Chapter 1
“Scarlett, open your mouth.”
Damian scooped up a spoonful of cheesecake and held it to my lips.
The sleeves of his black shirt were rolled up, revealing his pale, elegant wrist and a Patek Philippe worth millions.
That was just part of his everyday life as the heir to a mafia family. Even in a hospital room, he was immaculate.
I obediently opened my mouth and swallowed the cloying sweetness.
He smiled, satisfied, and reached out to wipe the cream from the corner of my mouth. His thumb was warm—almost too warm.
“Good girl.”
His voice was hoarse, still weak from his injuries, yet it was filled with lingering affection.
The family’s private doctor stood to the side, reporting respectfully.
“Mr. Damian is recovering well. It’s just his memory…”
“I remember Scarlett.”
Damian cut the doctor off and looked at me with burning eyes, as if I were some precious treasure he had lost and finally found again.
“I remember that I love her. That’s enough.”
The doctor fell silent, not daring to say another word.
I lowered my eyes, hiding the coldness and disgust in them.
Love me?
What a joke.
Just one week ago, we had been in this very same top-floor VIP hospital room.
Only back then, I was the one lying in the bed. He had stood above me, looking down with no warmth in his eyes.
“Scarlett, stop pretending to be dead.”
“All I did was have you give her 400cc of blood. Who are you putting on this dying act for?”
His true love, Isabella, had been badly injured after an attack by a rival family and urgently needed a blood transfusion.
And I just happened to have the same rare blood type as her.
So I, the “substitute,” suddenly had a new purpose.
His men dragged me from my home to the hospital by force. They pinned me to the bed, and an icy needle pierced my vein.
My blood flowed steadily into that woman’s body.
Weak and trembling, I begged him, “Damian, if they keep taking more, I’ll die.”
He only gripped my chin coldly and forced me to look at him.
“Die?”
“Scarlett, I saved your life. I saved your family’s company too.”
“If I tell you to die, you should be honored.”
“Being able to use your blood to save Isabella’s life is the greatest value you’ll ever have.”
Back then, he had been as cruel as a demon.
But one sudden car accident made him forget everything.
He forgot how he had used the power of his family to force mine into bankruptcy, all so I, a woman who looked somewhat like Isabella, would obediently become her stand-in.
He forgot how he had searched my body for another woman’s shadow, humiliating me night after night.
He also forgot that he had a true love carved into his heart, Isabella.
All he remembered was that he had a fiancée he loved deeply.
And I, Scarlett, was the lucky woman he had mistaken for that fiancée.
Nobody told him. Not his closest guys, not the board. No one.
Because the old Damian? Unpredictable. Vicious.
This version of him was softer, sure. But that obsession? That never went anywhere.
Say one bad thing about me, and he'd erase you. Just like that.
“What are you thinking about?”
Damian’s warm fingertips brushed my cheek, pulling me out of those freezing memories.
I raised my head and gave him a pale smile.
“I was thinking about when you’ll finally get better.”
“Soon.”
He kissed my forehead, his eyes full of indulgent affection.
“When I’m discharged, we’ll have the wedding.”
“I’ll let the whole world know that you, Scarlett, are the only wife of Damian.”
I sneered inwardly.
A wedding?
Damian, you owe me far more than one wedding.
What I want is for you to lose everything. I want you ruined beyond redemption.
