Chapter 1
After five years of marriage, Navier Armstrong wanted a divorce.
When she arrived at the office, she spotted the secretary heading toward her husband Lysander
Vanderbilt’s office with a stack of documents.
Using the excuse that she was heading the same way, she took the stack of papers, discreetly slipping the divorce agreement among them.
As she handed over the documents, Lysander was on the phone.
Without even glancing at them, he signed everything–including the divorce agreement.
Navier stared at his signature on the divorce papers, momentarily lost in thought.
So this is it. It’s finally ending.
Just as she reached for the documents to leave, her elbow accidentally knocked over a delicate picture frame on his desk. It toppled over, glass shattering across the surface.
The smiling girl in the photo was now partially obscured by broken glass.
It was Ophelia Belmont, Lysander’s deceased first love.
“What the hell are you doing?!”
Lysander abruptly ended his call, his voice snapping with fury.
He shot to his feet and roughly shoved Navier aside.
She stumbled backward and her palm landing on shards of glass. Sharp pain shot through her hand, but she bit her lip, refusing to cry out though tears welled up involuntarily.
Looking down, she watched blood dripping from her fingertips, staining the documents on the floor.
Lysander seemed oblivious to her pain.
He knelt down, carefully picking up the photograph and gently brushing away the glass fragments,
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terrified of causing the slightest damage. His movements were tender and focused, as if handling a
priceless treasure.
Navier’s heart turned to ice. She stared at the man before her, a wave of indescribable desolation washing over her.
Five years of marriage, and she–a living, breathing human being–still couldn’t compete with a photograph.
“Why are you still standing there?” Lysander looked at her, his eyes cold as ice. “Don’t come to my office again without my permission.”
Navier said nothing. She silently gathered the blood–stained documents from the floor and turned to
leave.
Her hand was still bleeding, but she couldn’t feel the pain.
As she reached the doorway, she heard Lysander making another call.
His voice remained detached but carried an undercurrent of urgency. “Have you found anyone who looks like Ophelia yet?”
The person on the other end said something, and Lysander’s voice betrayed a hint of barely
suppressed anguish.
“Keep searching! It’s been years! Why the hell can’t I find someone–anyone–who looks like her?
This… this isn’t fair.”
Navier paused mid–step, her heart twisting with a bitter ache.
She looked down at her bloodied palm and the corner of her mouth curved into a sorrowful smile.
“Lysander, you still can’t make it? Well, I did. Don’t worry, I’ll train her perfectly, and then I’ll personally deliver her to your side.”
Navier took a Uber to her private estates, Lakeside Villa.
As the car sped through busy streets, the scenery blurred past the window while her mind drifted to the past.
She and Lysander had grown up together–childhood friends. And she had loved him for a decade.
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But his heart had never belonged to her.
It had belonged to Ophelia Belmont, from the moment she walked into his life.
Then at just twenty years old, Ophelia fell ill and never recovered.
After that, Lysander became despondent, only reluctantly accepting the arranged marriage with Navier as part of a family alliance,
Everyone in their Manhattan social circle knew how much Navier loved Lysander.
She tolerated it when he kept a memorial corner in his home for Ophelia Belmont, leaving fresh
white lilies as if she were still alive.
She endured it when he covered their bedroom with Ophelia’s photos, whispering to them every
night like she was listening.
She even swallowed her pain from his obsessive global search for Ophelia lookalikes.
Navier believed that if she stayed by his side long enough, he would eventually turn around and fall
in love with her.
She even fantasized that someday he would forget about Ophelia, they would have children and live happily ever after.
Reality, reality had a way of slapping her in the face.
She had been pregnant three times and each ended in “accidental” miscarriage.
She had thought it was her weak constitution that couldn’t sustain a pregnancy–until her third miscarriage, when she accidentally overheard a conversation between Lysander and his friend.
“Lysander, you’ve been slipping abortion pills into Navier’s food every time she gets pregnant. If she
ever finds out, she’ll be crazy.”
And what does that have to do with me?” Lysander’s voice was cold. “If I had a child with another woman, Ophelia–wherever she is–would be heartbroken.”
That was when she realized her previous miscarriages weren’t accidents at all–Lysander had deliberately induced them!
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And his reason? He was afraid Ophelia would be upset from beyond the grave?!
That night, she broke.
She went to a bar to drink her sorrows away. There, she happened to rescue a young girl whose parents were selling her to an old man for money.
The girl’s face looked strikingly similar to Ophelia’s.
Navier stared at her, a crazy idea taking root in her mind.
Since Lysander couldn’t forget Ophelia, then she–his legal wife–would step aside.
But not before giving him one final gift.
She would train this girl to replace Ophelia and stay by Lysander’s side forever!
At Lakeside Villa, Navier opened the door to find Celeste Stanley studying Ophelia’s fashion style
with the tutor Navier had hired.
Celeste wore a white babydoll dress with delicate pearl necklace, giving her a pure, innocent appeal.
The only imperfections were her slightly yellowed hair from malnutrition and her thin frame.
But it was precisely her thinness that made her resemble the sickly Ophelia even more.
For a moment, Navier was transfixed before instinctively correcting, “Ophelia preferred white
dresses, hair with soft curls, and always wore Chanel No. 5 perfume.”
Celeste nodded obediently, her voice gentle. “I’ll learn it perfectly, Navier.”
She didn’t want to be sold off to that disgusting old man, and she desperately wanted to escape her
parasitic parents.
Navier had shown her a picture of Lysander–tall, sharp, devastatingly handsome–a man completely out of reach in her original world.
She would do whatever it took to stand beside him.
Navier looked at her with mixed emotions and stroked the girl’s hair.
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“You’ve already captured her essence. Soon, I’ll personally deliver you to his side.”
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