Three years before this very moment, on a rainy night when the shriek of scraping metal pierced the darkness, the horrifying sound of a collision shattered the silence of the main street.

A line of parked cars had come to an abrupt halt, while stunned pedestrians gathered around a wrecked black vehicle, smoke billowing from its twisted frame. The car was on the verge of catching fire.

Several people rushed forward to help whoever was trapped inside, only to discover that the driver was a pregnant young woman, approximately six or seven months along. She looked physically exhausted, almost alarmingly frail.

Amid the panic, a young man pushed his way through the crowd. After the locked doors refused to open, he smashed the side window with his bare forearms and carefully pulled the woman out.

She was so thin and fragile that it was difficult to believe she was carrying another life inside her.

He carried her away from the flames that had begun consuming the fuel leaking from the vehicle. Mere seconds later, the car exploded, leaving behind a towering mass of black smoke and fire, just as the fire department and ambulances arrived.

The young man carried the woman toward the ambulance in his arms. An odd feeling lingered in his mind—a sense that he knew that pale, exhausted face.

On the way to the hospital, while the paramedics fought desperately to keep her alive, he stared at her face more carefully.

Then, suddenly, memories from his university years surfaced.

It was Elena Smith.

His quiet, beautiful classmate from the School of Business.

Lucas was stunned by her condition. This was not the Elena he remembered. This was an emaciated, exhausted body that barely seemed capable of holding itself together.

When had she gotten married?

And who was the man who had allowed her to wander the streets in such a condition?

His eyes caught sight of the gold wedding ring resting on her ring finger.

It appeared expensive and encrusted with stones, yet its design lacked any trace of taste or affection. It looked as though whoever had bought it had chosen it hastily and without care, merely to fulfill some burdensome obligation.

When they reached the emergency department, obstetrician and gynecologist Dr. Mina Wilson was shocked to see her.

Elena was her neighbor, and Mina knew her well.

She immediately ordered Elena to be taken into the operating room because of the severe bleeding and instructed the hospital administration to contact the husband listed in her records:

Liam Valdimir.

The moment Lucas heard that name, he froze.

Liam Valdimir.

The owner of the largest business empire and most powerful corporations in the country was Elena's husband?

That innocent girl who had always lived quietly in the shadows?

As Elena was wheeled through the double doors of the operating room, an old memory from their university days suddenly appeared before Lucas's eyes.

Back then, Elena had been a simple girl who knew nothing about fashion. She usually tied her soft hair into a ponytail and wore thick-framed prescription glasses.

She surrounded herself with an aura of shy silence and avoided social connections, until she became practically invisible to everyone.

But he had noticed her.

For one reason.

Her blue eyes, clear and breathtaking like the open sky.

Lucas smiled bitterly as he sat on the wooden waiting-room chair, remembering a day during their final year at university.

He had been sitting in the college garden with a cup of coffee in his hand when Elena hurried past him, clutching a stack of lecture notes.

She failed to notice a stone on the ground.

Her foot caught against it, and she fell, sending her papers scattering in every direction.

She struggled back to her feet, frantically searching for her glasses with her blurred vision.

When Lucas saw how helpless she looked, he set his coffee aside and knelt down to help her search.

He eventually found her glasses lying near the trunk of a tree.

Without saying a word, he held them out to her.

When she lifted her head and looked at him with her bare eyes for the first time, without the barrier of her glasses, Lucas realized that behind the "boring" girl everyone ignored was a mesmerizing gaze that could never be erased from his memory.