Chapter 1

I once thought loving someone enough to lay down my life for them was the purest, unbreakable love there was.

Until, in the wind and snow, I heard the “late husband” I had tried to die for eight times carefully holding another woman in his arms while pretending to be someone else.

He said, “Once I stabilize the situation, she’ll understand.”

It hit me then—my wholehearted love was just an inconvenience he could put off sorting out for later.

And so, I finally learned to live for myself.

Bella Hayes POV

To die for my husband, Evan Foster, who had “died” in a car accident, I almost jumped off the cliff edge at Snowridge for the eighth time.

But only now did I realize that the kind of love I had been willing to throw my life away for was the biggest joke in the world!

My husband, Evan Foster, who should have been burned to a charred corpse in that car accident, wasn’t dead at all.

He was living under the identity of his half-brother, “Eric Foster,” carefully holding another pregnant woman in his arms.

At that moment, wrapped in an emergency blanket, I stood stiffly outside the lounge at the rescue station, listening to the suppressed sobbing and angry scolding of Evan Foster’s mother, Anna Clark, coming from inside.

“Evan! How much longer are you going to keep lying to her?! Bella Hayes climbed over the guardrail at the accident site eight whole times for you! Are you really going to watch her die for love, right in front of you?!”

Inside the room, the man I had loved deeply for three years was silent for a long time.

When he spoke again, his voice was hoarse yet cruel. “Mom, the real Eric died saving me. Grace Carter is still carrying his child. She can’t handle the shock of her fiancé’s tragic death. Right now, I can only be Eric Foster.”

“And what about Bella Hayes?! She’s your legally wedded wife!”

“Once Grace safely gives birth, and once the situation at Foster Group stabilizes, I’ll tell Bella Hayes the truth.” His tone carried a certainty so self-righteous it sounded natural. “She loves me that much. She’ll understand.”

“She’ll understand.”

Those words were like a rusty, blunt knife, grinding my heart to pieces while it was still alive.

For Evan, I had tried to die eight times. I had tormented myself until I looked neither human nor ghost, and I had nearly built up a tolerance to sedatives.

And Evan, to protect another woman’s pregnancy, had personally faked his own death.

He had watched me fall apart in agony, yet from his lofty position, he was certain that in the end, I would generously forgive him?!

The door to the lounge was suddenly pushed open.

“Eric Foster” looked up, met my dead, hollow eyes, and his face went deathly pale in an instant.

He blurted out, “Bella!”

Not Bella Hayes. Not Ms. Hayes. But “Bella,” the name he would only murmur in a low, lingering voice between the sheets, in the depths of passionate nights.

I looked at that face, my stomach churning violently. All I felt was overwhelming disgust.

The man’s Adam’s apple bobbed hard. Then he abruptly came back to himself and put on that restrained, compassionate expression. “Bella Hayes, why are you standing here? The doctor said you can’t be out in the wind.”

I didn’t expose him.

I only tucked my wind-tangled hair behind my ear, my voice as light as a weightless flake of snow.

“Eric Foster, is your brother really dead?”

A flash of extreme humiliation passed through “Eric Foster’s” eyes, but he still gritted his teeth and said, “Bella Hayes, my condolences.”

I nodded.

With that nod, I completely severed the obsession I had held for Evan Foster for three years.

I turned and walked into the wind and snow. No matter how the man behind me called out, I never looked back again.

The Evan Foster I had loved had already died in that car accident.

The one still alive was a vile man who had played me for a fool for another woman’s sake.