Juliette Monroe, his fiancée, turned away from me. "Looks like sending her away back then really worked. She's completely changed."

"Luther, come help me pick the wedding invitations. Tell me which one looks better."

Downstairs, the joy of their wedding preparations pierced straight through me.

I was adopted by the Hawthorne Family from the orphanage, so I grew up with Luther. We were childhood sweethearts and we loved each other.

Until three years ago.

Luther saw with his own eyes when his mother and his uncle were tangled together on the bed. His eyes were red as he questioned her, asking why she would do something like that. How could a woman like her, proud and noble, fall for someone as useless as his uncle?

He begged her like a madman to tell the truth.

However, she never gave him an explanation. All he got was her cold, lifeless body the next day.

Even though his father, Luke, tried to block all the news, word still got out that she had committed incest and taken her own life out of shame by swallowing sleeping pills.

From then on, the word 'incest' or 'forbidden love' became a forbidden topic to Luther.

And from that day, he started to slowly pull away from me.

I could not accept it at the time. The pain and the heartbreak drowned me and I started coming home drunk every single day.

The next morning, I woke up with a splitting headache and saw Luther lying next to me.

The messy bed and the soreness all over my body pointed to what had happened between us.

My face turned pale. I did not even have time to figure things out.

Luther was furious, demanding to know why I did that despite knowing that incest was his taboo, but I still drugged him.

The sun was shining that morning, but I felt like I had been thrown into an icy pit.

I cried, I begged. I told him I had been wronged. But that night, only Luther, his father and I were at home.

Luther stared at me, eyes full of pain and disbelief. "My father hates incest more than anything. How could he do this?"

After that, I was thrown into a mental hospital, cut off from the outside world. And it was there that I gave birth to a daughter with a congenital heart disease.

To stop the world from thinking my daughter was the result of incest, I told everyone she was someone else's child.

I laughed at myself.

All the pain would all be over soon.

I just had to find a good family for her. Once I did, I could give her my heart and finally rest.

Once I did, I could die peacefully.

I pushed open the door to the room that once belonged to me, but it was now Juliette's cloakroom.

I stood there for a moment in silence, then took my daughter's hand and turned to head toward the remote guest room. After settling in, I cleaned up the space and coaxed her to sleep.

That was when my phone rang.

"Jenna, I'm on set. My script ended up with Luther by mistake. Could you bring it to me?"

"Luther and I are waiting for you here."

I pushed open the door to their bedroom and the sight of their stuff together on the bedside table hit me like a slap in the face.

The bitterness rose in my chest as I grabbed the contract and rushed to the set.

Before I even had the chance to walk in, I was surrounded by a crowd of fans at the door.

A sharp, mocking voice cut through the air, "How dare such a shameless bitch like her show up? The Hawthorne Family raised her, yet she still had the nerve to commit incest with her brother."

Suddenly, one of the fans reached out, knocking the contract out of my hand. I bent down in a panic to pick it up.

But before I could, the fan stomped on my hand, crushing it underfoot.

"Look at you. Our Juliette is about to be happy and you're just jealous, coming out to cause trouble for her."

The crowd pushed me, trapping me in their harsh grasp.

I could feel the same suffocating panic I had suffered from in the mental hospital. Surrounded by darkness and voices, I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out.

The fans around me laughed cruelly, watching as the once proud Jenna was now a broken figure, lying on the ground with tears streaming down my face and my body shaking uncontrollably.

From a distance, Luther watched with a cold expression. I could see the faintest flash of pain in his eyes as he took a step forward.

He pulled me up from the ground and gently brushed the dust off my clothes.

Dazed from the onset of my condition, my mind tricked me into thinking I had gone back to those happy days. My hand trembled as I reached out to touch Luther's face.

However, Luther flinched away, making my weak body stagger from the rejection.

In that brief moment when he instinctively caught me, he seemed startled by how thin I had become. Every bone in my body must have jabbed into him like needles.

But they all said that she ...

Before he could process it, I snapped back to awareness and pushed his hand away without a word.

He handed the contract over to Juliette and turned to leave, but she called after me.

"Jenna, I'm short a stand-in actor. Could you help me out just this once?"

"The character used to be in a mental hospital. Since you've actually been there, it'll be easier for you to act the part."

Those three simple words hit like a whip, tearing my old wound wide open. I stood frozen, pale, my thin frame shaking uncontrollably.

Juliette pressed on, her voice soft and coaxing, "Don't worry. With my connections, even as a stand-in, I'll make sure you're paid like a lead actress."

Money.

I needed a lot of money to cure my daughter's heart disease.

After a long pause, I finally forced the words out with a hoarse voice. "...Okay."

Under the glare of the spotlight, I stood amidst a crowd of actors playing mental patients. They grabbed my hair and slapped me across the face.

"You lazy bitch! Why do we have to work while you get to sit around doing nothing?"

Staring at my face, his sharp nails scraped across my skin, "With a face like yours, no wonder the director can't stop drooling over you."

