Hey, Ugly Duckling

From my earliest memories, my entire family is cold and distant toward me.

When my parents look at my younger sister, Claire Lloyd, their eyes fill with warmth and joy. Yet, when they turn to me, only disgust remains. Claire's life is filled with applause and excessive love, while mine is filled with disdain and suffering.

When the explosion erupts at the street corner, I save the stranger beside me. Later, I learn he is Byron Whitmore, a mafia family's Don.

He begins pursuing me after I rescue him. Later, I quit my job and move to a new place, but he finds me and proposes in 100 different ways.

"Why me?" I ask countless times.

"Because it's you," he always answers.

The wedding causes a sensation throughout the city. I truly seem to have transformed from an ugly duckling into a swan.

That is, until I'm five months pregnant, when Claire needs a transfusion of rare Rh-negative blood after a car accident. The blood bank has a shortage. Because of that, my parents knock me unconscious and send me to the hospital.

In my daze, the blood extraction machine hums continuously. As two thousand milliliters of blood leave my body, I see Byron.

Tears well up in my eyes. I begin thinking he's here to save me. Instead, I hear him say, "We can't take any more. Sharon and the baby will die."

"But Claire has lost too much blood. She'll die, too..." My mother pleads.

"No one wants Claire safe more than I do." Byron's voice is thick with pain. "She's my first love. I've never forgotten her. I only married Sharon because her face looks so much like Claire's.

"But I can't trade her life for Claire's. Trust me—I'll find another way."

So, that's his reason for marrying me. The blood extraction machine continues running, but my heart has already stopped beating.

The affection I see in his eyes has never been for me. He's always looking through me at someone else. Everyone in the world loves Claire, and Byron is not the exception that I foolishly believe him to be.

That grand wedding is nothing but an ugly duckling's self-deceiving fantasy.

When I was five months pregnant, my twin sister Claire Lloyd got into a car accident and lost a lot of blood. My parents knocked me unconscious and forced me to give Claire a transfusion of Rh-negative blood.

In my daze, I heard my husband Byron Whitmore's voice. "I only married Sharon because her face looks so much like Claire's. Claire is my first love. I've never forgotten her.

"But I can't trade my wife's life for Claire's. Trust me—I'll find another way."

When I woke up in the hospital bed, no one was around. The needle mark on my arm throbbed with dull pain as memories flooded back.

When I was six years old, my parents clutched my drowned brother's body in anguish.

Back then, Claire had pointed at me through her tears. "Oliver