Chapter 1

“Get down on your knees.”

Before I could react, a man in a suit and sunglasses twisted my arm behind my back and forced me to the ground.

What was going on? Had I accidentally gotten involved with criminals?

I couldn’t think of any reason the mob would come after me. I was just an ordinary office worker who had been unlucky enough to get hit while traveling for work.

I was literally hit by a car.

I thought I would be smashed into pieces, but when I opened my eyes, I found myself completely unharmed. Instead, I was surrounded by a group of men in black in a narrow alley, with no way to escape.

Every worst-case scenario flashed through my mind. In the end, I begged them to leave my body intact. To my surprise, they only tied me up and drove me to this place.

I narrowed my eyes and secretly studied the man before me. The moment our eyes met, a flood of memories that didn’t belong to me filled my mind. I gradually understood my situation.

I had somehow entered a melodramatic angst novel.

The man before me was Julian Hart, a famously distant man from one of the city’s most powerful families.

He had withdrawn from society for over a decade, only coming back for the woman who held his heart.

Their feelings were mutual, and they were only one step away from making their relationship official.

But on the day he confessed, she received an offer from an overseas university and rejected him in front of all their relatives, friends, and business partners.

His love turned to hatred.

He wanted to imprison her, but he couldn’t bring himself to truly hurt her.

While he had nowhere to vent his resentment, he discovered the female lead, who looked almost identical to his first love.

Julian hid the female lead in the basement and cut her off from the outside world.

He hurled cruel insults at her, yet his gaze softened whenever he looked at her.

He treated her brutally, then secretly applied medicine to her wounds late at night.

But the female lead knew nothing about his hidden acts of tenderness.

Unable to endure Julian’s humiliation and abuse, she only wanted to escape the prison locked by his hatred.

She kept trying to escape, but Julian always found her.

After reviewing the plot, I summed it up in one sentence: the male lead completely unhinged, while the female lead was a master of escape.

The story had reached the part where the female lead was captured yet again.

Next, Julian would subject her to another round of cruel humiliation.

Correction. This time, I was the one about to be humiliated.

A polished shoe moved in front of me, its toe lifting my chin. “Do you know what you did wrong?”

“No. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Perhaps I had only just entered this body, and the female lead’s stubborn, pure-hearted personality still lingered in my bones.

The words slipped out before I could think, and I frantically slapped my own mouth.

“Stupid mouth. Watch what you say.”

Julian’s face darkened to an extreme degree. He grabbed me by the hair, making me grimace in pain.

When he saw my expression, his mood grew even darker. “She would never make that face.”

That was because no one had ever yanked her around by the hair like this!

“My shoes got dirty while I was looking for you. Tell me, what are you going to do about it?”

Though he seemed to be asking for my opinion, his shoe came straight toward my mouth.

“Wait!”

My voice was so loud that even the bodyguard pinning me down flinched.