Blurb：
In “Reincarnated as a Villainess,” follow Isabella, the cunning antagonist of the original novel, as she wakes up with memories of her doomed fate. Determined to avoid her tragic end, she must outsmart the heroine, Elena, and win the heart of the cold-hearted duke, Alexander. But with the mysterious sorcerer, Lucian, lurking in the shadows, Isabella’s plans take unexpected turns. Dive into this gripping tale of betrayal, redemption, and forbidden romance, where every choice could lead to salvation or ruin. Perfect for fans of isekai, otome games, and strong female leads!
Content：
I’ve been married to the prince of the underworld for ten years and have endured countless life-or-death situations by his side. My hands, once trained to play the piano, are covered in calluses from holding guns and stained with blood.
But at 28, my husband ends up falling for a young woman from the slums. She’s as delicate and pure as a chamomile. She’s his well-kept little secret—until I run into them at the woman’s prenatal appointment one day.
I storm up to him, demanding an explanation, only for him to nonchalantly hand me divorce papers. “Sonia is a devout follower of the church and can’t have a child before marriage. I must make an honest woman out of her. Sign these, and you’ll get 40% of the company’s shares.”
I refuse to do as told, so he corners me. In the end, he has my crippled younger brother tied up and forced under a hydraulic compression machine.
“Sign the papers, Maeve, or watch your brother become a human mince pie. The choice is yours.”
I fall on my knees and beg him to stop. As the machine turns on, my hands fly to my aching lower belly, and I scream as I lose consciousness.
When I wake up again, I’m back in the hospital, in the same spot where I ran into my husband and his mistress at her prenatal appointment.
This time, I don’t confront him. Overnight, I make arrangements with a sanatorium abroad, get divorced, and run away from home.
Yet the moment I truly disappear, my husband loses his mind.
Chapter 1
I hid behind the wall, shrinking into myself and shaking as I covered my mouth. My younger brother Morgan Emerson’s gruesome death still flashed before my eyes.
“Once the pregnancy has stabilized, we’ll get our marriage license,” my husband, Gabriel Fuller, promised Sonia Westley.
I didn’t lose my mind when I heard these words again. After I’d stormed up to Gabriel and confronted him in my last life, he’d been so worried Sonia would find out that she was a side piece that he shot me in the jaw.
That memory had me hiding further in the shadows.
Gabriel held Sonia close to him and turned to leave. I waited until I was sure they wouldn’t turn back before entering the consultation room with my test results.
The doctor pointed out kindly, “Ms. Emerson, given how thin your uterine wall is, it’ll be hard for you to conceive after you abort this baby.”
I stared at my two-month prenatal test results. All I could think about was the tenderness brimming in Gabriel’s eyes when he pressed his ear to Sonia’s baby bump.
I’d fallen for that same look ten years ago. I’d passed up the chance to further my studies abroad and given up my dreams of becoming a pianist for Gabriel. My hands, classically trained for the piano, had since learned to pull triggers instead.
Over time, I grew used to a life of bloodshed and treading on the edge of the knife.
But then Sonia came along and reduced all my efforts to a joke.
When I didn’t respond, the doctor continued, “Does your husband know about your special circumstances, Ms. Emerson?”
I looked up, my gaze meeting the doctor’s as I said calmly, “My husband’s dead.”
An hour later, I was ashen-faced as I walked out of the hospital, bracing a hand against the wall to keep myself upright. When color returned to my lips, I fished out my phone and gave Morgan’s caretaker, Ian Leefolt, a call.
“Ian, have Morgan transferred to a private sanatorium in Greenburg by this week. Keep it low, and make sure Mr. Fuller doesn’t hear even a whisper about it.”
I also had one of my confidantes draw up a set of divorce papers.
I’d only just made the arrangements when one of my subordinates forwarded all of the information on Sonia to me.
In my previous life, I’d hated Sonia’s guts and refused to even look at a picture of her.
Now that I’d been reborn, I approached this with far more composure. For the first time, I grew curious about what kind of person Sonia was and how she managed to ensnare someone like Gabriel, who’d seen all kinds of women in his life.
I clicked to open the zip file. A footage popped up, and in it was a young lady playing a wistful, romantic tune on an old piano, set in an even older, practically derelict church. Sunlight played over her dress, faded from too many washes, and she looked as pure and innocent as a chamomile after the rain.
