Chapter 1.

A dark blue document folder was thrown onto the glass table in front of Elena.

“Sign it,” Charlie ordered flatly, his voice devoid of emotion. “Sarah has returned. She’s fully recovered now, and I won’t let her keep hiding just because she’s afraid of you.”

Elena stared at the bold word Divorce printed across the top of the papers. Her chest instantly tightened with unbearable pain. For five years of marriage, Elena had survived in hell. She endured every insult, was branded as the monster who ruined her own sister’s life, and was forced to serve Charlie while he constantly looked at her with disgust.

She swallowed all that pain for one foolish hope: that someday Charlie would finally see her as Elena, not merely Sarah’s shadow. But today, that hope died completely—trampled beneath the feet of the same man she once risked her life to save from an icy lake many years ago.

Slowly, Elena lifted her head, refusing to shed another tear in front of this man.

“You never even asked me once, Charlie,” Elena said, her voice trembling coldly. “Did I really cut those brake lines? Am I truly that cruel in your eyes?”

Charlie scoffed dismissively. Leaning back against his chair, he folded his arms across his chest arrogantly.

“What else is there to ask, Elena?” His gaze radiated pure hatred. “Sarah became crippled because of your sick obsession with me,” he accused coldly. “You were jealous because I loved her, not you.”

His finger pointed directly at Elena’s face.

“Now she’s back to reclaim her happiness. I won’t let you touch or hurt her ever again. Your existence in this house was a mistake from the very beginning.”

A mistake…

Elena almost wanted to laugh hysterically. If Sarah had suffered overseas, then what should Elena call her own life? Who was the one trapped every night inside a silent room, crying until she threw up because of Charlie’s rejection?

Charlie had deliberately married her while drunk, swearing to torment her for the rest of her life as revenge for Sarah’s disability. And Elena accepted every bit of that suffering for the sake of the truth she desperately hoped would one day come to light.

How naive she had been.

“Yes, you’re right,” Elena whispered bitterly with a faint smile. “Spending five years of my life loving you was the greatest mistake I’ve ever made.”

Charlie frowned slightly. A strange flicker crossed his eyes when he heard the resignation in Elena’s voice, but his arrogance quickly buried the emotion.

“Good. At least you finally understand. Take the compensation money and disappear as far away from our lives as possible.”

Elena lowered her eyes to the enormous amount written in the document. To Charlie, those numbers were nothing more than a price tag placed on the remains of her dignity.

With trembling yet determined hands, Elena picked up the pen. The blazing love she had carried for him for more than a decade had now turned completely to ashes.

Taking a deep breath, Elena signed her name across the paper.

Done.

This cursed bond had finally been severed.

She dropped the pen, letting it roll across the glass table. Then she rose to her feet. Her gaze toward Charlie no longer contained pain—only absolute emptiness, as though the man before her was nothing more than a stranger.

Yet somehow, that change in her eyes caused Charlie’s chest to tighten unexpectedly. A sudden sense of loss swept through him, but his pride forced him to ignore it.

“I’m leaving,” Elena said calmly. “And I swear on the rest of my life, Charlie—one day, you’ll fall to your knees and beg God to turn back time to this very day. The day you threw away the only person who ever sincerely gave her life for you.”

Without waiting for a response, Elena turned around and walked firmly out of the room.

As she stepped through the gate beneath the light drizzle, Elena placed one hand over her still-flat stomach. Hidden beneath her dress was a tiny secret she had only discovered that very morning through two red lines on a pregnancy test.

A cold smile slowly spread across Elena’s rain-soaked face.

“Charlie, you will never know about this child.”

Starting today, the weak Elena was dead.

And when she returned someday, she would no longer stand beneath anyone’s shadow.