Five Years Dead, She Still Wants Money

Emily Carter once threw herself in front of a car to save me, shattering her leg, and yet in her most critical moment, I abandoned her.

When she later limped to find me, she witnessed me falling in love with someone else.

She clutched my hand, demanding to know why I treated her that way.

I splashed wine into her face. “Because you’re crippled! You have no money, no ability—did you think I’d let you drag me down forever?”

Emily collapsed to the ground in tears. With her heart already dead inside, she accepted treatment, recovered, and then began to build her own business.

Five years later, through ruthless means and cunning strategy, Emily rose to become the richest entrepreneur in America.

The very first thing she did after her success was to seek revenge. She wanted me to repay the money I owed her—tens of thousands—at her engagement party, just to humiliate me.

But the one who came to repay her wasn’t me. It was my mother—because I had already been dead for five years.

“Emily, the auspicious hour is here. We should start the ceremony,” Brandon Reed said, holding Emily in his arms with tender joy.

“Wait a moment. I must sever the past before I can peacefully become your bride.”

“If that bastard Ethan Brooks doesn’t return the money, I’ll burn down his family home. I mean what I say.”

As her words fell, an old, shabby figure caught her eye, utterly out of place among the elite guests.

People recoiled from her, covering their noses and glaring at her like she was a beggar.

“What are the security guards doing, letting a filthy vagrant in here?”

“God, the stench! Get her out of here!”

Several guards rushed over to seize my mother, but she quickly held up the invitation.

“Let me go! I was invited by Emily Carter.”

“Ha! What a joke. You think Ms. Carter would invite trash like you? Who do you think you are?”

“Never seen such shameless arrogance before!”

“Stop standing around—drag her out and toss her back in the gutter.”

“Yes, ma’am!” The guards struck my mother several times and kicked her to the ground.

Furious, I rushed forward, trying to fight them off. But everything I did was useless—my soul was transparent. I had been dead for five years.

“Stop!”

Emily, clad in a luxurious custom-designed gown, walked over with graceful steps. She looked down at my kneeling mother and splashed red wine onto her face.

“Why is it you? Where is he? I wanted Ethan Brooks to come pay me back. What’s wrong—was he too scared to face me, so he sent you instead?”

She sneered. “He never imagined that I, Emily Carter, would become the wealthiest woman alive. Do you regret it now?”

My mother’s reddened eyes brimmed with grief and helplessness. She shook her head with sobs.

“Ethan… he can’t come. He’ll never come again.”

Breaking free, she pulled a red plastic bag from her pocket and took out two stacks of bills.

“I’m here to repay you on Ethan’s behalf. This is twenty thousand—count it.”

Emily snatched the money and smacked it against my mother’s head.

“Pathetic. Only twenty thousand? Do you think I’m a fool?”

“Five years ago it was twenty thousand. Now it’s five hundred thousand.”

“What? How could it increase so much?”

“That’s interest!”

“But I don’t have that kind of money. Even this twenty thousand I earned by working as a janitor and collecting bottles.”