Half of Gabriel’s profile showed up in the footage, but even then, I could see the gentle, bewitched look in his eyes.
I paused the footage, then ran into the restroom to dry-heave.
How ridiculous! Gabriel had fallen for the person I’d been ten years ago.
…
It was almost sunset when I left the hospital.
I was still in a daze as I drove down the street, but just as I was about to turn at the junction, an out-of-control truck barreled toward me. I quickly steered to avoid the collision, but to no avail.
Before I knew it, my world was spinning violently.
Chapter 2
I was stuck in the driver’s seat and couldn’t move. I didn’t have to be a genius to know that Gabriel’s rivals had pulled this stunt out of revenge.
My phone was shattered, and I couldn’t get it to work.
At that moment, a familiar black Maybach cruised past the junction I’d been at earlier. It was Gabriel’s car!
“Gabriel!” I yelled with all the strength I could muster, struggling to get his attention. The car slowed, and my heart nearly stopped.
He saw me!
But the next second, the car sped up again and drove away from the junction without hesitation. Through the car window, I saw Gabriel shielding Sonia’s eyes, and I lost the strength to cry out to him again.
He wouldn’t stop the car while Sonia was in it. His nemesis, whoever it was, was out for blood and revenge, and the scene of the crash was nothing short of disastrous. Of course Gabriel wouldn’t want his precious Sonia to see any of this.
My consciousness began to slip, and my strength waned by half.
…
When I woke up again, I was staring at the snow-white hospital ceiling.
The door had been left ajar, and I heard Gabriel’s subordinate speaking on the other side. “Mr. Fuller, what if Mrs. Fuller saw Ms. Westley? I doubt we’ll be able to hide Ms. Westley’s identity from her if she takes it upon herself to investigate.”
Gabriel tossed aside what remained of his cigarette and snuffed it out with his foot. “Don’t worry about that. Your only job is to protect Sonia. She’s too pure, unlike us. Maeve is as cruel as she is cunning, and Sonia’s too naive to outsmart her.
“Use Maeve’s disabled younger brother as leverage if necessary. It’ll make her think twice before she makes a move, considering he’s the only family she has left.”
I clutched the blanket tightly and bit the inside of my cheek. I remembered what Gabriel had told me when he proposed to me all those years ago. “I swear I’ll protect you. No one will touch you as long as I’m around.”
He was still protective, and he sang the same tune. But this time, his promise was to Sonia, not me.
I used to be the person whom he shielded from harm like a fussy mother hen. But now, in his words, I’d become a ruthless, dangerous person.
When I heard footsteps approaching, I closed my eyes again, only to slowly open them.
“Are you awake? I had someone look into the incident. The Winstons were behind the crash. Here’s the waiver. They’ve agreed to hand over their land in Westport if you sign this.”
Gabriel stopped before me. As I met his gaze, I found that I couldn’t say another word to him. He’d turned my near-death experience into leverage for his business negotiations.
My heart grew cold. “When did you come up with that idea, Gabriel?”
Was it the moment he saw me get hit by the truck or when he realized the Winston family wanted to come after me?
Gabriel frowned, displeased by my probing. As perceptive as I was, I dropped the subject. Nothing good could come from hashing things out with him.
As if to placate me, Gabriel spent the next two days working in my hospital room—not that it made a difference since he used earphones all the time, occasionally revealing the smile I’d once found so familiar.
I handed him the divorce papers while he was on a call with Sonia. I thought he might notice, given how obvious I was being, but he barely glanced at the papers before flipping to the last page and signing his name.
He didn’t even take his eyes off the laptop screen.
I took the papers back with a trembling hand and stared at the barely dry ink of his signature.
I suddenly had a flashback to our first meeting ten years ago. At the time, Gabriel had been on the run from his nemesis after they attacked him.
He’d been lying under an abandoned metal bridge, covered in blood. 18-year-old Gabriel’s eyes had been so terrifyingly bright that he’d reminded me of a wounded lion cub.
I’d been on my way to piano class when I saw him. The moment I locked eyes with him, I’d felt moved. I’d turned toward him, unexpectedly and unwittingly taking my first step into a dangerous world.
Following that first meeting, Gabriel took a bullet through the chest to protect me and endured an 18-hour life-saving surgery. It was the first time I realized that being kind and naive couldn’t protect anyone in his world.
