Her Rebirth of Retribution

Calista was awoken by the sound of thunder as she lay in the annexe of the Fairchild Manor.

It was nighttime, and the heavy rain pounded against the white bay window. A flash of lightning shone through the window, casting a bright light on her and the messy bed she was lying on.

She could hear faintly two men talking outside. She felt feverish but still tried to get up...

Suddenly she froze. Wait... Wasn't she dead?

She knew this better than anyone else - she couldn't have survived after she pulled out the life support machines.

Her legs had been paralyzed for the past three years too - how were they able to move now?

Calista reached for her legs subconsciously and noticed an emerald ring on her left thumb!

This ring was a present from the Fairchilds upon her engagement, but it was taken away from her when she was eighteen!

The series of shocking revelations made her start to think more clearly.

Heavy rains, a luxurious bungalow room, waking up after being drugged, the men outside...

Could it be that she didn't die but somehow restarted her life? Did life get restarted on the night when the worst nightmare of her life happened?!

Upon realizing this, her first reaction was not joy but terror.

Because if it was really that day then...the two men talking outside were the two scoundrels who wanted to rape her!

In her previous life, she tried to fight back despite being drugged and managed to use a cell phone to hit one of the men's heads, but he hit her back and she fainted. Eventually she woke up from the pain of being tortured by them. Now it was happening again, but this time she regained consciousness earlier than the last time.

Calista's heart started pounding. If everything happened just like the last time, Quincy, together with others, was going to burst into the room to 'catch her in the act' in a few moments.

That was how she was completely disgraced in her previous life and had to call off her engagement. If this was her second chance to live, she was going to save herself this time round! She must get help!

She got up from the bed and immediately collapsed - after being unable to walk for the last three years, she had somehow forgotten how to walk.

The voices outside stopped when they heard her fall. "There's a noise coming from the room! Is she awake?"

Calista almost stopped breathing when she heard those familiar voices from that past nightmare. She quickly grabbed her clothes and used all her strength to get up from the floor.

The icy raindrops splashed directly onto her through the open window as she realized there was a problem - she was on the second story.

The annexe was very far from the main house where a family party was held there on this very night. As such, all the servants should be in the main house busy serving the guests, so even if she shouted till her voice was hoarse, she would not be heard over the heavy rain.

The men outside had reached the door and were turning the handle!

With no other way out, Calista did not have time to hesitate.

She climbed up the window despite the aching all over and made the twelve-foot jump down.

She landed and used the strength left in her to roll forward, but a sharp pain shot through her body the moment she landed, as if she had broken all her bones.

"D*mn! She's escaped!"

When she heard their voices, Calista made another painful somersault forward and lay flat under the shrubs, her body tense with fear.

In the rain she could hear herself panting.

One of the men stuck his head out of the window but didn't find her and started shouting angrily at the other man, "Hurry up and find her! She can't run far!"

With that, they both ran towards the stairs.

Calista was still suffering the effects of being drugged and couldn't fight back in this situation, so her only way out was to run.

Enduring the pain, she managed to get some clothes on before diving into the bushes again. Her strategy was to climb her way to the main house under the cover of the plants and the rain.

The two men did not give up trying to look for her, searching high and low within the compound. There were several times when they came very close to finding her, using sticks to beat the branches and leaves, and sometimes they came so close, Calista could see their leather shoes. The more desperately they searched, the calmer Calista became.

She didn't have time to think about why her life had come back to this particular day. She only knew that she must not allow the same thing to happen to her a second time, even if this whole thing were but a dream!

Through the leaves, her reddened eyes could finally see the brightly lit main house.

My life won't be the same as before! As long as I make it into the house, this life won't be the same as the previous one!

The main house spanned two square miles and looked imposing in the heavy rains.

The party in the luxuriously decorated banquet hall had almost come to an end. There were few guests, but every single one was an important and influential person. However, the Staffords were invited to the party only because their children were betrothed to one another as babies. As such, Benedict Stafford was feeling extremely out of place at this party and couldn't wait to go home, but his second marriage was to an extroverted woman who could start a conversation with anybody in the world.

The doors suddenly slammed open with a bang!

Everyone was shocked by the sound and turned to stare at the door. Benedict shouted out in shock, "Callie?!?"

Lightning flashed and thunder boomed right behind Calista.

Calista was covered in mud and bruises, her hair all wet and with no shoes on, looking more like a ghost than a human.

She could make it to the door only because she had that emerald thumb ring that marked her as the future daughter-in-law of the Fairchild family. In her previous life, she would never have allowed any one of the Fairchilds to see her in this terrible state, but now... Calista laughed coldly, and with a quick scan of the room, she found Quincy and narrowed her eyes. At that moment, her blood began to boil!

Quincy was taken aback by this stare - when did this useless sister of hers have such a terrifying stare?

Also, what were Zane and Yael doing? She had practically delivered Calista to them and they let her escape!

She secretly made a call to Zane Xenos, then put on a surprised face and ran over to her sister.

"Sis! I thought you were drunk and resting in the annexe! Why do you look like such a mess? Did some guy try to get unfriendly with you?"

The words out of her mouth were slanderous, and her choice of words steered the guests' thoughts in the direction she wanted.

The guests hadn't even thought of that - but once Quincy put it in their heads, they couldn't look at the situation in any other way.

Calista's face was unnaturally red and her clothes were a mess - it did look like she was just sexually assaulted.

Suddenly someone let out a gasp, "Wasn't this Mr. Kallum's fiancée?"

Mr. Kallum's fiancée looked like a mess at a party in the Fairchild Manor, how unbecoming, thought the guests as they started murmuring among themselves about Calista.

Seeing the shock on the guests' faces, Quincy pretended to become anxious, and tried to explain the situation on Calista's behalf.

"Callie, you're really strong right? Even the security guards aren't your match...or was it because you were really drunk so..."

So she wasn't able to resist an attacker? Or so she ended up just sleeping with any random person?

Quincy purposely trailed off at the end, leaving the crowd to their own imagination, probing Calista with their eyes.

Hearing the voices of the crowd getting louder, Quincy made a big show of being anxious, turning red in the face and then finally shouting, "OH DEAR! Don't be afraid, my dear sister! Mr. Fairchild will get back at whoever did this to you!"

Calista was really impressed by her acting. Only a few words could cause such an uproar - armed with such tactics, it was no wonder she suffered so tremendously at the very last!

Calista finally opened her mouth to speak, her voice hoarse and a little stiff.

"Are you saying.... you think I was molested?"

Her clothes were a mess, but her expression remained calm, as if everything was just a misunderstanding.

Instead, it was the younger sister crying and making a scene, but every word that came out of her mouth was slanderous - and it looked like something scandalous was about to unfold...

Calista's response took Quincy by surprise, and she awkwardly tried to turn the situation around, "Sis! I did not mean that...Oh look you're hurt! Why don't you go back and have a rest? There are so many people looking at you, Mr. Fairchild would be upset if he sees you like this."