The scene was horrific beyond words. Police officers filled the area, lights flashing everywhere.

The police couldn't even tell what the vehicle had originally looked like from the wreckage.

Only a few personal belongings left inside allowed them to confirm that there had been a single fatality, the body completely carbonized by the flames.

Nothing remained intact.

Damien had imagined the ending between himself and Lydia countless times, but never like this.

Even rescue efforts had become meaningless.

He watched helplessly as the rescue workers carefully recovered what little they could that belonged to Lydia.

His body trembled uncontrollably as he belatedly pulled his phone from his coat pocket.

He mechanically returned the countless missed calls. There was no response.

An earlier number, however, went through.

It was the hospital. "Mr. Hayes? Your wife's surgical abortion went smoothly today, but she insisted on being discharged. We tried calling you many times, but you didn't answer…"

Damien gradually stopped hearing the voice on the other end. The hand gripping the phone only grew colder and colder.

He remembered how Lydia had carefully asked him the night before, and how he had readily promised to go to the hospital with her.

She had a severe fear of sharp objects. Even a simple injection would leave her ashen as if half her life had been drained away.

Damien didn't dare imagine how she must have faced those moments alone on the operating table.

He took a deep breath, straightened himself, and faced Ethan Reeves, an acquaintance who was walking toward him, the officer in charge of the accident.

"My condolences."

They shook hands. Ethan briefly explained what had happened, then, perhaps unsettled by Damien's expression, gave his shoulder an awkward pat before walking away.

Damien's other private phone kept vibrating.

Ava's number appeared on the screen again and again.

He didn't want to answer.

At that moment, all he wanted was a brief stretch of silence.

Memories rushed through his mind, carrying him back through the four brief years he had shared with Lydia. One year of dating, three years of marriage.

There had been sweetness once. Lydia's flawless face had been etched into his heart from the very first moment their eyes met.

Ava had only ever been a resemblance. A substitute.

When had she gradually stopped mattering so much? Even Damien couldn't say.

He had grown accustomed to her waiting. No matter what he did, she was always there.

After signing every accident report, he pulled his coat tighter and got back into the car, driving away at full speed.

The wind howled past. His mind was completely blank.

Inside the estate, Ava sat restlessly. The moment he pushed the door open and stepped inside, she stood up at once.

"Mrs. Hayes, what happened to her…?"

He saw anticipation in Ava's eyes, undisguised and unmistakable. A wave of nausea rose in his chest.

His expression remained indifferent as he replied flatly, "She's dead. The car burned out. Nothing was left."

"What about the Carter family…"

Damien pushed past her impatiently, speaking quickly as he headed toward the study.

"Call the Carter family. The funeral will be held in three days. Tomorrow, you'll handle the paperwork for her death certificate. And one more thing." He paused mid-step. "Have someone pack up all her belongings. Throw them away… no, put them in storage for now."

The obituary for his late wife was released in the middle of the night.

Miles's carefully chosen words vividly portrayed the grief and agony of a devoted couple torn apart by death.

All information about the extravagant birthday celebration for Ava had already been erased from the internet.

As if, from the very beginning, Damien had been a man deeply devoted to his wife, Lydia.

On the day of the funeral, the heaviest snowfall in a decade fell over Crownford.

It was as though the snow meant to bury all filth deep underground, just as the Hayes Estate looked cold and mournful from the outside.

Inside, fires burned warmly. Ava held Ronan close, smiling as she ate the nutritional food served by the servants.

Upstairs in the study, Damien removed his wedding ring and casually tossed it deep into the wardrobe.

Raging flames tore through half the sky. Some people were shouting in shock, others gasping desperately for air.

These were the final fragments of memory after the violent collision.

Lydia's eyelids fluttered again and again, yet it felt as though her entire body was restrained, unable to move no matter how hard she tried.

She faintly heard voices speaking, unfamiliar ones, laced with foreign accents.

"She's suffered extreme psychological shock. Instinctively, she doesn't want to wake up, but physically, she's mostly out of danger."

"You mean she could wake up at any time? That's wonderful."

"No, no. What I mean is, she may also never wake up."

Those words yanked Lydia's drifting consciousness back in an instant. Her heart clenched, her fingers twitched slightly, and she snapped her eyes open.

White filled her vision. Slowly, it sharpened into focus. A high ceiling, walls so starkly white they sent a chill through her.

