The Dream of a Dying Swan

In the three years I spent unconscious in a hospital bed, Julius Carter took care of me day and night without complaint. The very first thing he did after I woke up was get down on one knee beside my hospital bed and propose.

That night, while scrolling through social media, I came across a female influencer who looked strikingly similar to me.

[Another date with my boyfriend today!]

[He took me to an upscale restaurant for dinner and bought me the diamond ring I wanted. He's the sweetest!]

The top comment read: [You're showing off so much. I bet you're just a sugar baby!]

She fired back immediately with a reply. [Being a sugar baby takes skill, too. Looking like a pig won't get you that kind of treatment.]

[My boyfriend is the heir to the Carter family. Another nonsense from you, and I'll have my lawyer sue you!]

My breathing hitched. Since when did Julius Carter have a girlfriend?

Rage overcame me, and I tapped on her profile, ready to send her a private message. That was when I noticed a post pinned to the top of her page. The photo showed a pair of long, elegant hands placing food onto someone's plate across the table, and on the back of that hand were two small moles. They were the exact same two moles Julius had.

Staring at the two moles, identical in both shape and placement to Julius Carter’s, my breathing hitched. My fingers trembled uncontrollably as I zoomed in on the photo.

“No… That’s impossible…”

How could Julius be cheating on me?

I widened my eyes and examined every detail in the picture, desperately searching for something different. I kept telling myself I had made a mistake and that it couldn’t be him.

Three years ago, his mother had looked down on me because I was an orphan, so she hired someone to kidnap me. When I was moments away from losing my virginity, Julius charged in without a second thought and saved me.

While the kidnappers chased us down the highway, our car lost control and slammed into a massive tree. In that split second between life and death, I shielded him from the fatal impact and fell into a coma. After that, Julius personally sent his own mother to prison and nearly cut ties with the entire Carter family.

In fact, when I finally woke up, the first thing he did was propose. And with our wedding only seven days away now, how could a man like that possibly cheat on me?

I opened Lea Hart’s profile. As I scrolled further, my heart sank. Last month, Julius traveled to Franco on a business trip and took the opportunity to finalize the details for a custom jewelry set worth over a million dollars for me. Yet, on that same day, Lea had posted a photo collage tagged with a location in Franco.

I opened the images to see that she was wearing a jewelry set