Chapter 1

The agony still felt like it was lodged in my body.

On our wedding night, my husband threw me into the sea for the sake of his one true love.

The sharks tore me apart.

Not even bones were left behind.

That was how my last life ended.

"Hiss—"

A sharp sting shot across my cheek, and my eyes flew open.

I was lying in bed, drenched in cold sweat.

A man sat on the edge of the mattress. He was pressing a handkerchief wrapped around ice against the right side of my face.

Just a few hours earlier, in the wedding hall where our two families had gathered, my "wonderful husband," Arthur Sterling, had left that mark there himself.

Ours was a marriage alliance between two mafia families.

Right as we were about to exchange rings, Arthur's phone rang.

It was his junior from school—Chloe, the woman he treasured like some untouchable first love. She was crying on the phone, saying she had scraped her knee.

As the eldest daughter of the Vincent family, I had tried to preserve both families' dignity. I asked him to at least finish the ceremony and stay through our wedding night before leaving.

What I got in return was a hard slap across the face.

Arthur's eyes were full of contempt and disgust.

"Audrey, how can you be this vicious to a girl who's pure and kind? Once this ceremony is over, the law and both families will see us as husband and wife anyway. Why are you so obsessed with who spends tonight with you? What, is the Vincent family's precious heiress such a slut that she can't get through one night without a man in her bed?"

I became a laughingstock.

But for the sake of the alliance between the Vincent and Sterling families, I didn't make a scene then and there.

In my last life, on this very night, I realized the man who came to my bed wasn't Arthur at all.

It was Asher—his twin brother, the one the family had deliberately hidden away and cast out.

We sat there in stiff, miserable silence until morning.

The next day, burning with fury, I demanded an explanation from both families.

Arthur, who had been dragged back by force, kicked the door open like a madman. He grabbed the ashtray off the table and smashed it into my head.

He blamed everything on me, screaming that if I hadn't insisted on making such a huge issue out of it, Chloe wouldn't have developed a fever from her wound getting infected because he wasn't there with her.

Later, Chloe called again and threatened suicide.

That was the final straw. Both families flew into a rage, confiscated Arthur's phone, and forced us to go on our "honeymoon."

On that yacht, Arthur finally found a chance to call Chloe.

But no one picked up.

He decided Chloe was dead, and poured every ounce of his hatred onto me.

With his own hands, he shoved me into a pack of sharks.

"Ma'am?"

The voice in front of me was hoarse and low.

Compared with Arthur, there was something tighter in it—warier, more careful.

I snapped back to myself and stared at that face.

It was a face identical to Arthur's, as if copied and pasted.

This was Asher.

The one exiled as a disposable pawn so his twin brother could secure the family inheritance.

The one condemned to live in the shadows as nothing more than a stand-in.

If things followed the path they had in my last life, I should have screamed, exposed him, hurled the bedside lamp at his head, and started the countdown to my own death.

But instead, I slowly raised my hand and gently laid it over the back of his.

A flicker of shock passed through his eyes.

He instinctively tried to pull away, but I held on tight.

I leaned toward him slightly, letting the neckline of my dress slip lower. Looking straight into his eyes, I curved my lips into a smile.

"So... should I call you husband now? Or... little brother?"

For a moment, it felt as though all the air in the room had been sucked away.

Every muscle in Asher's body went taut.

"You..." His Adam's apple bobbed.

"Since he was kind enough to send you to my bed without a second thought..." I let out a soft laugh, my fingers sliding up from his wrist, tugging him closer. "Then I guess that makes you my husband."

Before he could say another word, I yanked him down by the tie and silenced every question on his lips with my own.

For the first half second, Asher was rigid with shock.

But the instant my tongue broke through that resistance, something in him caught fire.

The ice trapped between our bodies melted, cold water soaking into my wedding dress.

He let out a rough, low breath and tore open the row of buttons down the back of my gown.

Bodies colliding.

Hot, ragged breaths.

We rolled across the expensive carpet and the bed in a tangle of heat.

His large hand moved along the inside of my thigh, and just as we were both about to lose ourselves—

Bzzz... Bzzz...

A phone began to vibrate.

Asher froze.

Hovering above me, he breathed hard, chest rising and falling, then turned his head slightly toward the phone.

On the screen, two words flashed clearly:

Arthur Sterling.