Chapter 1

I thought Frederic shielding me from a knife with his own body was the deepest love of my life.

Then I discovered it was all a staged act, a calculated ploy to make me willingly lie on the operating table and donate my bone marrow to his childhood sweetheart with leukemia, Lydia.

He bought the hospital, deceived my mother, watched me take "nutritional supplements" every day, all to turn me into a convenient source of blood.

When they injected me with sedatives and forcibly extracted my marrow, my mother died alone in a car accident. I never got to see her one last time.

I dragged my broken body to a remote mountain village, completely numb inside.

Two years later, he knelt at the medical station entrance begging for my forgiveness. I laughed coldly and handed him surgical scissors. "You said you loved me, right? Then reopen that scar you got from 'saving' me, and we'll be even."

He actually did it, blood dripping onto the ground.

I turned to smile at Luke, who had just returned. "Come on, the steaks are done. We're having a feast tonight."

Watching the tenderness in my eyes for another man, Frederic completely broke down.