Chapter 1

"Suzie's family is on the verge of falling apart, and they're forcing her to marry some old man in his fifties! I can't just stand by and watch her being sacrificed like that! Just marry my brother instead!" Shawn said as he sat across from me, his brows furrowed tight.

As for me, his fiancée, I had found two red lines on a pregnancy test strip half an hour ago.

"So?" I tightened my grip around the small plastic strip in my pocket with my cold hands. "What does that have to do with you asking me to marry your brother?"

"Hugh has been lying there for three months, and the doctor said he needs a wedding if the family wants him to produce an heir."

Shawn said it in such a casual way… I could even hear it in his tone, as though he thought he was doing me a favor. "Marry him first and help him get through this. Once Suzie's situation settles down, I'll figure out how to handle both families. We can still be together... No one knows about us other than our parents, anyway."

I was shaking with rage and got up to my feet, ready to throw the pregnancy test into his face, which was nothing but full of pretense!

My family was not rich or powerful, but we were still respectable. If the family company had not run into trouble recently, my parents would never have agreed to let me marry an illegitimate son like him.

"Shawn, we've been together for three years, yet now you want me to marry a man in a coma? Do you even have a conscience?! I'm..."

'Mom, say yes! Hurry and say yes.' A child's voice burst into my mind without warning, cutting me off as I was stunned in shock.

'You mistook him for someone else that night and went into the wrong room in the dark! My real dad is Hugh Fletcher, Shawn's older brother! He's been looking for you ever since that night because he wants to make things right.'

I was completely stunned as I instinctively covered my stomach, which was still flat.

Was I… Hallucinating?

'That coma is just an act. My dad is the richest man in the country! He's clearing out the traitors inside the company, and he isn't even in the hospital. This fortune is literally being given to us for free! We have to take it!'

The richest man in the country?

Hugh Fletcher?

Wasn't his brother named Hugh Gibson?

'My dad took his mother's last name. His birth mom died when he was five, and he was sent to live with his uncle's family. He only came back after he became an adult. That whole rotten family has been eyeing my dad's fortune ever since.'

When Shawn saw that my face had gone pale and I was standing there without saying a word, he thought I was furious. His tone softened, and he reached for my hand. "Nina, I know this is unfair to you..."

I stepped back immediately, avoiding his touch, and I forced down the anger in my heart.

I did not fully believe those words. So, I took a deep breath and said, "What if... I said I don't want to?"

Impatience appeared on Shawn's face, but he quickly replaced it with helplessness. "Nina, Suzie took a stab for me back then and almost died. I must repay that debt. If you truly love me, don't make things difficult for me right now, okay?"

I looked at that righteous act of his and nearly laughed in anger. If that voice was telling the truth, then the child in my stomach truly was not his anyway.

I would treat all the feelings we had cultivated over these few years as nothing more than a dream.

But there was still a hint of reasoning remaining in my mind. What if that voice was just a hallucination? What if it was only a delusion brought on by anger?

I could not be that irresponsible with my own life, and I could not hurt someone who had nothing to do with this.