Chapter 1

After the livestream ended, there was one million dollars in my account.

Guglielmo Raimondi had transferred it.

I stared at the string of numbers in a daze for a long time.

I used the money to pay for my dialysis. When the needle pierced my arm, I gritted my teeth and didn't make a sound.

Suddenly, I heard a familiar voice outside the hospital room. Through the crack in the door, I saw Guglielmo.

It had been eight years since we'd last seen each other. He looked way prouder and more confident. His black suit was impeccably tailored. Four armed bodyguards followed closely behind him.

But the man standing there was no longer the Guglielmo who had once told me he couldn't live without me.

His succession ceremony had just ended. So, he hadn't even had time to change his clothes before rushing straight to this hospital.

And it was all because his fiancee, Giulia Ponselle, had sneezed once. Right away, he brought her to the hospital for a checkup.

I watched as he lovingly wrapped his arms around her.

The next moment, I turned my head. Pretending I hadn't seen them, I reached out to close the door.

But in the next second, the door suddenly opened. I jumped and looked up, only to meet Guglielmo's eyes.

His gaze was icy as it swept over the needle marks and bruises left on my arm after undergoing dialysis.

Guglielmo sneered, "I didn't expect to run into you here. Now that you've seen me, you can't even be bothered to say hello?"

As I looked at him, a bitter feeling surged in my heart.

After thinking it over, I said, "It's been a long time. Could you lend me another 300,000 dollars?"

Guglielmo froze for a moment, and his expression grew even darker. He grabbed my wrist, and his fingers pressed against the wounds left by the needles.

His movement was rough. It hurt so much that I gasped.

Fuming, Guglielmo asked, "We haven't seen each other in years, and all you want is to borrow money from me?"

I looked at him and deliberately kept my tone light. "You're the Don of the Raimondi famiglia now. You should have more than enough money to spare. Don't worry. If you lend it to me, I'll find a way to pay you back."

Guglielmo was silent for a moment. Then, he took out his phone and was about to make a call.

Giulia suddenly wrapped herself around his arm and said in a meek voice, "Guglielmo, is this the ex-girlfriend who abandoned you? 300,000 dollars is nothing. One of my handbags costs more than that. I should thank you for leaving Guglielmo back then. Otherwise, I wouldn't have such a wonderful fiance now."

After hearing that, I could only smile bitterly.

Guglielmo and I had met when we were at the bottommost ranks of our respective families. He was an illegitimate son from a branch of the Raimondi famiglia, while I was an orphan from a fallen branch of the Vittorini famiglia.

We were two people with no place in our families. During that time, we became each other's salvation.

After we came of age, our families stopped giving us any financial support.

We could only use the money we'd saved from working odd jobs to rent a small apartment. We planned to save enough money to cut ties with our families and leave for somewhere no one knew us.

But one day, enemies of the Raimondi famiglia poisoned Guglielmo's drink. The poison damaged his kidneys. The doctor said that without a kidney transplant, he wouldn't survive the month.

I knelt in the clinic of a black-market doctor and begged everyone I knew for help.

In the end, one doctor took pity on me.

He sighed and said, "You and he are a match. But if you agree to the transplant, you'll have to live with getting dialysis treatments for the rest of your life."