In ten years, I’d grown from a young lady who would tremble at the sight of blood to Gabriel’s missus, a woman who didn’t even bat an eye at whatever filthy work I was handling.
I’d become Gabriel’s equal, but he thought that made me no different from others. If anything, I’d become filthy.
Chapter 3
I ran my thumb over the calluses on the pads of my fingers, my thoughts drifting to the memory of Sonia playing the piano. For a second, I wondered what the point of it all was.
The resentment and hatred building up in me suddenly waned, replaced by resignation.
After I was discharged from the hospital, Gabriel made up an excuse that he had to go away on business. He didn’t come back in the month-long cool-off period that followed the divorce proceedings.
However, I didn’t expect to run into Sonia.
I wanted the baby I’d lost to rest in peace, so I dropped by the church to ask the priest to hold a requiem service. I was by no means religious, but I wanted my child to go to heaven all the same.
As I pushed the door open and entered the church, Sonia was playing the piano for the children’s choir. The last chord sounded terribly off-key.
Before I could stop myself, I approached Sonia and reached toward the keys to play the right notes. “That part should sound like this.”
This was the first time I was meeting Sonia in person. It was a lot more peaceful than I’d imagined.
Sonia’s eyes lit up. “You play the piano too? I’ve been practicing that part for ages, but I could never seem to get it right.”
A faint, wry smile curled my lips, but Sonia spoke to me as if we were already friends. When she learned that I’d come to pray for the baby I’d lost, she got on her knees before the altar and began to pray devoutly, “Lord, ever merciful and full of grace, bring this pure soul into heaven and comfort its mother.”
I froze. She reminded me so much of myself that I was stumped. I even felt a little sorry for her, and if I wasn’t seized with the urge to save my old self so I could tell her to leave Gabriel, for nothing good could come from getting close to him.
My gaze fell on Sonia’s baby bump, and in the end, I chose to keep my mouth shut.
If Sonia found out about me and Gabriel, she would be devastated and break up with him. If that happened, Gabriel would lose his mind and hunt me down for revenge.
The bloodshed and gory scenes from my previous life played through my mind like an old, familiar film.
I told Sonia that I was going for a confession and ducked into the confession booth. I pulled up the security footage from Morgan’s room in the sanatorium, and it wasn’t until I saw that he was unharmed and fast asleep that I heaved a sigh of relief.
After our parents died, Morgan was the only family I had left. This time, I would not drag him into the messy world I shared with Gabriel.
Having regained my composure, I emerged from the confession booth, only to have the black barrel of a handgun pressed to my forehead.
I tensed, then dared a look in Sonia’s direction. The woman had already collapsed on the floor.
I cursed inwardly just as the grip of the handgun struck me and knocked me out.
…
When I came to, I found myself bound together with Sonia in what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse.
Sonia’s voice cracked as she sobbed, “I told you, I already paid my dues! What more do you want? Gabriel already warned—”
A loud slap cut her off.
The leader of the gang, who boasted a scar on his face, grabbed a fistful of Sonia’s hair. “Yes, you paid your dues, but three of my boss’ ribs are broken, courtesy of your boyfriend! Imagine what will happen to our street cred in the underworld if we don’t do something about it!
“You said he cares about you, right? Well, then, I’ll take my time to torture you and carve you up!”
From what I heard, these ruffians worked for low-level forces in the underworld and mostly dealt in illicit loans. No wonder they hadn’t recognized me.
I slowly steadied my breathing and flicked the folding blade on my ring, then began to cut through the binding ropes. It wasn’t the first time I’d been kidnapped, and my experiences proved valuable.
When the man with the scarred face noticed that I was awake, he immediately rummaged through my Hermès purse.
“Sorry, Ms. Emerson, but it looks like you’re down on your luck. Have your family wire three million dollars to us if you want to live.”
“I’m sorry for dragging you into this, ma’am. But don’t worry, my boyfriend’s a pro at this sort of thing. He’ll come and save us.” Sonia reassured me tearfully, her eyes gleaming with admiration for Gabriel, as if he were our savior.
My hands stilled, but I made no reply.
Suddenly, the man with the scarred face swore loudly in fury. He raised the hand clutching the phone and snapped viciously, “He doesn’t believe me. Looks like I’ll have to send him a small gift.”