Standing before her was a doctor with a high-bridged nose and deep-set features. His striking blue eyes carried an inexplicable calm.

Meeting her gaze, he shrugged lightly and smiled toward the young man standing beside him.

"Oh, I lost. She woke up this quickly. Looks like the shock wasn't quite enough."

Lydia struggled to sit up, but her body had no strength. She quickly fell back onto the bed.

The young man reached out at once to steady her, his voice gentle and calm. "Careful."

Lydia blinked, utterly confused by the situation before her. Memories began surfacing bit by bit, and she parted her lips involuntarily.

The sound that came out was hoarse, completely unlike her former voice.

"I… wasn't I dead?"

The doctor's smile deepened as he suddenly leaned closer. "Yes, ma'am. But I pulled you back from Death himself."

He picked up a stack of documents from the bedside, his expression turning serious. "Any interest in signing my hospital on as the Sterling family's permanent private medical facility?"

The young man quickly stepped in to stop him. "Stop messing around, Henry."

......

It took Lydia some time to piece together everything that had happened.

The young man's name was Julian Sterling.

At the moment the horrific crash occurred, Julian's car had been right behind hers.

He and several others quickly got out to help, but the fire was too intense. They barely managed to drag Lydia out of the car and move her to safety.

The violent impact left Lydia unconscious. She had suffered severe head trauma, along with burns to her shoulder, elbow, and other areas.

In fact, she had been undergoing emergency treatment at this private hospital overseas for a full three months.

Lydia listened to all of this in a daze.

After a long while, she looked up at Julian in confusion.

"You saved me… then why didn't you take me to a nearby hospital? Why bring me overseas? M-my husband… where is he?"

Thinking of Damien, her throat tightened. She suddenly grabbed Julian's arm.

"He doesn't know I'm here, does he? Otherwise, he would have come looking for me."

But after hearing that, Julian's expression darkened visibly.

He lowered his shoulders slightly and turned on the television.

Over the past few months, he had recorded every piece of news related to Lydia. Now, he played them for her one by one, in chronological order.

When the obituary for Lydia was released, she was visibly stunned.

"He… he thinks I'm dead?"

Soon, she grew increasingly silent.

She watched the funeral end in haste. Damien held a black umbrella, leaving shoulder to shoulder with Ava.

She watched Damien mention her in front of reporters, his expression heavy with grief, though the wedding ring was long gone from his finger.

Lydia trembled as tears fell onto the blanket. She rubbed the wedding ring still on her finger.

Julian hesitated before speaking.

"Actually, more than half a year ago, I started tracking your life. I knew very clearly what you were going through, and what had been happening."

He pulled out a stack of photos and placed them in front of Lydia.

In those photos, there were shots of Damien holding Ava, and others of him bending down to wipe sweat from a little boy's forehead…

As Lydia looked at them, an uncontrollable chill spread through her body, leaving her shaking.

"This is… this is Ava's child."

Julian corrected her calmly. "No. In fact, this is Damien and Ava's child. He was born one year after your marriage. He's two years old now."

The truth drained all color from Lydia's face.

One year after the marriage.

While she had been full of hope, baking small treats for their newlywed life and ironing Damien's suits, he had already been with Ava.

Those photos laid bare every hollow moment and hidden underside of the past three years.

During the moments she waited for Damien, he had been staying close and intimate with Ava.

Her teeth chattered uncontrollably.

She remembered waking up groggily late at night for water, seeing Damien come upstairs in his pajamas.

He had answered so casually, "Couldn't sleep. Just walking around."

In reality, Ava had already been staying in a room downstairs at the time.

Lydia's tears wouldn't stop falling. She wiped them away, only for more to spill over again.

For the first time, Lydia felt grateful that she was still alive. Otherwise, she would have died without ever knowing the truth.

Yet confusion slowly spread through her heart.

She looked straight at Julian. "Why were you tracking me?"

Julian pulled out a chair and sat down. His gaze and tone had never been more focused.

"Do you know Richard Sterling?"

Lydia grew even more confused, but answered honestly. "Yes. The world's richest man. An elderly tycoon. What does that have to do with me?"

Julian said quietly, "It has everything to do with you. He's the one who's been looking for you. For more than twenty years."

"Looking for me?"

Julian nodded.

"Lydia, your mother was Richard's only daughter. He has no other children. Which means you are now his only granddaughter."

Lydia stared at him in shock. How was that possible?

