A million in debt, and my younger brother needed money to survive. Then a car accident sent me crashing into Shen Yu, a man who seemed to live high above the clouds.
He gripped my chin, his gaze complicated and cold. “Sign this. Be mine, and your debt will be wiped clean.” To stay alive, I signed the humiliating contract and moved into his gilded cage.
The mansion was cold, its rules strict. Sometimes he gazed at me tenderly; other times, he was as distant as ice. Then I found an old, yellowed photograph in his study. The girl in it looked seven-tenths like me and wore a radiant smile, but her name was carved on a gravestone.
“Shen Yu, look at me! I’m Lin Wan, not someone else’s shadow!” I shouted, smashing a glass. Storm clouds gathered in his eyes, but when my ex-boyfriend humiliated me, he punched him to the ground and declared his claim over me. “Touch her, and see what happens.”
On a rainy night, when I burned with fever, he awkwardly stayed by my side. Tipsy at a victory banquet, he lost control and kissed me. Just as my defenses began to crumble, I heard him murmur drunkenly, “Don’t go… A Yan…” On the anniversary of his beloved’s death, his vulnerable figure in the cemetery broke my heart. But one drunken remark shattered my beautiful dream completely.
I left my ring behind and disappeared without a trace.
When he showed up outside my studio, haggard and red-eyed, saying, “Wanwan, come back. There’s no one else. There’s only you”…
The truth that came too late was even more devastating: that beloved was the blood relative he couldn’t stop grieving! Was I truly a stand-in, or the only salvation he could grasp as he sank into darkness?
When my enemy aimed a gun at me, he shielded me with his body. “Touch her, and you’ll have to kill me first!”
A stand-in contract with one of the wealthiest families began with a ridiculous car accident, blossomed into a love that grew with every calculated step, and ended in a devotion worth risking their lives for. Shen Yu, this time, have you caught the light, or another illusion destined to break your heart?
