Chapter 2

Adrian pulled me out of the pool.

From that moment on, I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

Even now, I still remember the warmth of his arms.

My clothes clung to my body, soaked through, but his heat seemed to melt me from the inside out.

I looked up at him. His profile was sharp and striking.

In that moment, he truly seemed like a god descending from the heavens.

He became my salvation, my love, the person I was willing to devote my entire life to.

From that day forward, I loved Adrian for fifteen years.

But Adrian never loved me.

He had always loved Vivian.

Even the day he pulled me from the pool, he had mistakenly thought the person drowning was Vivian.

After Vivian left, he seemed to lose his soul.

He loved her so much that he treated her words like commandments.

When Vivian told him to use me as her replacement, he truly did.

He took me home and dressed me according to Vivian’s preferences.

Vivian had a slimmer figure than mine, so he ordered the staff to stop feeding me until I collapsed from hunger.

Vivian had a more defined nose, so he had a piece of cartilage taken from my ear and implanted into my nose.

Vivian loved wearing dresses, so even though my legs were covered in scars, he forced me to wear princess dresses every day.

The more I came to resemble Vivian, the more time Adrian spent with me.

He brought me to every event.

It was as if I were a songbird trapped inside his cage.

He often stroked my face, gazing at me with a dazed expression, as if he were looking through me at someone else.

But he never touched me.

He never kissed me or slept with me.

Even when I deliberately tried to seduce him, he would shove me away in disgust.

Adrian scrubbed fiercely at the place where I had kissed him, his expression like a man who had swallowed a fly.

He threw me to the floor, naked.

I lowered my eyes and hid my disappointment.

From that day on, there was no softness left in his gaze.

Yet while he despised me, he couldn’t let go of the face that looked so much like Vivian’s.

Finally, he decided I would bear him a child.

A child that looked like Vivian.

A child that belonged to him.

And because I loved him so much, I willingly agreed to become his surrogate.

An egg-retrieval needle longer than my forearm was inserted into my body.

I lay there expressionlessly, enduring the unbearable pain without making a sound.

Adrian stood to the side and watched.

There was a trace of reluctance in his eyes, but he never told them to stop.