I shut my eyes in despair. The humiliation and terror I had buried deep clawed their way back into my mind.

The lights shifted and a group of doctors in white coats walked in.

"You're acting up again today. How will you ever learn to behave if you don't suffer a little?"

They took out bottles of pills, seized my face roughly and forced the bitter medicine down my throat. I choked and instinctively tried to spit it out.

However, that only irritated them even further. Their faces were clouded with displeasure.

"Talking back now? I guess you've decided you don't want to get better and leave this place."

They all laughed mockingly as hands reached for me from every direction.

I screamed and whimpered, but after three years of being broken into obedience, I did not dare to resist.

The next second, my whole body froze in horror.

A hot stream trickled down my legs. Under the harsh flash of lights, it was impossible to hide.

"Oh my God… Jenna Hawthorne, who was once so high and mighty, actually…"

The mocking laughter echoed around me.

Surrounded by the crowd, I did not dare lift my eyes to meet anyone's gaze, especially not Luther's, who stood not far away. I shut my eyes in despair.

Three years ago, I was still proud and headstrong, cutting through the elite circles of the business world with sharp precision and unshakable confidence.

But now… I was reduced to a woman suffering from mental illness, humiliated and branded as insane in front of everyone. Shame overwhelmed me as I bit down on my tongue with all my strength and only when the sharp tang of blood filled my mouth did I finally come back to my senses.

I could not die.

If I died… what would happen to Anna?

Then, a man's cold voice cut through the chaos.

"Get out."

A coat was draped over my shoulders. It still held the lingering warmth of the man who had placed it there and it made my frozen body feel just a little less cold.

Everyone on set saw the dark cloud over Luther's face, scattered in fear.

Juliette reached out to take his arm gently, trying to speak. However, he shook her off without hesitation. "You get out too."

In the blink of an eye, only the two of us remained on the set.

Luther turned to face me with bloodshot eyes. "Are you really that desperate for money? You let them humiliate you like that for what? A few bills? You weren't like this before."

Just when I had felt the faintest warmth returning to my chest, his words dragged me back into the cold pit. I could feel tears slipping silently from the corners of my eyes.

But I was no longer the same Jenna Hale.

I replied with biting sarcasm, "That's right. All I care about now is money. The past? I don't want it anymore. I only recognize money."

A flicker of pain crossed his face. He sneered, then turned toward the door and ordered the bodyguards outside.

"Bring everyone back. Continue filming."

I was painfully and humiliatingly filming a scene set in a mental hospital. Not far from me, Juliette was acting coquettish in a bed scene with Luther.

The moment I finished filming, my hands were trembling. I just wanted to leave.

But then I heard his low, possessive voice. "Juliette, since you're so insistent on doing intimate scenes, then do them with me."

After saying that, he turned to look at me.

"We only need one more person on set as a cameraman. Since Jenna is so desperate for money, let her do it."

My face turned pale. I knew this man too well. I could tell from every word that this was revenge.

Still, I did not flinch. I turned back around and walked steadily onto the set.

I picked up the camera and began recording as the two of them acted out the intimate scene on the bed. Her sweet, coy voice and his relentless advances echoed in my ears.

The camera only caught suggestive angles. Nothing really happened, but the way they touched was enough to make my chest tighten.

Finally, he let out a low growl and the scene ended.

My heart felt numb from the pain. I raised a hand to my face and was startled to find it wet with tears.

I wiped them away quickly and walked over, handing the camera to Luther. "Take a look. If you're not satisfied, we can reshoot."

He smiled, but there was no warmth in it.

I stepped forward and turned to look at the two of them with steady indifference.

"Pay me my wage. I'm quite satisfied with this job. If needed, I can be your stand-in again."

Luther's expression was cold and distant when he tossed a card in front of me. "Fifteen thousand dollars. Is that enough? Considering what you just cleaned up, it's not a bad wage."

I crouched down and picked up the card in silence, then numbly began cleaning the mess they left behind on the bed.

From outside the set, the staff watched every second of my humiliation. Once, they had shown me some respect, wary of my identity as the adopted daughter of the Hawthorne Family. But now that they had seen how much Luther despised me, that respect vanished.

They swaggered over without hesitation. Juliette's assistant tossed a pile of clothes at me.

"Wash these for our treasure Juliette Monroe. Make sure they're dry-cleaned properly."

The photographer strolled up after her. "Pick up some mushroom chicken soup for me from that place in the south of the city."

They dropped a few bills and coins on the floor like breadcrumbs. I knelt down without a word and picked them up one by one.

I smoothed the crumpled notes. The humiliation stung, but they were not wrong. Indeed, I was here for the money. As long as I could save enough to replace Anna's heart, none of this would matter. I could die in peace.

In the next life, if such a thing existed, I never wanted to cross paths with Luther again.

From a distance, I caught a glimpse of him.

He was holding a cup of warm brown sugar water, gently offering it to Juliette with such gentle care.

"You're in a sensitive period. Let the stand-in do the river scene in the winter next time. It's too cold for you."