Chapter2

"He's alive! Hunter is alive!" Hunter's mother shrieked and threw herself around him, sobbing.

Hunter was pale. His skin had a grayish tint. But he was breathing — shallowly, irregularly, but breathing.

He turned his neck with a stiff, mechanical slowness.

His gaze moved past his mother, past his father, and finally landed on Wendy.

"Wendy…" His voice came out as a hoarse whisper, rough as gravel.

Yet it was filled with an unmistakable warmth, a deep and tender affection.

In his eyes, this gentle, caring woman — this Wendy — was a thousand times better than I had ever been. "Was it you… who saved me?"

"Hunter!" Wendy threw herself into his arms.

Then she turned her head just enough to shoot me a triumphant, venomous look. "Sister, do you see? I don't need you at all. I can save Hunter just fine on my own."

Hunter's father let out a cold, sharp snort. "So what if she's not a blood daughter? Wendy has a kind heart, and she just saved my son's life. From this day forward, we recognize only Wendy as our daughter."

Even the bodyguards standing around began to murmur among themselves.

"She's right, you know. The real heiress isn't fit to hold a candle to the adopted one." "Engaged or not, with that kind of vicious nature, she doesn't deserve Mr. Hunter at all."

I folded my arms across my chest and watched the whole farce with cold, detached eyes.

Savior?

That so‑called "chemical ink" of Wendy's stank to high heaven — a sharp, acrid smell of high‑concentration preservatives mixed with industrial solvents and adrenaline.

She hadn't performed any resurrection.

All she had done was pump a dead body full of poisons and stimulants, forcing its heart to beat again through sheer chemical violence.

The Hunter standing in front of me wasn't a living man.

He was a living corpse — a rotting piece of meat that was already decaying from the inside out, at a terrifyingly accelerated rate.

"Is that so?" I said, letting a sneer creep into my voice. "Since you trust her skills so much, how about we make a bet?"

"What kind of bet?" Hunter leaned protectively against Wendy, glaring at me with eyes full of poison.

"I bet you won't survive the first seven days." I stepped forward, letting my full presence fill the room. "If,you're still standing here in one piece after 7days, then I will voluntarily annul our engagement and disappear from your lives forever."

The crowd gasped. No one had expected me — the woman who had once loved Hunter with every fiber of her being — to be the one to propose ending the engagement.

Wendy's face lit up with barely concealed joy, but she quickly forced her expression back to one of hurt. "Sister, why would you curse Hunter like that? Do you hate him so much over a piece of paper that you want him dead?"

"Shut your mouth," I said flatly. "Don't stand there and disgust me. But if he does rot away on the seventh day, I want thirty percent of the Hunter family's shares. And Wendy — you will kneel before me in public, kowtow, and confess every single lie you've told."

Hunter laughed ，"Scarlett, have you lost your mind? I've never felt better. Nothing is going to happen to me. You want out of the engagement? Fine. I accept your bet. We'll see how you crawl out of here like a beaten dog in seven days."

"Put it in writing." I pulled a betting agreement from my drawer, along with a formal engagement annulment form.

I'd prepared them days ago, knowing exactly how this would play out.

Hunter snatched the pen from my hand and signed both documents without even reading the fine print.

Then, with a triumphant smirk, he took Wendy by the arm and walked out, followed by his parents and the muttering bodyguards.

I watched them go, and my smile turned to ice.

What a fool.

He had no idea that without Return Ink — the real, blood‑bound ink of my family a dead body would begin to stink and completely dissolve into a pool , reeking pus by the seventh.

Let's see how long Wendy's heavy perfume could mask the smell of his rotting flesh.

Let's see how long her stolen engagement would last.

Late that night, I was cleaning my needles and preparing to close the shop when I heard the screech of tires outside.

Bam!

The heavy iron door of my studio was smashed open by a black SUV.

The metal frame buckled. Shards of glass flew across the floor.

Several men in dark suits rushed inside, carrying a young man between them.

He had been shot twice in the chest.

His expensive suit was soaked in blood. He was barely breathing — more dead than alive.

When I saw his face, my heart stopped for an entirely different reason.

Howard——Hunter's young uncle.

The true power behind the Hunter Group — the man who held all the real influence, even though he stayed out of the spotlight.

The only person in my past life who had tried to fight his way into that basement to save me, while Hunter was torturing me to death.

Hunter had murdered him first, in a preemptive ambush.

In my past life, I had been so blind, so obsessed with Hunter, that I never once noticed Howard.

Never noticed the quiet, steady way he had always watched over me. Never noticed the genuine kindness in his heart.

"Miss Scarlett…" The lead bodyguard fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face. "Please. Please save him."

I looked at Howard's pale, dying face.

For a moment, I saw the ghost of that past life — saw him throwing himself against the basement door, heard him shouting my name, saw him fall under Hunter's blade.

I didn't hesitate.

"Put him on the table," I said, my voice steady. "Tonight, I'm going to show you what a real resurrection looks like."