Chapter 2

When Seraphina heard I was going to call the police, she immediately FaceTimed me, demanding answers.

“Jace is just a playful kid, a little bit immature. He didn’t mean to cut the rope.”

“Look, I’ll apologize for him. Let’s just drop this small matter, okay?”

“I promise you, our engagement will continue. Even though you’re a cripple now, with you as my husband, nobody will dare to laugh at you!”

I hung up the phone and pounded my numb legs, consumed by grief.

We were childhood sweethearts; we’d been together since we were eighteen.

I still remember a younger, innocent Seraphina swearing under the sun that she would love me forever, her heart never changing.

But it had only been eight years, and her heart had already changed.

In her eyes, Jace getting a fright was a major event, but my shattered legs she casually dismissed as “a small matter.”

It turned out, love and indifference were starkly obvious.

I hired the most professional legal team to gather evidence of Jace’s deliberate harm, then called the police.

The lawyers quickly got back to me. Seraphina had ordered all company surveillance footage deleted the moment the incident happened.

She had chosen Jace’s side once again. Her protectiveness toward him chilled me to the bone.

Seraphina furiously rushed to the hospital, raising her hand and slapping me across the face. She snapped, annoyed:

“Dean, you’re calling the police over such a small thing? Didn’t I already apologize for Jace?”

“He’s just an eighteen-year-old kid! You’re a whole decade older than him, why are you being so petty with a child?”

“Besides, you were the one who scared him first! He has a weak heart and gets easily frightened. I haven’t even tried to blame you, and you’re already turning the tables on me!”

She finished speaking and sat by my hospital bed, threatening:

“Our engagement just got put on the schedule. You don’t want me to unilaterally cancel it now, do you?”

“Your legs are broken, and if you get dumped too, what will happen to your parents? They’re already not in the best health; if they hear this double blow of bad news, it could literally break their hearts, and something terrible might happen!”

I stared hard into her eyes, unable to believe she would use my parents to threaten me, all for Jace.

Five years ago, Seraphina was in a car accident. Both her kidneys were damaged, and she urgently needed a transplant. My entire family got tested for a match, and only my mother was a match.

Despite her age, she immediately decided to donate a kidney to Seraphina, which is why her health has been declining ever since.

At the end of the year my mother donated her kidney, Seraphina was being chased by a rival she’d angered.

Both our families had just left a restaurant when a masked man with a knife rushed toward Seraphina.

Her biological parents instinctively hid, but in that critical moment, my father stepped forward and took a knife for her, puncturing his lung.

My parents’ health suffered because they successively saved Seraphina. They genuinely loved her and had long considered her part of our family.

But Seraphina was not only ungrateful, she was using them to threaten me into withdrawing the police report.

I pulled at the corner of my mouth, a bitter taste filling my heart.

“Why? Seraphina, haven’t my family and I been good enough to you?”