I wheel myself into the birthday celebration that Wales Price has thrown for me. The atmosphere is originally lively, but a brief silence descends when everyone sees me.

The guests are there for different purposes, but celebrating my birthday is not one of them.

"Is that Mr. Price's crippled fiancée, Joey Hertza?"

"Yeah, but the one he really loves is Anna Giovanni. I saw them kissing in a corner earlier."

They use their wine glasses to block their mouths as they speak loudly. They think I'm still the crippled deaf I used to be.

They don't know that I regained my hearing last week. I can hear every mocking comment they make.

Meanwhile, Wales stands there and allows it to happen. He doesn't stop the guests from talking about me. He seems to have forgotten that I only ended up like this while protecting him. I shoved him away when the accident happened and got trapped underneath the car myself.

When I was rescued, Wales swore to stay with me and care for me for life. It's only been three short years since then, but he's already changed.

I receive a message on my phone. "Ms. Hertza, the lifelike corpse that you've ordered is now complete. Reply to this message with your confirmation, and your death-faking service will be immediately effective. We will send the corpse to your and Mr. Price's wedding in five days."

I don't even hesitate as I reply with my confirmation.

Enjoy your wedding, Wales.

One week ago, I was still Wales Price's paralyzed fiancée. I had been convinced that Wales' love for me was true until I regained my hearing.

I refused to marry a liar, so I looked up a service to fake my death. I would use a fake corpse of myself to participate in our wedding.

Before I left, I behaved as I usually did and acquiesced with Wales' plans to throw me a birthday party. Wales wheeled me to the table and played the role of a caring lover, serving me food and peeling the shells off the prawns for me.

His good friends shoved him in the shoulder playfully and teased, "What a good husband you are! There's only five days left till you'll be a married man. What are you going to do about your other lover, Anna? Why don't you give her to me?"

I clenched the fork in my hand tighter after hearing his words and waited for Wales' answer.

Wales didn't say a word until he was done peeling the last prawn. He placed the prawn on my plate and cleaned his hands with a napkin elegantly. He did not react to how his friends were humiliating me—his fiancée.

"Oh, please. It's already a great honor for Joey to be married to me. Does she still wish for me to be wholeheartedly loyal to her? A wife and a lover are two very different people, after all. A wife is meant to be cared for at home," Wales explained calmly.

"A lover is a precious treasure who can please me in any and every way. Of course, I'll continue to see Anna even after I'm married."

Wales had emphasized the word "please" as he spoke, leading to the men around us erupting in jeers and hoots.

I forced myself to keep my expression passive. I couldn't afford to let Wales notice that I was shaking. He was no longer the gentleman that I once knew.

Wales threw his fork onto the table, causing the raucous laughter around us to cease immediately. His eyes were narrowed as he swept his gaze at the people surrounding us. "So, all of you had better watch your mouths. I won't show any mercy if Joey finds out about Anna."

Wales was the CEO of Price Corporation, which dominated the business market of Anaxia. With one word, he could destroy an entire family. Nobody dared to go against his orders.

"You're really such a good husband! You hid Anna away just so Joey wouldn't find out and leave you."

The crowd began to shower praises on Wales, complimenting his deep affection.

I lowered my head so no one would see the disgust that was swirling in my eyes. Was this what love was meant to be? If it were, I would rather not have it.

"Isn't it easy to hide the truth from Joey since she's deaf? Have you and Anna ever… in the house…"

The man let his fragmented sentence trail off into silence, leaving the blanks to be filled in by the audience's own imagination.

Wales smirked as he swirled the wine in his glass. "Of course. The bedroom, the living room, the kitchen, and even outside of Joey's door. We've done it everywhere. It was thrilling, to say the least.

"The thrill is why I didn't allow the doctor to cure Joey's deafness and heal her crippled legs. Did you really think I wouldn't be able to find the best doctors in the world for her with my status and power?"

Everyone was so busy giving Wales a thumbs-up that they didn't notice how my knuckles had turned white from how hard I was gripping my knife and fork.

I had initially planned to reveal to Wales that my deafness and crippled legs had been cured during the wedding, wanting to surprise him. Who knew that this surprise would end up backfiring on me? With my hearing restored, I had found out the painful truth.

In order to maintain the thrill he had with Anna Giovanni, Wales had sentenced me to a life of being deaf. It was why I decided to leave and give up on marrying him. On the day of the wedding, the only thing he would be left with was an artificial corpse that looked exactly like me.

