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Jayden watched me, hunting my face for some flash of anger.
If he could catch even a trace of resentment or temper there, he'd have something to pin on me. Ungrateful. Willful. A woman who talks back to her elders.
He didn't find it.
My face stayed calm, and I looked at him the way you'd look at a stranger.
He glanced around at the others.
His voice dropped even lower.
His tone softened too.
"Still, what you said just now wasn't easy to hear. If you'll only be truly devoted to Mom from now on, she'll come around and treat you well. She'll start seeing you as family."
The words were almost identical to the ones I once used to talk myself down, in my past life.
I'd tried to put myself in their shoes back then. A newcomer with a different name coming into the house, of course it took some getting used to, of course it needed time.
So at first I wasn't angry.
I believed it too. As long as I was genuinely good to my mother-in-law, as long as I treated her like my own mother, heart would answer heart in the end.
But I was wrong.
After the wedding in my past life, I set out to win her over.
I knew she liked earrings, so I spent over thirty thousand on an imported pair and gave them to her.
I thought it would make her happy.
Instead she said, "If you really cared, why buy them only now? You just want to move me to tears, don't you. You're nothing but a scheming little gold-digger."
How badly I'd wanted Jayden to say one word for me.
He did say something.
Except he said it from his mother's side.
"Gabriella, you ought to try seeing it from her point of view. Mom actually has a point. You have to keep it up, so she can tell it comes from the heart."
He wore such an earnest face when he said it.
And in that moment I actually thought he was right.
So I listened to him, and I paid attention.
Whatever she liked to eat, I bought it for her.
Whatever clothes she liked to wear, I bought them for her.
All top quality. All the most expensive.
And none of it bought me her heart.
I'll never forget what she said in front of the whole family.
"A daughter-in-law waiting on her mother-in-law is only right. Am I supposed to thank her for it now?"
Time after time I tried to please her, and time after time I got nothing but cold sneers.
So I simply stopped buying her anything at all.
And that made her furious.
She had her son give me the cold shoulder, wouldn't even let me come home.
When I asked why, she just said, "I made it perfectly clear at the wedding, and you didn't object then. You're an outsider, not blood, so what are you making a fuss about now!"
So after that.
Nothing in the Gilbert family was ever any concern of mine.
I just kept working, like a servant who never stopped.
