"Mom, you're solely my mother now. All your maternal love is for me alone. I feel so incredibly happy."
Cynthia hugged her daughter, filled with guilt and heartache.
"Isabella, I was wrong in the past. I let you down, and I let your father down. You were his only child, and I didn't take good care of you."
"Mom, don't say that. I know you endured all that humiliation just for me."
Right after she was reborn, Isabella had doubted her mother's affection, thinking that after her death, her mother hadn't cared and hadn't even come to see her.
It was only from Ethan that she learned her mother had actually been murdered by Natalie.
"Mom, we both need to live well from now on. Whenever something comes up, we need to communicate to avoid misunderstandings."
"Alright. Hurry up and get some rest."
Cynthia gently pushed her daughter away, urging her once again to go to bed.
Under her mother's repeated urging, Isabella finally went upstairs to rest. As for the gifts York sent, she wasn't going to accept them, so she couldn't be bothered to tidy them up. Tomorrow, she would have someone help load them into the car and take them with her to see York.
She would return them all to York. She wouldn't accept a single gift from him; he harbored nothing but malicious intentions.
She suspected York was behind Ethan's accident. She had warned Ethan, and Ethan would have someone investigate it. Now, they just had to wait for the results.
If York truly was reborn and had returned for revenge against her and Ethan, she had to prepare early and guard against him.
Meanwhile, in the grand living room of a luxurious villa, York sat on the sofa. He held two small, round stones in his hand, rotating them constantly. The two stones clacked against each other, producing a sharp sound that felt a bit piercing in a living room so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
His subordinates all thought York had taken a liking to Isabella. After all, she was stunningly beautiful. Even though she had been married once, the marriage had been in name only, and Isabella was still untouched to this day.
York wasn't particularly driven by lust. He occasionally took a woman, but his standards were incredibly high. They had to be entirely clean; York wouldn't touch a woman someone else had slept with, finding it filthy.
Though the women he slept with wouldn't become their boss's official partner, York never mistreated them. When they parted ways, he always gave the woman a massive sum of money, more than enough for her to buy a house and a car in a major city with plenty left over.
"She is very smart."
A faint smile hung on York's lips. Isabella was absolutely reborn; only a reborn version of her would have her intellect this sharp.
In his past life, he and Isabella had no direct interaction. Oh, in his past life, Isabella was still known by the Lane surname. By the time he knew of her, she was already dead, kidnapped and murdered by his capable subordinates.
She died quite tragically, and the one who paid top dollar to hire Dave and his crew to kidnap Isabella was Natalie. Natalie had demanded that Dave and his men destroy Isabella's innocence and then disfigure her. Natalie truly harbored a deep, vicious hatred for Isabella.

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