After noticing how I hadn't touched my food, Wales signed at me, "Joey, why aren't you eating?"

I looked at his face that was filled with concern and forced a stiff smile. "What are all of you talking about? You look like you're having fun."

Wales patted my head fondly. He signed, "I'm telling them about us. They're very envious of our love."

He lifted my hand and pressed a kiss to the back of it. Everyone at the party saw the kiss and exchanged sly looks with each other. My heart felt like it had been thrown into a pit of fire, left to be burned until there was nothing but ashes remaining.

Wales had clearly been telling them about how he messed around with another woman while we were only separated by a single wall. He chose to lie to me, pretending he was telling them about our love. The way he had done it so easily led me to believe that he had also lied to me in the past.

"I'm tired. I want to go home."

I wanted to leave this dreadful place as soon as possible. I wanted to escape from these people who treated me as a laughingstock. I didn't care about Wales' response. I turned and left the party, sending a message to the driver to pick me up.

The driver brought me to Middleton Street, slowing the car to a stop in front of two shopping malls. When I raised my head, my vision was filled with the words being projected on the electronic billboards, which were affixed onto the two buildings.

"Marry me, Joey!"

Passersby stopped to snap pictures of the billboards while letting out envious sighs.

"As expected of Wales! Joey is so lucky to be loved by him. I wonder how much this cost him."

"I heard that Joey is deaf, which is why Mr. Price used this way to propose to her. I also heard he didn't just rent out these two billboards, but he even rented out all the billboards in Anaxia for this month to broadcast their proposal video at a specific time every night for everyone to see.

"It's so romantic!"

While everyone turned green with envy at how Wales treated me, I could only smile to myself in a self-deprecating manner. I quietly rolled up the window and told the driver to keep driving.

A week ago, I would have shared the passersby's excitement. I asked the driver to bring me here every day at this specific time to watch the proposal video Wales prepared for me.

Wales and I grew up together, and he had declared his intentions to marry me since we were children. After we grew up, he left the country to boost his career. When he returned, he was already the CEO of Price Corporation.

Meanwhile, I was still an ordinary woman with a complicated family background.

My father was a violent man who hit my mother until she couldn't take it anymore and ran away. My stepmother didn't like me, and after my younger sister was born, I practically became the maid of the family.

I used to think of myself as a damsel in distress while Wales was my knight in shining armor.

After Wales returned, he rescued me from my miserable living conditions. He also gave a large sum of money to my father to gain his blessings for our marriage.

It was why when we were caught in the car accident, I had willingly shoved Wales out of the way of danger. I took his place and was crushed under the wheels of the car before I lost consciousness.

The accident left me with broken legs and ruptured eardrums that led to my hearing loss. Wales had searched high and low for doctors to treat me, and I had followed their orders to the best of my ability. But nothing had worked.

A month ago, my best friend returned to Anaxia. She brought me to a doctor who was famous overseas.

The doctor told me that my eardrums were only damaged and could be healed with proper treatment. As for my legs, the bones had not been realigned properly during my first surgery. I just had to go through another operation, and the bones could be fixed into the right place.

The joy I felt was mixed with surprise. What the doctor told me was completely different from what Wales told me in the past. At the time, I still believed that he truly loved me. But now, I knew that it was his intention all along to keep me paralyzed.

Three weeks after my latest surgery, I regained my hearing. I could also stand up and walk around, albeit slowly. I had planned to surprise him at the wedding by walking down the aisle to him, walking toward the source of my happiness on my own two feet.

I had dreamed more times than I can count of hearing Wales say, "Good morning, sweetheart!" to me with my own two ears. It would be such a sweet and wonderful feeling.

But the first thing I heard when I woke up the next morning after regaining my hearing was the unmistakable sounds of Wales and Anna as they moaned sweet nothings to each other from the room next to mine.

Anna was Wales' assistant, and they had gotten together a long time ago. In the years when I was suffering from deafness, they flirted in front of me so many times while I remained clueless.

Pain radiated from my heart, forcing me to hunch over as I hugged myself tightly. Wales' earlier answer echoed in my mind.

Even after we got married, he would continue his clandestine relationship with Anna. To keep everything under wraps, he was willing to sacrifice my well-being and keep me as an invalid forever.

Although the winter gales were biting and burrowed deep down into my bones, the stinging cold also kept my mind clear.

I had loved Wales so deeply once that I had been willing to die for him. However, my love for him had shriveled up. I was going to prove to him through my actions that his web of lies would eventually be exposed.

