Swish—
Lightning slashed through the sky, illuminating the dark rainy night outside the window.
A car that blended seamlessly into the night parked steadily at the foot of this abandoned building.
The car door opened, and a jet-black umbrella unfurled, hiding the face of the person beneath, revealing only a physique more perfect than the top international male models.
Thunder rumbled as if it were going to shatter Sophie’s world. The heavy rain pelting fiercely could not drown out the increasingly close, heart-pounding footsteps echoing down the hallway.
Creak—
The old wooden door gave a teeth-gritting sound as it slowly opened.
Lightning flashed, fully revealing the intruder before Sophie.
There was no mistake, it was him!
In her past life, it was he who, on such a rainy night, wore a face as handsome as a god’s while committing diabolical acts, dragging her into an abyss of endless torment.
He imprisoned her for a full ten years, during which countless surgeries left her praying for death.
Again and again, each time she doubted she would survive the operating table.
Roaring, struggling, running away, and in the end, a desperate numbness... Ten years, day and night were hellish torture.
In those ten years, she never saw her family or friends again; she was surrounded only by him and his accomplices.
A lifetime of struggling and suffering in her past, only to close her eyes, stop breathing, and open them again to find herself back on that rainy night where all tragedies began.
The icy wind thick with moisture rushed in through the wide-open door, chilling her to the bone.
He stood there, behind him the hallway was like an endless hell, pitch black without a glimmer of light, as if he were the boundary between earthly life and infernal.
Sophie took an action utterly different from her past life’s frantic escape, stepping stiffly towards him, one step at a time.
Her fearless eyes met his obsidian-like emotionless ones, watching as a flicker of doubt quickly passed through his usually placid gaze.
"You cannot escape..." The man’s cold words were lost, shocked into silence by the fair arms wrapping around his neck.
A soft sigh tinged with a nasal note echoed by his ear, as if a hand had brutally twisted his heart, causing a deep aching pain.
"I will never run again." Her arms tightened, and Sophie hugged this man who had frightened and terrified her for ten years in her previous life, yet whom she had also longed for and yearned for decades.
In those ten years, she never knew that those countless surgeries were his utmost attempts to wrest her life from death.
Until the final surgery, when he coldly threatened, "This is the last time. If you survive, I will release you."
And she did survive the last time.
He could no longer imprison her.
Because... he had transplanted his own heart into her.
This man truly was a demon; ten years of cold imprisonment in a barren house and for the decades to come, he made her willingly captive to his deep, overwhelming love.
"As long as you understand!" His familiar cold, emotionless voice sounded by her ear, bringing tears to Sophie’s eyes, scorching and searing her heart.
She had been reborn.
Returned to the time when he was still alive.
In this lifetime, she would never be deceived by his cold and fearsome exterior again, and she would love him properly.