Chapter 1 The Man Who Never Existed

"Lydia Salisbury, you've killed another person who truly loved you. You really are a curse!"

With that cutting remark, my eldest brother, Ian Salisbury, promptly hung up.

I stared at the blank phone screen, my mind still echoing with everything Tia Salisbury, the fake heiress, had said.

Tears fell one after another, each one landing with a dull ache that made it hard to breathe.

As it turned out, Ian was in on it, and he even drove a knife into my heart while I was already grieving.

Yet, the wedding ring on my finger—the one Caspian had personally designed for me—still left me with a sliver of hope.

I took the documents I had prepared and went to register my daughter's birth.

The clerk tapped at the keyboard several times before looking up at me with an odd expression. "Ma'am, is Caspian Wyndham really your husband? There's no record of anyone by that name in the system."

At that, he checked my marriage certificate again. "there's no valid marriage record for you two."

I had already been mentally prepared for the answer, but hearing him confirm it still sent a sharp pain through my chest.

Unwilling to accept it, I took out my phone and tried searching for him through the university's alumni directory. My hands trembled as I tried to log in repeatedly, but every attempt returned the same result. I couldn't log in.

I wanted to contact his friends and relatives, but I remembered what Caspian had told me when we had first gotten together. "I'm an orphan from a small county town. I got into college on my own, and I don't have any family."

He looked uncomfortable when he said it.

Back then, I had assumed he was simply ashamed of his background. Only now did I realize he had been lying to me from the very beginning, all for Tia.

A wave of dizziness swept over me, nearly making me lose my balance.

Who'd have thought I'd spend six years loving a man who never existed?

Suddenly, a large hand clamped tightly around my arm.

"Lydia, what's wrong with you? Caspian is dead. Why aren't you going to identify his remains? How can you still be standing here, staring into space?"

I turned and found myself face-to-face with my other brother, Jon Salisbury. He seemed furious.

After our parents learned that I was their biological daughter who had been switched at birth, they immediately sent Tia away. But on their way to bring me home, they got into a car accident, and both died despite efforts to save them.

Like Ian, Jon had always hated me. He had been doing his part in this elaborate deception, too.

I saw the disgust in his eyes, and my voice broke into a sob. "I just gave birth, Jon. Ian said there was nothing left of Caspian to identify. If I went there, would I even be able to recognize him?"

They had been desperate to force me to accept reality, then leave me drowning in guilt over Caspian's death. That way, there would be no obstacles left for Caspian and Tia to begin their new life together.

But not one of them had considered that I was a woman who had just given birth, a postpartum mother who shouldn't have been subjected to such a massive shock.

Jon stared at me blankly for a moment before his brows drew together in irritation. "If you don't want to go, then don't. No one's forcing you.

"Caspian treated you like a princess, and it was all for nothing. If he hadn't been in such a hurry to see you, he wouldn't have gotten into that accident!" he scolded icily before storming away.

I watched his resolute back disappear and managed a bitter smile.

Tia's livestream had already ended.

I opened her profile. It was filled with videos of her everyday life, and every single one contained a mysterious man's back.

The camera only caught him for a fleeting moment each time, but I recognized Caspian nonetheless.

I deliberately tortured myself by scrolling further back.

When I saw the marriage certificate in the very first video, I teared up at once.

Who'd have thought that the man I had loved all this while turned out to be someone else's husband all along?

I took a screenshot of one of the photos showing Tia's villa and contacted a private investigator, who, in less than a day, managed to track down the address.

She even found out the name of the man who lived there—Caspian Laughton.

He was the eldest heir of the Laughton family of Newport, nothing like the helpless, impoverished orphan he had claimed to be.