The boutique was tucked into a hillside villa district, far from the city, and the road was empty—not a single passing car, let alone a cab.

I was still wearing the stiletto heels they'd paired with the gown. I hadn't walked a kilometer before the heels had torn my feet raw. Every step felt like walking on a knife edge. My whole body was shaking.

I couldn't keep going. I crouched by the side of the road and called Leo.

Even after he'd hurt me beyond anything, when I had nowhere else to turn, he was still the first person I thought of.

He picked up fast. My voice came out thick with tears.

"Leo, can you send someone to get me? I'm on the road outside the boutique. My feet are bleeding—I can't walk."

I hadn't even finished before he cut me off, sharp and angry.

"It's only a few kilometers. Walk back yourself. Do you have any idea how long Mia cried over the blood you got on the dress? Don't bother me."

The line went dead. When I tried again, it was already busy.

I looked down at my phone. The battery indicator was red. It could die any second.

Everything I had been holding in broke out of me at once.

I crouched by the roadside, buried my face against my knees, and cried until my whole body shook.

That was when I heard it—a Harley engine tearing down the road, deafening, coming closer.

On instinct, I pressed myself to the edge of the road. But the modified black Harley didn't slow down. It came straight at me.

The midday sun glared off the windshield, but through the tinted visor I could see the rider's face.

It was Frank. Mia's most loyal lapdog. The same Frank who, with her, had spent two years of high school making my life hell.

He kept the throttle wide open. At the last second, I threw myself toward the shoulder, but it was too late—the front wheel clipped my right leg and sent me flying.

Agonizing, bone-shattering pain crashed over me in an instant. I crumpled heavily in the middle of the road, covered in blood, and could only watch helplessly as Frank spun his motorcycle around and sped away.

Through fading consciousness, I dragged myself forward across the scorching asphalt with my last shred of strength. My fingers finally brushed against my phone, discarded on the roadside, and I fumbled instinctively to dial the emergency line.

Then darkness swallowed me whole, and I slipped into complete unconsciousness.

My muddled dreams were flooded with fragments of the past.

Back in my first year of high school, news of my mother’s suicide by wrist-cutting spread across the entire campus overnight.

Gossiping classmates dug up every ugly detail of our family’s secrets, plastering the bulletin boards with cruel rumors branding my mother a mistress and me an illegitimate child.

Mia, the legitimate daughter and my elder half-sister, attended the same school.

From that day on, I became her and her followers’ plaything.

When she failed an exam, she seared scars into my skin with a scorching curling iron.

When she was scolded by teachers, she ordered her lackeys to pin my hands down and force toilet water into my mouth.

When she fought with her boyfriend, she’d have Frank beat me with a towel-wrapped fist, aiming only at hidden parts of my body. The pain left me tossing and turning through sleepless nights, yet I dared not show a single bruise to anyone.

In the end, crushed by public pressure, the principal forced me to drop out.

Motherless and abandoned by school, I scraped by on odd jobs to survive.

Until one early morning, on my way back to my cramped rental room after work, I was cornered in an alley by a gang of thugs. They robbed me of every cent I had and leered as they laid their hands on me.

That was when Leo appeared and saved me.

He held out his hand to me against the light, asking if I would stay by his side, working as his live-in caretaker.

I recognized him at once. He was the senior one grade above me, the school heartthrob who always ranked first in every exam—the quiet crush I’d hidden deep in my heart, too afraid to confess.

I took his hand, clinging to it like the only light in my endless darkness.

The day I moved into his villa, he saw the unhealed, crusted scars covering my body. His fingers trembled as he tended my wounds, whispering softly to ask if I still hurt.

I shook my head and told him I was fine.

Truly, the moment he stepped into my life, all my pain had vanished.

The villa servants whispered behind my back, sneering that I was a mistress’s daughter, doomed to follow in my mother’s footsteps—a bewitching girl born only to lure men.

Leo took my hand, stood before every last one of them, and said in a cold, unyielding tone:

“If you believe a parent’s choices define a child’s future, then your own children will be nothing but servants for the rest of their lives.”

No one dared speak of my background again after that.

Fearing I would suffer further cruelty if I returned to school, he never forced me to go back. Instead, he hired private one-on-one tutors, granting me anything I wished to learn—finance, painting, foreign languages, without hesitation.

