After His Rebirth, the Obsessive Mafia Boss Who Loved Me to Death Cheated 99 Times

: One

The Mafia Boss, Kael Volkov, confessed his love to me for the ninety-ninth time, and still, I refused.

That very night, he drugged and imprisoned me.

With a crazed, obsessive look in his eyes, Kael Volkov held me, professing his love over and over again.

I scoffed at his words, my heart filled with a bone-deep hatred for him.

After I painstakingly planned my escape, I was kidnapped by his rivals along the way.

To save me, Kael Volkov took three bullets.

The first shot crippled one of his hands. The second blinded one of his eyes. The third took his life.

Before he died, Kael Volkov, covered in blood, stared at me, his expression a mixture of stubbornness and vulnerability.

"Vivian Lennox, why couldn't you bring yourself to love me, just once?"

When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day Kael Volkov first confessed his feelings for me.

This time, I chose to take his hand.

I thought we would grow old together, but contrary to everything I knew, Kael Volkov betrayed me three times.

On our wedding night, he "accidentally" went into the wrong room and slept with another woman. I swallowed my pain and forgave him.

He took a call from another woman and, at two in the morning during a raging storm, abandoned me in the countryside. I was three months pregnant. I had a miscarriage. I dried my tears and let it go.

Until the third time. He threw my elderly mother off a cliff, hundreds of feet into the deep sea.

...

The sea wind howled, and my tears streamed endlessly down my face.

Just a few feet away, my mother was dragged forward, a sack thrown over her head. Her frail, elderly frame was shaking violently. Even without seeing her face, I could feel the depth of her despair.

Kael Volkov's expression was cold and severe. A cigarette dangled from his lips as he toyed with a jet-black pistol in his right hand.

Behind him, at the bottom of the cliff hundreds of feet below, lay the vast, boundless sea.

I understood what he was about to do in an instant.

My legs gave out, and I collapsed to my knees before him.

"She's my mother... She's the only family I have left in this world. I'm begging you, please spare her. You can do anything you want to me, just don't hurt her…"

Kael Volkov gave me a careless glance, then lifted my chin. He chuckled. "When you so brazenly harmed what Clara holds dear, did you ever stop to think about how she felt? It only hurts when it happens to you, doesn't it?"

I stared at him, my heart a wasteland of sorrow.

A few hours earlier, Clara Sterling's dog had fallen into a mud puddle. Claiming she felt unwell, Clara had insinuated that the grand task of bathing the dog should fall to me.

Because the dog choked on a bit of water while I was washing it, Clara Sterling had broken down into heart-wrenching sobs, accusing me of trying to drown it.

Kael Volkov had treasured her for years, so naturally, his heart ached for her.

Kael Volkov had comforted her gently, a casual smile on his face.

I thought that would be the end of it. I never imagined that after consoling Clara Sterling, he would bring my mother here.

I knew all too well what Kael Volkov was capable of. I couldn't dare to gamble with my mother's life.

And so, I could only grovel and plead with him.

"Kael, I really didn't mean to. Please, believe me, won't you? My mom is old, and her health is already fragile. Please, don't scare her…"

Kael Volkov let out a cold snort.

"You wanted to drown Clara's dog, didn't you? Then I'll just have to let you experience what it feels like when someone you love drowns. Vivian Lennox, when you do something wrong, there are consequences."

He looked me in the eye, a cruel smile playing on his lips.

"Wouldn't you agree?"

A chill shot through me. I clung desperately to his trouser leg, pleading with him again and again.

But Kael Volkov was dead set on getting revenge for Clara Sterling.

The next second, he slowly raised his hand, and his men instantly knew what he meant.

"No! Don't!"

It was too late.

My mother was tossed over the edge like a rag doll—

A swift fall, a loud SPLASH, and a spray of water erupted from the calm surface of the sea.

Utterly heartbroken, I scrambled forward like a madwoman, only to be grabbed by Kael Volkov's men and pinned to the ground.

Tears blurred my vision. In my daze, an image from my past life surfaced: Kael Volkov's blood-stained face right before he died, his eyes filled with despair and vulnerability.

It was that look in his eyes that I had made my vow.

'If I had another life, I would love him with all my heart.'

It seemed the heavens answered my prayers. But this time around, the man I remembered was gone, replaced by someone completely unrecognizable.

Faced with his cruelty time and time again, I chose to swallow my pain and suffer in silence.

I brainwashed myself, telling myself over and over that he didn't mean it, that if I was just good to him, he would eventually remember his feelings for me.

But reality dealt me a harsh slap in the face.

I had paid an unbearable price for my stubborn delusion.

I had lost my mother, the only person in the world who cared about me.

The dam of my tears broke, and despair threatened to swallow me whole.

Kael Volkov stared at me for a long time, seemingly quite satisfied with my reaction.

He walked over, his fingertips gently brushing my cheek to wipe away my tears before slowly pulling me into his arms.

"Baby, have you learned your lesson?"

His face no longer held the look of deep love he once had for me; all that remained was cold detachment.

The man who would have died for me was long gone.

'I was wrong.'

'Of course I knew I was wrong.'

'I was wrong to have been soft-hearted with him time and again. I was wrong for not walking away the first time he crossed my boundaries. I was wrong to carry the debts and grudges of our past life into this one.'

'I was so, so wrong.'

I don't know how much time passed before Kael Volkov's men retrieved my mother's body from the water.

Suddenly, with a burst of strength from I-don't-know-where, I shoved him away and crawled, trembling, to my mother's side.

Just as my hand reached out to open the sack, Kael Volkov's voice sounded again.

"Alright, I'm done teasing you. It's just a mannequin in there, not your mother."

I froze.

Kael Volkov continued, "Baby, if you dare misbehave again, what they place in front of you will be your mother's actual corpse."

"Clara took a bullet for me. I owe her. From now on, you are not to provoke her. Be good, and don't make things difficult for me."

I watched him in a daze until his figure disappeared from view. Only then did I wipe away my tears and, with a trembling hand, make a phone call.

"I've made up my mind. I'm leaving Kael Volkov."