I was going to show him that I would never tolerate being lied to.

I had only been lying on the bed for a while before a pair of strong arms wrapped around me from behind. I was so startled by the sudden touch that I started to thrash around. However, the person behind me tightened his hold on me.

It was Wales, and he reeked of alcohol and perfume that made my nose sting. I had smelled this scent on Anna before, and it made my stomach churn.

He signed to me, "The birthday party was for you, Joey. Why did you leave before cutting the cake? Did something make you upset?

"I'll bring you to see our new home tomorrow. I bought it just for you, and I've already renovated it, too. Once we're married, we can move there together."

He tried to kiss me after he was done speaking, but I turned my head away and said, "It's fine as long as you've made the decision. I don't feel like going."

When he noticed my indifferent response, his expression turned confused, and he signed, "Joey, do you not want to marry me anymore?"

Wales was acting so cautiously at that moment. Gone was the imposing air that usually surrounded him when he was moving about in the outside world. If I had not heard how he wanted to keep me a cripple with my own two ears, my heart would have melted at his careful behavior.

I wanted to come clean and tell him that I didn't want to marry him anymore. After all, he was the one who cheated on me first. He was the one who was enjoying the affections of another, extinguishing any hopes or expectations I once harbored for the wedding.

What right did he have to accuse me of not wanting to marry him anymore?

But I decided it wasn't yet time to expose his betrayal. At the end of the day, Wales was an extraordinarily powerful man in Anaxia. If I showed my hand to him too early, there was a chance that I wouldn't be able to leave Anaxia alive.

Under his watchful gaze, I sighed quietly and signed, "No. It's just that my legs are hurting. We can visit the house tomorrow."

The new house was located next to Anaxia's most affluent area, Middleton Garden. Wales had hired a famous interior designer from Fraux to supervise the renovation process. Every sharp corner of the house had been smoothed down into a curve to prevent me from accidentally bumping into it.

All the tables, chairs, and counters were also shorter than most furniture that was sold on the market, all to make it convenient for me to use them while I was in my wheelchair.

Wales had planned everything out perfectly with my wheelchair-bound state in mind. It was clear that he never once considered allowing me to stand up on my own two feet again.

As the designer introduced the different furnishings in the house, Wales translated his words to sign language for me. I didn't miss the envious glint in the designer's eyes as Wales caressed my shoulder with a smile. "Do you like it, darling?"

I looked around the room. I couldn't deny that the house fit my previous image of a dream home perfectly.

When we were dating, I had once told Wales that I wanted massive floor-to-ceiling windows in the house. I wanted to be able to stand at the windows and admire the blooming tulips in the yard outside.

Wales had remembered everything I told him and had made my wishes a reality. Unfortunately, he had forgotten something crucial. No matter how perfect the house was, now that I had lost his love, the house would remain just that—a house instead of a home.

"Joey, I've reserved this wall for our photos. We'll take a photo somewhere in the house every Christmas and hang it up on this wall. It'll be our tradition until we grow old."

I met Wales' gaze and saw how his eyes were filled to the brim with love. My heart clenched painfully, and I almost wanted to ask him why he chose to be unfaithful. However, I managed to suppress my sorrow at the last moment.

I signed, "Will your love for me last forever?"

Wales rushed to sign back as if he was afraid I would misunderstand if he took his time to respond. "You're the woman I chose. I'll love you for the rest of my life."

I turned my head away, not wanting to look at his traitorous face. He had already betrayed our promise, and yet, he could still lie to my face so easily.

The sound of a ringing phone cut Wales' passionate confession short. He picked up the phone while shooting me a smile. A flash of desire flickered in his eyes as he murmured, "Don't rush me. I'll be there soon to spoil you, my bunny."

He pretended that nothing was amiss after ending the call. He apologized, explaining that something urgent had come up at the company that he needed to handle. He told me to tell the designer if there was anything about the house that I wasn't satisfied with.

Assuming I couldn't hear him, Wales had flirted with Anna right in front of my face. I barked out a self-deprecating laugh. When the designer asked me if there was anything I wanted to change, I shook my head.

As the driver chauffeured me away from the house, I thought to myself that I wouldn't be able to watch the tulips in the yard blossom.

My plan was to leave on the day of the wedding while my corpse took my place on the altar. Naturally, I wouldn't move into this house after that. What the house ended up looking like after the renovations would have nothing to do with me.