Chapter 1

To outsiders, I had always been difficult to get along with. I was frigid, arrogant, mean, and unreasonable.

They said I was like a thorny rose—beautiful but no one dared to approach me.

They were not wrong because I had never allowed anyone to get close to me for a long time.

The year my mother passed away, I was three years old. My father took his lover, Gloria Stone, and her daughter, Winona Sweeney, back home.

At first, I tried to please them. I learned to control my temper, to give in, and to bow to them.

However, I soon realized that the more I did this, the more my so-called obedient sister and perfect step-mother would slander and blame me.

My father, who had been protective of me, gradually grew to dislike me.

Thus, I stopped pleasing them. Since they disliked me, I would make them even more uncomfortable. I started becoming sharp and mean. They said I was uncultured, so I overturned the table at family gatherings.

They said I did not understand the rules of the upper class, so I was carefree and caused trouble everywhere.

If I were destined not to receive love, at least I wanted to protect myself. This went on until I met Cameron Payne.

Cameron was the Don of the Payne family. He controlled an underground trading network spanning several countries, with ruthless tactics and never showing mercy. No one dared to provoke him or get close to him.

When Winona led people to bully me, the same man declared his love for me to everyone at a banquet. "Anyone who bullies Hazel Sweeney again, I'll break their neck!"

Everyone was stunned.

I only felt irony; it was just another farce of someone betting with others to win me over. When he gave me priceless jewelry, I did not even bother opening the box; I simply donated it, saying I had plenty of such things.

The next day, he sent even rarer, more expensive pieces.

He took me to a Mafia family dinner, yet I showed up in a bikini. When someone mocked me for being unruly and dressed like a prostitute, he immediately canceled his partnerships with those companies and acquired them!

When he proposed, and I rejected him, everyone bet that Cameron would break my neck the next second. After all, no one dared refuse someone like him, let alone tolerate a woman ignoring him so much.

However, Cameron did not do so. He continued to spoil me and pursue me without any limits.

When I almost died of pneumonia at home, I pressed the emergency call button he had given me. No matter where I was, he would find me once I pressed it. He abandoned a multi-million dollar business deal to come back and take me to the hospital. The moment I opened my eyes, I fell in love with this man.

After we got married, he spoiled me rotten.

I never imagined that the love I was so proud of would turn out to be a farcical mix-up of mistaken identities.

On my birthday, Gloria and Winona ganged up on me, leaving me alone in a corner of the garden. Then a fire broke out, and thick smoke billowed. Everyone ran outside, but no one called me.

I was trapped in the fire, almost thinking I was going to die. Cameron rushed in and saved me.

When I woke up in the hospital, I was filled with gratitude for surviving the fire and him.

Just as I was about to find him, I overheard his conversation with someone else as I turned the corner of the stairs.

I turned around, got someone to print out the divorce papers, and went to Winona's hospital ward.