Chapter 1

If I hadn't had that sudden thought to go to the company early to deliver that wedding gift, I might have truly been willing to be Adrian Cole’s marionette for the rest of my life.

In this circle, everyone knows two open secrets:

First, I am a sinner who is greedy and stole three million dollars from the family’s children’s medical fund.

Second, Adrian is a madman who stood against the whole world for me.

For the past 1,800 days and nights, I also believed this with all my heart.

Adrian and I had already been together for two years before the scandal. I had loved him long before I ever needed him to save me.

When my parents kicked me out, and when friends avoided me like the plague, he stood in front of the surging reporters and brought me back to the lakeside villa.

I thought many times that it was the only miracle in a desperate situation.

Until this very moment.

Until two days before that grand wedding, I was standing behind a cold concrete pillar in the company’s underground garage, holding a deep blue velvet box.

Inside the box lay a pair of platinum cufflinks. On the back, a simple confession was engraved: To the man who stayed.

I had intended to secretly place it on his car seat as a wedding surprise.

But my feet froze right where they were.

A few steps away, in the dim light, I saw my always elegant and composed fiancé. He was gripping a man’s collar hard, pressing him tightly against the car door.

"That job five years ago, I took a huge risk!" The man named Miles turned red in the face. His voice showed a crazy desperation, "You were the one who told me to stuff those rigged accounts into her private computer! You were the one who told me to wire that three million! Now that you are about to have a grand wedding with her, you want to send me away with just a little hush money?"

The air around us seemed to be sucked dry in an instant. My eardrums began to roar violently.

"You have already received what you deserved." Adrian’s voice was low and steady. It carried a chilling sense of deathly silence, "Never appear in front of her again."

Miles let out an ugly, cold laugh. "She still thinks you saved her—and that you were the only person who stayed. If she knew that you were the one who destroyed her first, and then stood out to catch her—"

The voice stopped abruptly.

Adrian’s fingers gripped his throat like iron pliers.

"She will never know." Adrian stared at him, word by word, as if passing judgment .

The breath left me in a rush. I stood stiffly on the spot, gripping the gift box tightly until my knuckles turned pale.

My savior. My protector. The man who held me tightly when I had nightmares and told me over and over, "You still have me."

The person who pushed me into hell, and the person who gently caught me at the bottom of the abyss, were the same hands from beginning to end.

After a short scuffle, Miles broke free and ran away. Adrian didn't even look twice. He calmly straightened his slightly wrinkled cuffs and turned to walk toward the executive elevator.

It wasn't until the deathly silence around me closed in again that I moved my legs like a shell without a soul. On the ground where the argument had just taken place, an old mobile phone with a cracked screen lay.

I picked it up. There was no password lock. The main screen glaringly displayed an audio file from five years ago.

I pressed play.

"Wait for the Hartwell family to kick her out, then she will have nowhere to go."

Amidst the crackling static, Adrian’s voice cut clearly through my eardrums. So calm, so matter-of-fact.

This was not a misunderstanding. It was not a one-sided lie from an extortionist.

The man who used to panic over a mere scratch on my finger had personally stripped away my life and personally planned my ruin.

I don't remember how I drove back to the lakeside villa.

The front door was pushed open. Adrian walked in with the chill of early autumn. Seeing me curled up on the sofa, he immediately took off his coat and strode over.

"Why is your face so pale? Is your headache acting up again?" He frowned, and his warm palm pressed against my forehead. The genuine distress in his eyes had been my only spiritual pillar for the past five years.

He went to the kitchen and began warming a cup of milk.

I looked at this man. I looked at his perfect disguise.

"Adrian..." I tried to make my voice sound as dependent on him as usual, "I was just wondering, if one day my family finds out I am innocent, would you let me go back to the family?"

The spoon in his hand did not pause.

The next moment, he put down the cup and pulled me into his arms, blanket and all. His arms were so strong, carrying a sense of oppression as if he wanted to rub me into his own bones and blood.

"They didn't even give you a chance to explain back then before throwing you on the street." His chin rested against my hair, his voice gentle enough to suffocate, "Cecilia, you don't need anyone. You have me, and that is enough."

I leaned stiffly against his chest, listening to his steady and powerful heartbeat, feeling only a chill spreading through my entire body.

He wasn't distressed for me. He just couldn't bear the possibility of me having even a tiny chance to leave him.

Late at night, everything was silent.

Adrian slept behind me, his arms tightly locked around my waist, his breathing deep and steady. The posture was as if I were his most priceless treasure.

While he was fast asleep, I quietly slid out of bed, hid in the bathroom, and opened that old phone again.

At the very bottom of the interface, there was an instruction he had sent five years ago:

Block every Hartwell message. Let her believe no one came back for her.

The mirror over the sink reflected a pale and clear-headed face.

He had never saved me when I fell into the abyss. He had only spent five years locking me into a sterile display case called "love," and then personally locked the door for me.

I slowly turned off the phone, and the screen went completely dark.

For the first time in five years, I didn't fall asleep beside him. I slept next to a stranger.