Chapter 1

Chapter 1

My daughter treated me like her worst enemy.

When I paid for her piano lessons, she accused me of trying to parade her on stage for other people's entertainment.

When she wanted to run off with an older guy she met online, I stopped her, and she claimed I was stripping away her human rights.

After winning the gold medal at the national piano competition, she had a bright future ahead of her. Yet during a live interview, she told the world I only treated her as a cash cow.

Later, when I suffered a sudden heart attack, she flushed my emergency medication down the drain and sneered that I should have died long ago.

Reborn into the past, I immediately put her expensive piano up for sale and canceled all her private tutoring.

I watched her fall from grace into the gutter, completely indifferent.

Only then did she drown in regret.

……

The moment I opened my eyes, my phone buzzed with messages from the piano instructor.

"Mrs. Hayes, Chloe's tuition for the next semester is due. As usual, it's forty-eight hundred dollars."

"Also, is something bothering her lately? She keeps hiding her phone under the keys during class and neglects her practice. She hasn't completed her assigned pieces for two weeks straight."

"At this rate, she won't even qualify for the National Youth Piano Competition, let alone take home an award."

"Please talk to her when you have time. Her future should be her top priority."

I stared at the familiar text messages on the screen, my chest tightening.

In my past life, I received the exact same messages.

Back then, I sat Chloe down to talk and discovered she had met a guy ten years older than her in an online game. She was already planning to move in with him.

She was still a minor, and jumping into an online relationship was bound to get her hurt. I refused to let her ruin her life.

She threw a massive tantrum, screaming that she would kill herself if I didn't let her date him. She even took a wrench and smashed the brand-new grand piano.

That piano had cost me nearly ten thousand dollars, bought as her sixteenth birthday present.

In the end, I still held my ground.

I spent a fortune repairing the piano, forced her to delete the game, paid her tuition, and supervised her practice every single night.

Through pure grit, she took the gold medal at the national competition six months later. Several judges were blown away by her talent, and she was granted early admission with a full scholarship to a prestigious conservatory.

Her future seemed limitless.

Looking at my daughter wearing that winner's crown, I felt nothing but overwhelming pride.

To my horror, during the post-competition press conference, she broke down in tears and publicly condemned me.

She declared on live television that I was the person she hated most in the world.

She claimed I forced her to learn piano just so I could parade her on stage for cheap applause.

She claimed I drove her father and grandmother away, keeping her from the family she loved most.

She claimed I used death threats to tear her away from her true love.

She claimed I was broke and pathetic, dumping all my failed ambitions onto her and turning her into a money-making tool.

Her voice cracked with emotion, moving every reporter in the room to tears.

Watching that broadcast on television, pure fury overwhelmed me, triggering a massive heart attack.

Chloe was standing right beside me. Right before my eyes, she dumped all my heart pills into the sink and flushed them away, her face twisted in venomous triumph.

"Why bother taking pills? You should have died a long time ago."

Those were the last words I heard before I died.

My spirit floated above the room as she put on a weeping act while calling 911, letting the paramedics haul my lifeless body away.

In front of the cameras, she wailed hysterically, winning the sympathy of the entire country.

The elite conservatory promised to waive all her fees and granted her a twenty-thousand-dollar annual stipend.

A world-renowned pianist offered to take her under his wing and sponsor her studies abroad.

Soon after, she reunited with her deadbeat father, posting pictures of their happy family and receiving endless blessings from online strangers.

And what about me?

People online celebrated my death, calling it divine retribution and pure karma.

My ashes were dumped in a rundown suburban cemetery, where random tourists stopped by just to spit on my headstone.

When my ex-husband cheated, I walked away with zero marital assets just to secure full custody, terrified his mistress would mistreat my daughter.

To pay for her piano lessons, I worked a day job and took two extra night shifts.

Afraid of wasting her musical talent, I spent top dollar hiring the best private mentors.

I poured years of blood, sweat, and tears into making her shine, only for her to grind me into the dirt the second she got the chance.

So much for motherly devotion.

I tapped my phone screen and replied to the piano teacher.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Clara, but I won't be renewing Chloe's lessons for the next term."

"If she still wants to play, tell her to ask her father to pay for it."

Since she never appreciated a single sacrifice I made and viewed me as her enemy, so be it.

In this life, I would give her all the freedom she ever wanted.