Chapter 1

“Mr. Thorne, your wife’s been hit by a car!”

When I woke up, I was lying in a bed, staring up at an elaborate crystal chandelier.

My whole body hurt like hell, and I was wrapped up in layer after layer of something that left me too weak to move.

Just as I was starting to come around, I heard movement by the window. A man was standing with his back to me, pacing anxiously, on the phone.

“Mr. Thorne, Ivy’s badly hurt. She needs to go to the hospital right now. Are you coming home?”

There was a brief silence on the other end. Then a man’s voice, so cold it cut:

“She’s too stubborn to die. Don’t bother.”

The call ended. The man looked up, helpless, and his eyes landed right on mine. He froze for a second.

He walked over to the bed and asked, without any expression at all, “Feeling better?”

“Who are you?” I watched him warily.

He frowned. “I’m Evan Price. The Thornes’ family doctor.”

“Oh. And who’s Mr. Thorne?”

Evan didn’t answer. He seemed to be trying to figure out what I was up to, and an edge of irritation crept into his voice. “Ivy, Mr. Thorne’s company is at a critical point in its IPO, and Chloe Vance just got back. He’s busy. Lay off the games. Even if you got yourself killed by that car, even if you fake amnesia, he’s not going to look at you twice!”

That was harsh. It felt like a bucket of filth had been dumped over my head, and I didn’t understand a word of it.

When he saw how pale I’d gone, Evan seemed to soften a little. His tone eased, like he was offering friendly advice. “Ivy, you’ve been married to Mr. Thorne for seven years. Seven years of making scenes, and he still never fell in love with you. Now his first love is back. How much longer do you think you get to be Mrs. Thorne? …Get what you can out of it while you still can. Otherwise, when you’re old, you won’t even have money for a doctor.”

Of course it hurt to be talked down to like that. But the dull ache deep in my chest told me every word of it was true.

Just how pathetic had my marriage been, for my husband’s own staff to pity me like this?

Wait…

“You said I’ve been… married for seven years?”

“And I’ve got some asshole husband who couldn’t care less that I got hit by a car, and he’s got a first love who just came back?”

…

Chapter 1

It took a whole lot of snot and tears, but I finally got Evan to take me to the hospital. He even covered the bill before he left.

While the doctors were examining me, I got my memories in order.

No time travel. No waking up inside a novel. I’d just lost seven years of memory.

My memory stopped at eighteen. The summer after I graduated high school, I was working at a restaurant, and in the alley out back, I found a man passed out on the ground. His name was Lucas Thorne.

He was gorgeous, he came from a very powerful family, and he was ridiculously capable. Me, an ordinary girl, becoming the guy who saved a rich heir’s life? Lucky me.

I never imagined I’d end up marrying him.

Evan told me we’d gotten married suddenly, right after I graduated college. No real relationship before that. No wedding. Just a trip to City Hall and one dinner with his family.

I’m an orphan. I made him my everything.

But after we were married, I found out there was another woman living in his heart: Chloe Vance.

His childhood sweetheart. His first love. The one who’d always had his heart.

Supposedly, both families had always assumed the two of them would get engaged. But there’d been some kind of misunderstanding, and she’d gone abroad.

And me? I looked about thirty percent like her. That’s how I got to be Mrs. Thorne.

I couldn’t handle the reality of it, so I started acting out in our marriage. Constantly.

I racked my brain for ways to get Lucas’s attention, and all it ever got me was his irritation and disgust.

His family and friends all treated me like a stain on him. A joke. They even placed bets on when we’d get divorced.

That’s when Chloe made her big, glamorous comeback.

She was the swan. I was the ugly duckling.

My ugliness made her look even more perfect. I was a clown. She’d never even bother to notice me.

Today was her welcome-home party.

I’d begged Lucas not to go, to leave me at least a little dignity. In the end, I’d even threatened to kill myself.

His face had gone cold, and he started the car. So I ran after it, barefoot, as fast as I could.

Until a car running a red light knocked me flat. In the last second before I blacked out, I never saw him stop.

And why was it Evan who’d patched me up?

He said he’d just happened to be passing by, and he was worried that if anything happened to me, it would look bad for the Thornes, so he brought me back to the house and bandaged me up.

I was seriously starting to think the old me must have been under some kind of curse.

I’d hit the jackpot and married into money. Wasn’t being a pampered rich wife good enough? Why would I grovel like that, all for love?

I’m the kind of person who hates letting herself get pushed around!

If you don’t love yourself, who’s going to love you?

Once I’d figured all that out, I threw myself into getting better, and before long I was cleared to go home.

When I was washing up, I noticed my body was covered in scars, big ones and small ones, so I went to a cosmetic clinic.

For the ones the lasers couldn’t fix, I found a tattoo artist and had designs inked over them, following their shapes.

The good news? Lucas had never been stingy with money.

Money meant a good life. As for love—that wasn’t my problem.

The divorce was definitely happening. The first love was back. If I didn’t step aside, that would be pretty tactless of me.

But I wasn’t going to keep swallowing humiliation. All those years of misery? I wanted to be compensated for every one of them.

“This one, that one, and that whole set—wrap them all up!”

I handed over that black card again and again, until every bit of my resentment had been spent.

I got into a cab and gave the driver the address Evan had texted me. In the message, he’d also told me not to make any more scenes.

I wrote back, ok. Of course I wasn’t going to make a scene.

Then I got out of the cab and just stood there, gaping.

The so-called mansion was basically a castle. All this obscene wealth dropped right in my lap, and the old me wanted love?

My hands were shaking as I stuffed my new clothes, one piece at a time, into the gigantic walk-in closet.

Then I heard a key turn in the front door.