Chapter 1

There had been a horrific car accident.

Iris McGuire's boyfriend had supposedly lost his memories.

The good news was that the amnesia was a hoax. The bad news was that he had orchestrated it himself.

"Iris... McGuire, right?" Alfred Sinclair said gently. "I hate to say this, but I've forgotten everything. Everything between us."

Alfred sat upright on the hospital bed, his features as striking as ever. Nothing, however, could conceal the impatience flickering in his eyes.

He continued, "I really don't want to think this way, but if my memories of us can disappear so easily, then maybe they never meant much to me in the first place."

He spoke as though he feared Iris might cling to some foolish miracle and remain at his side, waiting for his memories to "come back."

The wind howled outside the window, slipping into the ward and brushing the hair away from Iris's pale face. It grazed her cheek and pierced straight through her heart.

"I understand." Iris' voice remained calm because she knew he was lying.

Fifteen minutes earlier...

A doctor informed a weakened Iris that Alfred had lost his memories after the crash.

The news left her reeling. Ignoring the agony from her own injuries, she rushed toward his ward, every step sending sharp pain through her body.

What she found stopped her cold.

The man who was supposed to be gravely injured reclined lazily by the window with a cigarette between his fingers and a phone pressed to his ear.

"Still thinking of meeting someone on Tinder?" Alfred scoffed. "I told you I'd make my relationship with her public just to make you mad and pay attention to me."

His tone held no cruelty. It sounded relaxed, almost indulgent. It sounded like a man very much in love.

"All right, all right," a woman's sweet, coy voice chimed from the other end. "I'm sowwy, okay? I've been a naughty, naughty gal..."

Alfred swallowed hard and murmured, "Is that all you've got for an apology?"

"No." Her voice dropped, rich with promise. "You'll have to find out tonight."

Iris did not hear the rest of the call, but she did not need to. Alfred's expression told her everything.

Then the woman suddenly raised her voice. "So what are we going to do about her? I don't want people calling me the other woman. I don't want my reputation ruined."

Alfred flicked ash from his cigarette, entirely unconcerned. "I've already handled it, babe. I asked the doctor to fake an amnesia diagnosis. As long as I insist it's real, no one will believe anything she says."

The woman hesitated. "But what if she won't let go? I wouldn't give up so easily if I were her."

"I'll crush that hope," Alfred replied, a laugh slipping out as though he were playing a game and everyone else were pieces on the board.

Iris clenched her fists until her nails cut into her palms. She felt none of it.

Alfred had been her childhood friend. His family disapproved of her, which had forced them to hide their relationship for four long years.

Last night, he had finally agreed to make their relationship public. On the way to his family's home, however, they were caught in a violent car accident. Both of them lost consciousness from their injuries.

Iris had dreamed for years of walking openly at his side, no longer hidden in the shadows. Now she understood the truth. He had agreed only because he had quarreled with the woman he truly loved and wanted revenge. He had always loved someone else.

Everything fell into place at last: the way he kept glancing at his phone while driving, his excuse about waiting for work updates. In truth, he had been waiting for another woman's reply.

Footsteps echoed down the corridor.

Iris turned, feigning a late arrival, and entered Alfred's ward alongside the doctor.

Alfred ignored her, as though she were a stranger. At last, he looked at her with detached coolness and asked her to leave.

...

"I hope you understand why I won't feel comfortable with you staying here," Alfred added.

Iris nearly laughed. The second son of the Sinclair family was pouring every ounce of his acting talent into ending their relationship in the most dramatic and self-serving way possible.

She tried to speak, to shout, to expose him. Anger and pain overwhelmed every word before it could form. She stood there, humiliated and silent.

God, she felt humiliated.

She had loved him with everything she had. Anyone who knew about them could see it. She cared for him with tireless devotion, like a servant and a mother all at once, even though he never once dared to acknowledge her to his parents.

