Chapter 1
🚗 For the sake of a substitute, my brother and my lover humiliated me in every possible way.
They saw me as disgusting trash and handed everything that belonged to me to Noah Vale with both hands.
Noah Vale trampled on my dignity and smiled coldly. “Julian Hale, you’re so pathetic. No one loves you…”
But after he learned of my death, Noah Vale went insane.
“Julian Hale, why don’t you just die?”
It was hard to imagine that such vicious words came from my childhood sweetheart and lover.
He grabbed my collar and shook my thin, paper-like body.
“It was only a little blood for Noah, and you ran away in a tantrum. Do you know you almost got Noah killed?”
My body was numb and stiff, and for a moment my head spun while my stomach churned violently.
A little blood…
He seemed unable to see the rows of bruised needle marks covering my arms.
He also could not see my skin-and-bones body, nor my despair and helplessness.
His gaze and my brother’s had long been completely drawn to Noah Vale.
When Noah Vale appeared, I was overseas for treatment.
After I came back, he had already made both my brother and my lover obsessed with him.
His health was poor too, so I seemed to naturally become his blood bank.
“I won’t donate blood to him anymore,” I said in a hoarse voice.
I was dying.
My illness had never been cured, and everything I had experienced after returning home had already drained me dry.
Adrian Sterling looked at me coldly. “That isn’t up to you. Filthy trash like you only has this one use left. Otherwise, why would we keep you around?”
He let go in disgust, and my body went weak as I fell to the hospital floor.
For a split second, I even felt dazed, wondering if I had developed some kind of persecution delusion.
I could not believe that the Adrian Sterling who had touched my head at the airport three years ago and told me not to be afraid would become like this.
He had clearly said he would love me forever and wait for me forever.
He had clearly said no one would ever take my place.
I pulled at my stiff facial muscles and smiled.
“There’s no need to keep me around anymore,” I said, looking up at him. “As you wished, I’m dying soon.”
When I said those words, I felt a long-lost sense of relief.
It was the relief of breaking free from every shackle, and even the unwillingness and anger tangled like weeds in my chest disappeared.
Dying could count as liberation too.