He waved his knife before me and Sonia, then said to his men. “Come here and cut that baby out of her stomach so we can send it to that bastard!”
My eyes widened. If Sonia were to die here today, Gabriel would rip me into shreds out of sheer vengeance!
Sonia was so terrified that she burst into tears, shrinking away from the approaching men. “Please, don’t do this to me! Don’t hurt my baby!”
Chapter 4
Sonia’s white dress was stained and dirty, and she wept so hard that the tip of her nose turned red. She looked like a bunny that had accidentally hopped into a wolves’ den.
The leering lunatics were even more riled up at the sight of the fat tears that rolled down Sonia’s face. “Boss, can’t we get a taste of this beauty before we hurt her? She’s practically begging us to do it.”
I cut through the last of the ropes binding me just before the men could drag Sonia away. Careening forward, I headbutted the blond ringleader with the scarred face out of the way, then pulled Sonia behind me.
“Witch! What the heck are you guys standing there for? Get her!” The man clapped a hand over his nose and, with an angry roar, set his lackeys on us. “Beat those witches up until they can’t walk! Then we can have some fun with them!”
It was one against four. With such poor odds, all I could do was shield Sonia with my body. She kept trying to shove me aside and beg the men to stop, yelling in between sobs, “Stop! Ma’am, please… Stop fighting! Stop fighting…”
Her voice was thick with devastation.
The next second, the metal door of the warehouse entrance was knocked down with a loud bang, and an SUV sped in. The violent cacophony of gunshots filled the air, and everyone turned toward the entryway.
Gabriel bolted for Sonia and pulled her into a tight embrace. “Thank goodness you’re okay.”
Sonia had cried herself hoarse and passed out before the ropes binding her were undone. Gabriel carried her into the ambulance, tenderly smoothing down her hair.
I heaved myself to my feet, only to meet Gabriel’s icy, menacing gaze. My heart sank.
“Maeve Emerson,” he bit out quietly, but my blood ran cold anyway. “Why were you with Sonia?”
I swallowed, tasting copper, then forced a bitter smile. “Would you believe me if I told you I met her by coincidence?”
A hard slap cracked across my face, and I fell back to the ground.
“When did you join the church, Maeve?” Gabriel hissed.
I spat out a mouthful of blood but refrained from telling Gabriel about the requiem service I’d requested for our baby. He stepped on my fingers, bearing his weight down on them. The sharp pain had me screaming.
“When did you start planning all of this?” he demanded.
“I didn’t plan anything!”
Gabriel turned and shot the man with the scarred face in the thigh, then aimed the gun at his head. “Is that true?”
The man with the scarred face cried out in pain as he pointed at me with a shaking finger. “M-Ms. Emerson came to me and offered to pay me to hurt Sonia so she could get revenge!”
“You’re lying!” I seethed, but one of Gabriel’s men pinned me down by my shoulders.
Gabriel chuckled maliciously, then pulled the trigger and shot the man with the scarred face in the head, killing him. After that, he crouched and gripped my hand.
“Maeve, it’s only right that you pay the price for hurting someone precious to me. An eye for an eye, right?”
With a crack, he broke my index finger.
I screamed, the pain making black spots dance in my vision. I spasmed all over as Gabriel rose to his feet and straightened his clothes, ordering indifferently, “Break the rest of them. Now.”
The simple order was met with swift obedience from his men, who pinned me roughly against an oil barrel and forcefully pried my hands open.
I screamed hysterically, “Gabriel! I hate you! I never should have saved you ten years ago!”
Gabriel froze on his way out, but my words weren’t enough to make him look back.
As agony washed over me, I thought about the first song I played for Gabriel. He’d gotten down on one knee beside me and clasped my hands, saying tenderly, “I love seeing you like this, Maeve.”
I’d saved him and trapped myself in a horrible nightmare ten years ago. Ten years later, he personally broke my finger, and with it, the last thing that tied us together.
…
As I lay in the abandoned warehouse at three in the morning with my fingers splayed in awkward, broken angles, my men hurried in with medical equipment.
The warehouse behind me was set ablaze. As the fire burned and ravaged the building, I leaned into my seat and called the person coordinating my plans.
“Have a ship wait for me at the port and draw up all the paperwork for a new identity for me. I want the name ‘Maeve Emerson’ to completely disappear from this world.”
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