Chapter 1

"Nick! Nick! Snap out of it—just say yes already!"

My friends were egging me on, all of them saying I'd waited seven years for this moment and to just say yes.

I looked at the scene unfolding in front of me—so painfully familiar—and shuddered. It all came rushing back. I'd really been given a second chance.

In my past life, my biological parents had come to the orphanage and run DNA tests on several of the men growing up there. But right as the results came out, I got into that accident. When I woke up, the head trauma had wiped my memory, and I'd nodded along like an idiot when Estelle proposed.

Not long after, she rushed me back to her hometown.

Looking back now, I realized she was terrified I'd regain my memory and ruin the scheme she'd so carefully orchestrated for Derek. What a devoted woman.

I bit down hard on my tongue, my stomach churning with disgust.

When I didn't answer, Estelle jumped in. "Nick, I know you're over the moon. You don't have to say it—I understand."

She grabbed the ring and shoved it onto my finger before I could react.

The ring was clearly too small—cheap, outdated. She must've grabbed it from some street vendor in a hurry. She didn't care that my face was twisted in pain, just kept forcing it on.

"Enough!"

I pulled my hand back coldly. The ring clattered to the floor with a sharp clink.

As everyone stared in shock, I looked Estelle in the eye and said, word for word, "I don't know you. Please leave."

Estelle's face stiffened. Her eyes went red as she grabbed me again. "Nick, I know you don't remember, but we've been together for seven years. I'm your only family. I'm the one you love most. You can trust me."

She put on this lovesick act, and to everyone watching, she looked like the perfect, devoted partner. That just made me look like the ungrateful one.

In their eyes, I was an orphan from a group home—poor, uneducated. Estelle might not have been rich, but she was pretty and responsible. By any measure, I was the one getting lucky.

But in this second chance, I remembered everything. Every humiliating detail of those seven years.

For seven years, I did all her laundry—right down to her socks and underwear. She never let me eat out. The few times I did, it was leftovers from meals she'd had with her friends. The apartment we shared was cheap and cramped. To save money, I even bathed in water she'd already used.

Now I had to wonder—was it really about saving a few bucks?

No. It was that Estelle looked down on me from the bottom of her heart. She thought I didn't deserve better. So she stripped away my basic human dignity.

She said I had no parents. She said I was ordinary and broke. She said I should be grateful because a woman like her, with her looks and prospects, was a gift to someone like me.

And that was why, after the accident, she swapped out my DNA test.