Second Time Around, I Won’t Marry the Don Chapter 01

Second Time Around, I Won’t Marry the Don Chapter 01

I was eight years old when I was adopted by the Vitale family, the wealthiest family in Chicago.

Many years later, they learned that when they adopted me, their biological daughter had also been in that same orphanage.

By then, that poor little girl had already been worked to death on a remote farm.

While I lived in luxury and was doted on by everyone.

Nathan Vitale was consumed with regret.

He wished he could trade me for her.

“Back then, if you hadn’t deliberately called me ‘Brother,’ I would have recognized Luna!”

His fingers clamped around my throat, forbidding me from ever calling him “Brother” again.

Then, one drunken, disastrous night changed everything.

I got pregnant.

Nathan believed I had done it on purpose.

He allowed others to frame me and pushed me into the lake.

My baby and I both died.

When I opened my eyes again…

I was back to the day the Vitale family came to adopt me.

“The Vitale family is adopting a Guiding Light!”

The news spread through the orphanage like wildfire.

The Vitales’ principessa had disappeared years ago. They had searched everywhere for her until, in desperation, they even turned to a psychic.

The psychic said that adopting a girl as a Guiding Light would allow them to find their biological daughter.

Scrap pulled my hand, urging me forward, hoping I could leave the orphanage.

He had been born deaf and mute, abandoned at the orphanage’s front gate as a baby.

Out of everyone there, he and I were the closest.

I looked up.

A young boy stood in the center of the room, dressed in a perfectly tailored suit.

Elegant.

Composed.

Every inch the young heir.

Compared to the noisy crowd of children shoving one another for attention, he looked like he belonged to another world.

It was young Nathan. Every inch a young master.

Scrap couldn’t see him, but he’d heard that Nathan was there to adopt a little sister.

He frantically signed to me.

“Call him Brother!”

He might choose you out of pity.”

The memories of my previous life came rushing back.

I had been squeezed into that same crowd of children.

Someone shoved me from behind.

As I was about to fall, I subconsciously shouted “Brother!”

That single word was why Nathan chose me.

But later…

He had wrapped those same hands around my throat and screamed at me.

“Go on. Call me that again!”

“Do you call every man you meet ‘Brother’?”

“If you hadn’t done that on purpose, I never would’ve missed Luna!”

Nathan hated that I had ever called him Brother.

My throat burned as though it had been sliced open with a blade.

He strangled me until my throat was ruined.

Because of that…

When Nathan was drugged by his enemies years later and pulled me into his arms in a haze…

I couldn’t tell him who I was.

One reckless night followed.

Afterward, he married me.

Everyone thought that as the fake daughter, I couldn’t accept losing my status and had deliberately seduced Nathan to remain in the Vitale family.

After we married, Nathan was rarely home.

He returned to the orphanage where he’d first adopted me again and again.

He never found his real sister.

Instead, he brought back another girl.

She looked vaguely like the childhood photos of Luna.

She cornered me one day.

“You stole someone else’s life. Have you no shame?”

Then she threw herself into the swimming pool…

…and claimed I’d pushed her.

The lie was full of holes.

Nathan never gave me the chance to explain.

“Evelyn.”

“This is what you deserve.”

He threw me into the pool.

By then, my health had already been failing.

Yet the water felt colder than the dead of winter.

Pain exploded through my stomach, as though someone had stuffed it full of stones.

I screamed for help.

Nathan thought I was putting on an act.

“You know how to swim.”

“How long are you going to keep pretending?”

The water around me slowly turned crimson.

Through my fading vision, I saw someone dive into the pool.

Only that day did I learn…

I had been pregnant.

And on the very day I found out…

I lost my baby.

The bleeding wouldn’t stop.

By the time they rushed me to the hospital…

It was already too late.

My child and I both died.