Chapter 1
I woke up in a different life, and the very first thing I saw was Tyler Greene handing me a divorce agreement.
His voice sounded cold and distant, like it barely needed me there.
"Mia, the girl's pregnant. She wants a title. Let's get divorced. Whatever you want as compensation, I'll give it to you," he said.
It happened to be our seventh wedding anniversary.
He'd been gone all night, unreachable, and the first thing he did when he walked through the door was ask me to end our marriage.
He said he'd found real love.
Staring at his sharp, elegant face, I drifted into a haze.
In my previous life, the moment he said those words, I grabbed the fruit knife on the coffee table and stabbed it straight into his chest.
His warm blood sprayed across my face, and with my vision burning red, I demanded, "She's real love? Then what do the seven years you spent with me count for?"
We'd once loved like we were burning alive; in the end we hated with the same fire.
I tore up the divorce papers, and we dragged each other through hell for ten long years.
When Alice Warren got pregnant, I had myself dragged into the operating room and forced into an abortion.
He came home with an empty expression and kicked away the child in my belly.
On Alice's birthday, I sent people to wreck her place and dump dead rats everywhere.
On my birthday, Tyler locked me in a dark room with nothing but cold snakes for company.
One thing after another… the man who once held me like something precious now tore me apart for another woman.
Because of Alice, my family's company went bankrupt; my parents were driven to jump to their deaths.
My pride, my dignity, everything I'd ever been, was ground down to dust.
Eventually, I lost myself.
One day, Driving across the River Bridge, I fell into a hallucination and plunged straight into the river.
Across the divide of two lifetimes, I took the divorce agreement again. My heart was perfectly still.
"I want seventy percent of our marital assets, and fifty-one percent of LoveMia Group," I said, steady as ever.
Tyler clearly didn't expect me to be so calm. His eyes flickered in surprise. "You really want the divorce?"
I nodded. "You pay, I leave."
His gaze sharpened, a warning hiding inside it. "Mia, don't play games with me. That whole push-and-pull thing doesn't work on me."
"Our divorce has nothing to do with Alice.
"If you go after her behind my back, you know exactly what I'll do."
Every single word was Tyler standing up for his precious Alice.
My fingers clenched the papers until my knuckles turned white. A tired laugh escaped me.
After the ten years of my past life, his ruthlessness was something carved into my bones.
There was nothing left to say.
I opened the file and signed my name, slow and steady. "Now do you believe me?"
He stared at my signature like it unsettled him.
A moment passed before he let out a soft sigh. "Mia, I hurt you. If you ever need help, come to me. Even if we aren't married, you'll always be family."
I looked at the shallow guilt in his eyes and just smiled.
"Get out," I said, my voice cold and final.
He picked up the agreement and walked away.
"I'll get the share transfer documents to you as soon as possible," he said.
I watched his figure fade, and a weight settled in my chest as memories surfaced.
When I was little, I got lost. By the time Grandma found me, Tyler had already been taken in.
We were painfully poor. Life was hard. Yet when I look back, all I remember is sweetness.
Tyler had always been good to me. So good that I forgot there was a world outside of him.
I once stopped to stare at a princess dress in a store window. He took on three part-time jobs after school until he saved enough to buy it.
I swallowed hard at the smell of pizza house outside a restaurant. He ate steamed buns for three months so he could take me there just once.
He was cold with everyone else, but with me he was gentle in a way that wrapped itself around my heart.
He gave me everything he had.
When Grandma passed, my birth parents found me. I brought Tyler with me to the Collins family.
The Collins were wealthy, and my parents hated that he was an orphan. They tried to send him away with money.
I told my parents he was the one I wanted to marry.
And if they tried to push him out, I'd walk out with him.