She remembered countless times when her father, drunk, had pointed at her and cursed, saying her mother was nothing but a poor, short-lived woman who sold drinks.

How could that possibly be connected to the world's richest man?

But the look Julian gave her was utterly serious.

"I followed you for half a year. All the investigation files and biological verification results prove it."

He reached out and took her ice-cold hand in his.

"He's been waiting for you all this time."

After hours on the road, the car rolled over thick layers of snow and turned into an area surrounded by towering cedars.

When the small white building came into view, it felt as though a hidden labyrinth had emerged from deep within the mist.

The entire top floor was a luxury hospital suite filled with life-support equipment, yet none of it seemed to matter anymore to the elderly man lying on the bed.

No matter how advanced the machines were, they couldn't stop his life from slipping away bit by bit. The steady beeping only intensified the hollow sense of an approaching countdown.

When the monitoring equipment sounded, Julian took Lydia by the arm and guided her to the bedside.

The elderly man slowly opened his eyes, his gaze traveling from head to toe as he studied the overly thin young woman before him.

The clouded eyes gradually lit up, and his lips trembled faintly.

Julian leaned closer and heard the frail voice whisper, "Help me up. Quickly. I want to see her."

At the instruction, several nurses hurried forward and helped him sit up.

The old man's eyes stayed fixed on Lydia as a soft sigh slowly escaped his lips.

"It's her. It's that child."

He took a few sips of water offered by a nurse, easing the sharp pain surging in his chest.

Still staring at Lydia, he said softly, "Come… sit beside me."

Lydia looked at the hand raised with great effort. After a moment of hesitation, she walked over cautiously.

That hand gently clasped hers, and a look of relief slowly bloomed across the aged face.

"My granddaughter… I have finally found you."

The confusion and doubt in Lydia's heart only deepened, and she had no choice but to ask hesitantly.

"Could there be a mistake? My mother never told me anything like this. She always said she was an orphan, with no family. She even took me back to see the room where she lived at the orphanage. It was small and old, but she said it was the only place she'd ever been happy."

Lydia abruptly fell silent. She stared in shock as tears streamed down Richard's face while she spoke.

One trembling hand tried to wipe away the tears at the corner of his eye, yet he asked her urgently, "What else? Tell me more… about your mother."

Lydia hesitated for a moment, then continued. "She stayed at the orphanage until her teens, then someone took her out. After that, she drifted from job to job. She worked as a factory laborer, and later, she even sold drinks."

She left out many of her mother's hardships. She remembered how her mother always brushed those years aside lightly, yet the fingers holding a cigarette would tremble uncontrollably.

Later on, Cyrus, who frequented night venues, launched a fervent pursuit of her.

They fell in love, married, and soon had her. But Cyrus quickly lost interest, constantly entangling himself with all kinds of women.

He carried on a secret affair with Daphne Shaw, whom he had known since youth, and later made no effort to hide it.

On Lydia's ninth birthday, her mother prepared a lavish dinner by herself and stayed with her to blow out the candles.

In the middle of the night, Lydia jolted awake. The wind howled, the curtains billowed, and the floor-to-ceiling window stood wide open.

"Mom!"

She didn't even have time to cry out as she watched her mother step forward without looking back.

Her body fell through the air, hitting the ground with nothing more than a dull thud.

Terrified, Lydia dropped to her knees and looked down.

Her mother's eyes were closed. Her body lay there, as though freed at last, like dust settling back to the ground.

Cyrus never remarried. He simply continued sinking deeper into his ambiguous relationship with Daphne.

Only when drunk would he fix Lydia with a vicious stare and suddenly curse, "Grace Sterling, what did I ever do to wrong you? Without me, you'd still be out there selling drinks and smiles!"

He smashed his glass to the floor, shards flying everywhere. Pieces lodged into Lydia's calf, and she simply crouched down, clenched her teeth, and pulled them out.

As if nothing had ever happened.

Before her mother jumped that day, she seemed to have sat by Lydia's bed for a very long time.

She had said, "Lydia, from now on, you'll be on your own. Live well. And if it ever gets too hard, I will be waiting for you."

Lydia remembered these words clearly, even though she was never certain her mother had truly said them.

Now, she didn't know why she had told so much to a man who was still a stranger.

Her tears kept falling.

Richard's eyes were filled with guilt and regret. With a trembling hand, he carefully wiped away her tears.

"Dear child," he said. "You have a family now. Even if… even if I'm not here anymore, no one will dare bully you."