After my surgery, I lost my memory. My fiancé took me abroad to settle down. For seven years, he didn’t let me contact the outside world. But that day, I accidentally found a financial magazine in his study. “Sebastian Silva…” The name sounded so familiar. Looking at the man on the cover with his cold,…
My entire life, I have served as someone else’s substitute on three separate occasions. The first time: Sebastian’s confession was rejected, so I forged a reply to him pretending to be the person in his heart. The second time: Sebastian was temporarily blinded in a car accident, so I posed as his girlfriend to nurse…
This was the third time Vivienne had barged into our room without knocking, interrupting the conversation between Julian and me. She walked straight up to Julian’s side, picked up a knee cushion, and strapped it onto his knee. Her mouth was filled with gentle, solicitous instructions: “Mr. Julian, it’s raining outside today, your leg will…
As I approached the private dining room, before the door was even pushed open, someone inside was speaking in German: “So President Julian and Ms. Vivienne are childhood sweethearts, no wonder they look so in sync.” “More than just in sync, don’t you think they look like a perfect match?” Harmonious laughter drifted out faintly….
My fiancé’s childhood friends encouraged him to give me a reality check before our marriage. So at the engagement party, he suddenly declared in front of everyone: “If I have to get married anyway, marrying anyone is the same.” Because of that, I became the laughingstock of everyone’s conversations. But I wasn’t angry at all….
Our kitchen in Elmsworth, a worn corner of southeast London that still kept its old brick fireplace from Julian’s grandparents’ time, always smelled of bergamot tea on Friday evenings. That night was no exception. I was washing dishes, Lily, our five-year-old daughter, sat scribbling on the wooden table, and Julian stood leaning against the doorway,…
The moment I nodded to agree to the divorce, Julian was soothing his lover over the phone. Word has it that he looked up and said: “It’s my fault to you. In the future, if you ever need anything, just say the word and I will help if I can.” Everyone envied me deeply. Evelyn…
In the second month of Julian’s disappearance, I spotted him on a London street, completely by chance. He was hanging out with his usual crowd, still wearing that same arrogant, reckless swagger. “Julian, you ‘disappearing’ like this makes it hard for the rest of us to even see you once.” “Couldn’t be helped,” Julian laughed…
The last thing I remember of my previous life is the flash of reporters’ cameras outside the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand. And my own voice ringing out on the stone steps: “Halloway Pharma knew their drug was killing people three years ago. Today, justice has spoken.” I was Victoria Vance, thirty-two, a…
When she said the words—“Sorry, I’m in a wheelchair”—the air in the room usually shifted. People shifted their weight. They tilted their heads, adopting that sickening, soft-focus look of performative pity. Victoria hated that look. She expected it, but she hated it. Arturo, however, didn’t do any of that. He didn’t blink. He didn’t apologize…
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