Chapter 2

Everything went black. Nora was forcibly shoved into the car, trembling and desperate as she curled up in the corner.

She couldn't donate a kidney. She would die.

She couldn't die yet.

"Nora, how were those five years in prison?" James looked at Nora, who was curled up in the corner, no longer carrying the pride she once had years ago. His feelings were complicated.

Nora flinched. Maybe it was a conditioned reflex from being bullied in prison—she hugged her head in fear.

"Did you become mute?" James looked at Nora with disgust, lifting his hand to grip her chin. The dark red blood on her forehead formed a stark contrast with her pale face.

"Fine." Nora's voice trembled, her eyes filled with both despair and hatred.

Thanks to James, her life in prison had been a living hell.

On the day of her release, a cellmate who had been bullying her finally couldn't stand it anymore and told her the truth—James's people had paid her to "take good care of" her for those five years.

Looking at the injuries on Nora's face, James's Adam's apple moved. He pushed her away in disgust.

Disgusting.

Nora looked numbly at James, the man she had loved throughout her entire youth. Now he couldn't stir any feelings in her heart.

She had stopped loving him long ago.

Emerald City Hospital.

Nora was literally dragged out of the car by James.

She looked at James pleadingly, kneeling on the ground, begging him.

After all those years in prison, she had been beaten into fear.

"James, please, I can't donate a kidney. I don't meet the conditions. I can atone for my sins—I'll do whatever you want me to do."

Nora kept begging, kowtowing hard on the ground.

Now, with no family background or connections, she knew very clearly that crushing her would be as easy as crushing an ant for James and the Adams family.

If they wanted her to suffer, she had to suffer—even more than they imagined—just to temporarily save her own life and then figure out her next move.

Nora now understood clearly that James wouldn't let her go, and neither would the Adams family.

She had to survive. She had reasons she absolutely had to survive.

James instinctively took a step back, his eyes showing complex emotions, as if he hadn't expected the once high-and-mighty Nora to become so lowly and humble.

"Aiden, please, with the Adams family's resources, there must be plenty of people willing to donate a kidney to Evelyn, right? Aiden, please, you and Mom and Dad know my body can't handle it."

Nora had a congenital heart condition. Even though she'd had surgery as a child, she still couldn't withstand the damage from donating a kidney.

Aiden clearly knew this, yet he just looked at her coldly. "This is what you owe Evelyn. If your mother hadn't switched Evelyn, you should have died long ago."

Nora's body froze for a long time before she collapsed weakly on the ground. "Can I atone in some other way?"

"Do you deserve that?" James sneered. "Nora, do you think five years in prison erases what you did? Have you forgotten what you did to me? When you betrayed me and had an affair with another man, did you think about this day?"

Nora didn't dare recall the hellish scene from five years ago, and she had no strength to explain.

That brother Aiden, who once promised to protect her forever, had personally sent her to another man's bed after learning the truth, just to destroy her.

In Aiden's eyes, Nora was a fake, which meant her fiancé James should belong to Evelyn too.

So Evelyn had brought James to catch them in the act.

It was all calculated by Evelyn and Aiden.

Evelyn was the victimized real daughter of the family—everyone believed what she said.

But her, the daughter of a thief—no one would believe her words.

The hospital room.

Evelyn was still unconscious, looking pale.

Nora hunched her shoulders, keeping her head down, not daring to look up.

By the bed stood the Adams family patriarch Owen Adams and his wife Ava Davis—the people Nora had called Mom and Dad for twenty-one years.

Seeing Nora enter the room, Ava slapped her across the face, extremely emotional.

Compared to Ava, Owen was much calmer. "Did Nora agree?"

"She's not qualified to disagree." James had already made the decision for Nora, forcing her to kneel by the bed.

Nora looked at Owen, trembling all over. "Dad... Mr. Adams, I don't meet the donation requirements. Please let me go. I can atone in other ways. I can repay what I owe the Adams family."

Owen's expression darkened with displeasure.

Nora looked at everyone as if they were strangers. During those five years in prison, she had even doubted whether the previous twenty-one years of her life had been a dream.

"Nora, have you forgotten? Five years ago, you had an affair with your lover and gave birth to a bastard child. You sent that child away. The kid should be about five years old now." James always knew how to find all of Nora's weak spots, tearing open her wounds and rubbing salt in them again and again.

Nora's head snapped up, looking at James. He was threatening her.