Whenever he grew upset, she bent herself into knots to soothe him, even at the cost of her own rest. Alfred had been her entire world. And in return, he chose the cruelest and most absurd way to discard her.

Numbness and clarity settled over her at the same time. In the end, she could only nod. "I understand. I'll leave."

'Just as you want,' she thought.

Love that was never equal could never last, and she was exhausted from caring far more than he ever did.

Iris left the ward with her head lowered.

Alfred watched her go, one brow lifting in surprise. He had not expected her to accept it so easily. He called for his assistant.

"Have someone keep an eye on her," he said. "That was too easy. She'll probably run back crying and begging me to recover my memories in front of the whole hospital. I don't want that."

His brow furrowed as the image played out in his mind.

The assistant nodded and left.

...

Iris had no memory of returning to her room. She sat on the bed in a daze, like a child left behind. Tears welled in her eyes, yet they refused to fall.

No one could let go of a four-year relationship that had meant everything to them so easily.

She lay back on the bed, exhausted, and her fingers brushed against the edge of her phone. She felt the cracks along the screen.

She froze. Her phone had stayed inside her bag the entire time. It should have been shielded from any impact.

A thought took shape. With trembling hands, she picked up the phone and examined it.

The crack looked as if a car tire had rolled over it. The phone would not turn on at all. That meant every record and every trace of the relationship was now unreachable.

Only one man could have ordered this. He feared that Iris might cling to him after the breakup, enough to have her phone crushed under a tire.

She let out a short, scornful laugh. Her gaze dropped to the phone case. It showed a doodled version of herself and Alfred.

The happiness she had felt in that relationship had been real. That was why the disappointment and resolve she felt now were real as well. She would not cling to anything he refused to hold onto.

She dropped the phone into the trash can.

Iris informed the nurse of her decision to be discharged.

Before she left, the young woman gestured toward the items in the ward. "These are yours, right? Are you not taking them with you?"

They were gifts Iris had spent a significant amount of money on for the Sinclair family. The visit might never happen now, but that did not mean the items had to go to waste.

She selected a few that could be sold for a modest sum and gave the rest to the nurses. "Here. Please enjoy this food as a token of my thanks for taking care of me."

...

Alfred took a nap after Iris left. When he woke, a bowl of steaming oatmeal sat on his bedside table.

He snorted. He had known it. Iris was such a simp that there was no way she would not try something to crawl back to him. She always relied on these small appeasement gestures to worm her way back into his favor.

He was beyond tired of it.

He sat up. "The oatmeal. I want it—"

"Now, Mr. Sinclair?" his assistant cut in. "You want it now? I'll get a spoon for you. I had someone make it for you."

Alfred frowned. "You got this for me?"

"Um, yes." A realization crossed the assistant's face. "Oh, Miss McGuire already left the hospital, according to the doctor. She must have accepted the breakup."

Alfred let out a snicker. "Accepted it? Who, that simp? Please. If she weren't such a clingy bitch, I wouldn't have had to go this far just to dump her. She must have seen what I did to her phone and thrown a tantrum over it."

"Do we still need to keep an eye on her?" the assistant asked.

"No. She'll find some excuse to come running back. You'll see. I want to be discharged. Handle it."

"Understood."

...

Iris did not go straight home. Instead, she went to Alfred's villa.

There were still things inside that she needed to take. She wanted the breakup to be complete.

She pressed the doorbell and waited. She had no keys.

She had never been given one, even when she was his girlfriend. She had come here hundreds of times and cooked countless meals for him.

He would pull her close and whisper, "Once we get married, Ris, I know I'll be the happiest man on Earth."

Yet he had never given her a key. When Alfred later replaced the locks with a thumbprint recognition system, her fingerprint was not registered. He had registered his housekeeper and maids instead.

The door opened.

Ruth, the housekeeper, looked at her in surprise. "Didn't the door recognize your thumbprint, Miss Quinn?"

'Miss Quinn?'