Rebirth of a scorned Empress

Victoria vomited blood while she held her stomach in pain. She glared daggers at her father, who was smirking down at her, a triumphant smile on his lips, his eyes glinted with mischief and pride. Hatred bubbled in Victoria's heart, and her blood boiled with rage as she thought about her latest discovery, about how the evil couple, her father and her stepmother, who had been her nanny when her mother was alive, had poisoned her just so that they could take over her mother's wealth.

Her father sneered mockingly, "So what if your mother left everything to you? So what if you know that we schemed and killed your mother to take her wealth? What can you do about it? You are still too powerless to do anything; even your death would mean nothing, just like your mother's!" He boasted hauntingly, which further boosted Victoria's rage.

"Why? What did my mother do to you?" She choked out, blood spilling out of her mouth with every word. Kate, her stepmother, sneered with hatred, "She took my husband! How dare she come after my husband to seduce him?"

"Seduce him?" Victoria chuckled darkly, her eyes filled with mockery. " Was my mother the one who did the seducing, or your cunning husband, who wasn't satisfied with a hag like you! My mother didn't seduce your husband, and you greedy people don't deserve to slander her name!" She bit back at them, making all their faces ugly. Kate snickered and slapped the dying Victoria across the face angrily.

One of the things that Kate hated hearing about was her incompetence at keeping her husband satisfied in the house; even after Victoria's mother's death, Henry, her husband, had gone out to look for other mistresses to keep by his side, disregarding her existence.

Victoria gritted her teeth as she tried to get up, only to be knocked down again by William, her stepbrother. He had always taken credit for her work, stealing her projects and claiming them as his own. No one except her team knew the truth - that he was a hoax, pretending to be a genius. She could already imagine what it would be like if the empire her mother painstakingly built was handed over to the frivolous young master before her.

"You are defeated; it's good you stay down," he mocked as he raised a transparent USB drive with smugness. Victoria's eyes went wide, and her hatred simmered over as she saw the drive in his hand. It was the one that contained her latest technological project; she had taken over the project from her mother and improved it, and the software was in the last phase and almost ready to be used.

Blinded by rage and the desire to destroy the software with her, she gathered the little bit of strength and rationality she had left and rushed up to tackle William to the ground. He fell and hit his head on the glass table behind him. The glass table broke and pieces of glass entered William's skull. Victoria felt a little bit of relief as she saw the thick blood oozing out of his head. She already lost all of her strength, and she couldn't struggle for the drive any longer, so she lay down feeling comforted that she was able to deal some damage and at least leave a scar on him.

'Hopefully, he would be brain dead' she thought in her mind as she felt her stomach knot together in pain.

In her hazy state, Victoria saw the rest of the family running to William, sadness overwhelming her heart at the thought of dying all alone, with no loved one around her. 'I'm sorry, mother; I am unable to protect everything you left behind, she thought to herself.