THE VAMPIRE SOUL

Even though it had been two years since Dominic Hatch and I got our marriage certificate and the system had sent over 700 reminders, I never once suspected anything. In fact, I'd just assumed the system was malfunctioning.

It never occurred to me that my marriage was a joke.

Dominic cruelly pulled out a lighter and set our marriage certificate on fire without a moment's hesitation.

My heart seized, and I instinctively tried to put out the fire with my bare hands.

A searing pain shot through me, and I pulled my hands back on reflex. But then, a black leather shoe stomped down hard, pressing my hands into the flames.

An agonizing scream tore from my throat.

Dominic's ruthless voice rang out above me.

"What, you can't stand to lose a fake certificate? You really want to be my wife that badly?"

I was trembling so hard from the pain that I bit clean through the inside of my mouth.

"I didn't fake anything! You took me to the city hall on your birthday to get this certificate!"

Dominic's eyes turned even colder. He gently flipped through a photo album.

"You say we got the certificate on my birthday two years ago, but that night I was clearly with her."

I stared blankly at the photo of two people entangled in the throes of passion.

My mind exploded.

That was the day I felt both the happiest and the most hopeless I'd ever been.

After we got the marriage certificate, Dominic said he still had work to take care of.

I waited for him eagerly in our marital home. Midnight rolled around—I'd called him so many times by then, but he never answered.

I got worried, so I took a cab to his company, intending to seek him out.

But I ended up in an unlicensed cab. The driver took me to a remote area, and I was forced to jump out of the moving car.

I pushed through the pain and ran as if my life depended on it. It wasn't until I encountered a patrol officer that I realized blood was streaming down my thighs.

Our first child was gone.

Later, Dominic knelt beside my hospital bed and apologized countless times.

I never blamed him. But I later found out that while I was fighting for my life and losing our baby, he was sleeping with someone else.

Dominic scoffed and asked, "What lie are you going to come up with now?"

His eyes roamed over my face before finally settling on the scar on my forehead.

"Even though I lost my memory, I knew from the very first moment I woke up and saw you that you'd never be the kind of woman I'd like."

The disdain in his eyes spelled it out loud and clear—I wasn't worthy of him.

I had seen that look too many times. His friends and passersby alike all thought I wasn't good enough for him. Standing next to me, he looked like a pearl cast before a swine—a terrible waste indeed.

But back then, he would always comfort me by saying it was me that he loved, not my looks. Alas, it turned out all that sweet talk was just a lie. Deep down, he never really thought I was worthy of him.

And now my plain face, further marred by scars, only deepened his disgust. Little did he know that I'd gotten the scar on my forehead from kneeling in a church for days and falling down due to exhaustion. I had prayed for him to wake up after the car crash that left him in a coma.

Dominic lifted his foot.

My palms were scorched to a bloody pulp. Blood dripped steadily, splattering onto the floor. Yet, it was the pain in my heart that stole my breath away completely.

I could bear it no longer and rushed forward like a madwoman, snatching the photo album.

I harbored the humble, pathetic hope that as long as I was the only one in Dominic's life after we got married, I could forgive whatever had happened before.

But photo after photo revealed the cruel truth—Dominic had never broken contact with that woman.

"You lunatic! What do you think you're doing?"

Dominic kicked me away and snatched back his beloved album. When he saw it was stained with the blood from my palms, a surge of fury instantly rose in his eyes.

The next second, a brutal slap cracked across my face. It left my ears ringing and my mind completely blank.

Dominic clenched his fists, his voice dark and sinister.

"Stop this madness. You are not my wife!"

Clutching my cheek, I smiled bitterly. It turned out that in this whole sham of a love story, I was nothing but a lunatic.

Just then, my childhood friend, Lawrence Miller, appeared at the front door.

In that instant, my eyes swelled with tears, my nose stung, and all the hurt I'd been holding in came flooding out of my chest.

But immediately afterward, I saw the woman behind him, and the tears in my eyes froze instantly.

She was the woman from Dominic's photo album.