Prologue

Prologue.

The soft rustle of silk sheets and the warm weight of a blanket were the first things Gwyneth noticed. Then came the blinding sunlight filtering through sheer curtains, gilding everything in the bedroom with an ethereal glow.

Everything was too real. And yet, completely wrong.

This wasn’t her room. The ceilings were too high, the bed too big, and this room screamed ‘billionaire wife’—which was insane, because the only thing I’d ever married was my job. Something a corporate slave couldn’t clearly afford!

Gwyneth bolted upright. Her heart thundered like a war drum. Her eyes snagged on a crystal photo frame. A man, handsome and aloof, and a woman—while holding a boy. 

Her breath hitched.  “Oh, no.”

With urgency that bordered on desperation, Gwyneth threw off the covers and dashed to the nearest mirror. The reflection that greeted her was both shockingly familiar and unsettlingly altered—yes, the face belonged to her, but it appeared so meticulously refined. Sharper cheekbones, flawless skin, and an elegant nightgown that felt like a costume rather than clothing. The beauty before her was too polished, too striking to have ever been hers.

‘Who is this?!’

Her fingers trembled as they grazed the edge of the vanity. This was definitely not her poky apartment in Quezon City. No coffee-stained work desk. No threadbare office uniform hung on the chair. No half-dead succulents basking on the window sill.

Everything felt sickeningly clean, extravagantly expensive, and meticulously curated—a world that almost blinded her with its sheen.

A sudden knock on the door startled her.

“Madam?” a voice called through the door. “Young Master Dylan is awake and asking for you.”

Gwyneth froze.

Dylan?

Why did that name make her stomach drop?

It was achingly familiar, and as the memories began to swirl in her mind, scenes from a life she never lived flashed before her eyes, almost disorienting her.

The door creaked open slowly, and in rushed a small figure—a boy no older than three, with tousled dark hair and wide, teary eyes that stopped Gwyneth dead in her tracks.

He launched himself at her with the reckless abandon of a child desperate for comfort.

“Mommy!” he cried, his voice filled with both longing and pain.

‘I’m a mother!?’

Gwyneth stumbled back a step, completely unmoored by the reality before her. She gazed down at the little boy clinging to her with all his might, her mouth agape but no words emerging. Her heart raced frantically as the horrifying truth settled in.

This boy—this adorable, trembling little boy—was Dylan.

The same Dylan who would grow up to become the villain of the novel.

A villain whose spiraling descent into darkness would be triggered by a singular, devastating betrayal: the cold, unfeeling rejection from his mother.

Her hands trembled in indecision, hovering awkwardly in the air as she grappled with conflicting emotions. Should she reach out to him? Comfort him? She was all too aware of the story—knew the path that lay ahead. In the original narrative, the mother pushed Dylan away, ignoring his desperate cries and ultimately abandoning him emotionally in favor of a new life with her charming second husband.

But Gwyneth wasn’t that woman.

Not anymore.

‘I just died, I cannot die again.’