasn't until Evelyn heard the commotion that she marched over, dragging all sixteen other mistresses with her.
"Middle of the night, and you two aren't sleeping. What kind of circus act is this?"
Once she understood what was happening, she brushed past us and shoved the door open.
Samuel was sprawled across the bed, flushed and tugging desperately at his shirt.
Evelyn turned back and flicked both of us on the forehead.
"You fight every day trying to move up, and now that the chance is here, you're suddenly playing shy?"
She crossed her arms, clearly losing patience as she eyed the two of us as if we were defective merchandise.
"Both of you are very fertile. Whoever goes in tonight is going to get pregnant. Figure it out and get in there."
She was desperate for a great-grandchild, and Samuel spent most of the year on business trips.
Of course, Rhian and I were the leading candidates.
We exchanged a look, but neither of us moved.
We both knew the truth.
If I went, I would die.
If she went, she would die.
So the best solution is to send in the woman he actually loves.
But with eighteen mistresses living here, who on earth knew which one she was?
Thinking that through, I spoke up carefully, keeping my tone sweet. "Madam, everyone is watching. Isn't it unfair to choose like this? And… shouldn't we consider Mr. Grant's preferences too?"
I turned slowly toward the bed, testing the waters.
"Mr. Grant… who would you like to choose? It's alright if she doesn't get pregnant the first time. We wouldn't want to upset the one you actually care about."
In my first life, when I secretly gave him the antidote, everyone else had been fast asleep.
Now, his beloved was right in front of him. Surely he would not willingly hurt her.
But to my surprise, Samuel looked straight at me and forced out a strained answer.
"Then… Leslie, you go."
Listen to that: reluctant, helpless, almost resentful.
Evelyn nodded approvingly.
"Leslie, go. Consider your wish fulfilled."
She wasn't wrong. Marrying Samuel had always been my dream.
Back in my senior year of college, a group of thugs cornered me in an alley outside campus. They wanted to violate me.