He’d brush my hair gently and say:

“Eva, the world is vast. Don’t trap yourself in the past. Learn to look forward.”

Back then, I had foolishly believed he genuinely wanted me to heal and grow.

Only now do I understand. He had simply wanted to make me forget every terrible thing Mia had ever done to me.

I was woken by the sound of arguing outside my hospital room.

Leo and Mia. Even through the door, their voices came through clearly.

"How could you do something like that? You had someone run her down with a car. Did you even think about the consequences?"

"I just needed you to prove it. Prove which of us actually matters to you! I was only gone a few years, and there she is, living in your house—are you really going to tell me you never felt anything for her?"

"How many times do I have to tell you. I've only ever loved you. She's a stand-in. That's all she is."

"Fine. Then prove it. Make sure she doesn't go to the police. Make sure she doesn't pursue this. Or I call off the alliance, and our families' deal falls apart."

I couldn't make out the rest.

So the whole accident had been a test of Mia's. She wanted to see which of us weighed more in Leo's heart.

Tears hit the sheet without a sound. Under the blanket, I dug my nails into my palms until the sting reached every part of me.

I wasn't a doll anymore. Not something they could pick up and put down whenever they wanted.

I reached for the phone on the nightstand. I started dialing for help. Before I could finish, a big hand knocked the phone out of mine. It hit the wall. The screen shattered beyond repair.

Leo was standing at the foot of the bed, his face black with rage.

"Eva. What the hell are you doing?"

"What am I doing?"

I looked up at him. The cold in my eyes was something I'd never had before.

"I'm calling the police. Mia tried to kill me. She's going to pay for it."

"I've kept you for five years. That was not so you could challenge me. That was not so you could go after my people."

Leo's hand shot out and gripped my jaw, forcing my face up. His eyes were pure warning.

"Your mother's ashes are still in my hands. I'm telling you—forget this accident. Be good. Because if word gets out about where a mistress's remains are buried, do you really think she's getting any peace?"

He said it calmly. Every word was a blade of ice going straight through me.

I went cold all the way through, like I'd fallen into an ice bath.

The pain I couldn't hold back anymore came out as tears. They fell one by one onto the back of his hand.

I reached up, pulled the engagement ring off my finger, and with everything I had left in me, I threw it at his face.

"Leo. This is over. I don't ever want to see you again."

The ring spun across the tile, ringing.

Something flickered in his eyes for half a second—something almost like regret. Then the door opened, and Mia's voice came in.

"Leo, let's go home. The smell of disinfectant in here is making me sick. You know how bad my nausea is in the first trimester. I can't handle it."

Leo's eyes went cold again. He let go of my jaw. He didn't even glance at the ring on the floor. He walked straight to the door, scooped Mia carefully into his arms, and carried her out without looking back.

Just before the door closed, I saw Mia look back at me, the smug little smile still on her lips.

She was telling me: now that she was back, there was no room for me anywhere in Leo's life.

The minute they were gone, the doctor came in with my chart. He was being careful with his words.

"Miss Eva, your body handled it well. You have a mild concussion and a fracture in your right leg, but the baby is fine. The pregnancy was not affected."

I went blank for a few seconds. Then I laughed. The laughter got wilder. I was still laughing when the tears started pouring down my face.

The cruelty of it.

The moment he threw me out for good, the moment I swore I was done with him, I was carrying his child.

A child his father didn't want from the start.

I made myself stop. I called the one private investigator I trusted—the only person I could still reach. I told him to immediately back up the traffic cam footage from the hillside road, and the hallway surveillance from the hospital where Leo had threatened me with my mother's ashes.

I knew Mia. She wasn't going to leave it alone. That evidence was the only thing standing between me and her.

The feeling in my gut got worse by the minute. I ignored the doctor, pushed through the pain of the fractured leg, and signed myself out.

I had to get back to the villa.

I had to get my mother's ashes and her relics. I had to get what she'd left me. I couldn't let those things stay in Leo's hands and become leverage.

My uncle was already on his way. I wanted to walk out with him carrying what was mine.

But when I got back to the villa on my crutches, every drop of blood in me went cold.