SLAP!

The sound came before the pain, and the sharp crack deafened her in whatever space they were standing in. Cecilia’s head snapped to the side, her cheek blooming with heat and her vision swimming for just a fraction of a second before her senses realigned themselves with sheer will.

She wobbled. Her feet, which had been planted somewhere, on what surface, in what room, she still had not had time to catalogue, skidded against the floor. She almost lost her balance entirely, going down in a heap of confusion and disorientation after being yanked into a new scenario.

But she held herself upright.

The copper taste flooded her mouth. Without a doubt, something inside her cheek had torn.

"Whose child is it?"

Cecilia turned her head slowly.

The woman who had struck her stood close, well within the radius of another blow if she decided to throw one.

Her face was beautiful in the way that antique vases were beautiful. Elegant, expensive, and one wrong move away from shattering into something sharp. Her eyes blazed with fury, believing she had been wronged and had no intention of forgiving the offense.

Elara, Arzhen’s mother. The dowager of whatever Vasiliev household existed in this alternate universe. In the real world, Cecilia had been familiar with the woman. Apparently in this world too...

"Whose child is it?!" Elara screamed again, her voice rising to a pitch that made the air itself seem to vibrate. "Because I know my son will never touch your filthy body!"

Ah.

Cecilia sneered, and it flickered behind her eyes. It hadn’t yet reached her face, though.

So that is the premise.

She wanted to look around and scan the room. She wanted to see the building, the world beyond whatever confrontation was currently occupying her immediate attention.

The System had yanked her into this prologue without context or a brief tutorial pop-up to explain the rules, after all. She needed clues and information. She needed to understand what kind of scenario this was and what precise role she was supposed to be playing.

But she could not look around. After all, she was facing a problem. Cecilia would never look away from a problem. That was, for better or worse, better for her and worse for others, was her most prominent trait.

She fixed her eyes to the three figures in front of her.

Elara stood closest. She was the one who slapped her after all. Her beautiful face was contorted ugly. Behind her were two other figures. Both were familiar for her too.

Arzhen Vasiliev. Her ex-husband in the real world. Well, not the usual divorce, but divorce by ’death’, the man who had killed her, ripped her heart and destroyed their bond.

Here, it seemed, it was different. Perhaps he was still her husband?

His tiger tail swayed behind him, bristling and puffed with rage. His eyes fixed on her with an expression of pure disgust. And beside him, as expected, like maggot following rot, was Ruby.

Look at her pink hair. It was immaculate. Her expression was carefully arranged into something that was supposed to look like sympathy but could not quite hide the smug curve of her lips. She was enjoying this.

Let’s confirm it.

"Mother-in-law..." she said steadily. "I don’t understand what you are saying."

"You still dare call me Mother-in-law after what you did?!" Elara screamed, voice cracked on the words.

Ah. So she was still her mother-in-law in this world.

Which meant, confirming her earlier suspicion, she was still Arzhen’s wife. But what had she done?

"I know I said you can do whatever you want," Arzhen said coldly, "but I said that as long as you did not ruin my reputation. But not only did you dare to have sex with three random men in a club—" His lip curled in disgust, "—you dared to get pregnant from them too?"

Cecilia’s brain short-circuited.

She had sex with three random men? In a... what club? While she was still married to this man?

Wait a minute.

In the real world, she did enjoy three men’s attention. She had married three of them. She loved three of them hard, and it surprised even her. But she had not done it while married to someone else.

Cecilia knew she was a lot of indescribable things. But she was not a cheater. She had never been a cheater. It clashed with everything she knew about herself, everything she had built her identity around.

This didn’t sound right.

Was she being framed?

Or set up?

Her eyes veered toward Ruby. She was standing just behind Arzhen, her posture demure and her hands clasped in front of her chest in the universal gesture of innocent concern.

But her lips couldn’t quite contain the smile that kept threatening to break through. It was there, at the corners.

Hmm... was it her plan, then?

"Thankfully I saw her in that club," Ruby said. She stepped forward, just enough to insert herself more fully into the confrontation.

"She was e-enjoying herself with... with... I do not even know, Arzhen..." She paused and looked up to Arzhen, eyes glassy in disbelief.

"I even saw one of them wearing a McKing uniform. Kissing her. Getting down on her. The other two were wearing dark worker’s overalls. There were three of them, Arzhen... On her. At the same time."

There you go.

The moment Ruby opened her mouth, Cecilia was almost sure.

Actually, Cecilia was not someone who would accuse others without proof. She believed in evidence. But experience mattered too. And in her experience, it was always Ruby.

"See?!"

Elara’s voice rose to a shriek, her finger jabbing toward Cecilia’s face.

"If not for Ruby, we wouldn’t know that this bitch goes around fucking broke-ass men to get pregnant and use it to trap my son in this marriage! We truly wouldn’t know! This scheming... snake... bitch... you!"

Her beautiful face, the face that had probably launched a thousand suitors and secured a Vasiliev marriage, was contorted into an even uglier visage. Spittle flew from her lips and her eyes bulged.

Ah...

Perhaps this was a bit much for the morning.

Cecilia had woken up in the real world and eaten breakfast. She had kissed her husbands, one in person, two via telepathic good-morning messages. She had decided to enter the prologue of the new scenario and see what the gods had in store for her.

She had expected confusion, even some degree of conflict, given the scenario’s title. "Escape the CEO as the Missing Pregnant Wife." Of course it would be stupid to expect nothing.

The System had explained that a CEO was like the leader of a merchant family. She had been prepared for corporate intrigue and marital drama...

But this?

She had not expected to materialize into a scene where she was being accused of adultery, impregnated by strangers(?), and publicly humiliated by her mother-in-law while Ruby Vaiva watched with barely concealed glee.

She wondered if all this had an explanation. If only she could talk to this world’s version of her and ask her to explain what the fuck was happening here—

"Arzhen..." Ruby slid into the silence like honey poured over broken glass. "Now, with her pregnancy, you can force the divorce. Like this, you will finally be free..." Her fingers, delicate, pale and perfectly manicured, clasped the hem of Arzhen’s sleeve. "...and we... we can..."