Chapter 1 Accidentally Saved the Richest Man
The story began at a hospital. Eudora Stanford, a young lady of slight build, rushed to the emergency room while carrying a bloodied man on her back with all her strength. "This guy needs emergency
treatment! He passed out in a car accident!"
Eudora felt that today was really not her day. She was riding her motorcycle on her way to deliver takeouts when a Ferrari nearby got knocked off the road by a large truck running the red light. The Ferrari was severely wrecked, its windows shattered and its trunk on fire. It might explode at any minute, and its driver was covered in blood and unconscious in his seat.
Eudora had no idea what gave her the courage at the time. Without a second thought, she raced to the car and desperately pulled the guy out of it. As soon as she dragged him several feet away, she heard a loud kaboom! The car exploded.
Eudora was shaken with fright. If she had been a little bit slower, she would probably have been blown to pieces along with the guy!
Just then, however, the severely injured man grasped her wrist with all his might as if clutching at the last straw. He mumbled in a daze, "Help me! Send me to the hospital... I'll pay you 100 million..." Eudora was stunned. '100 million? Did I just save the world's richest man by chance?'
At the counter, the nurse asked coldly, "What's the patient's name?"
Before Eudora could say anything, the nurse looked up and saw her face, and her attitude changed immediately. "Oh, if it isn't Alva Baldwin, our director's daughter! Please wait a moment, Miss Baldwin. A doctor will be arranged for you at once..."
Eudora smiled bitterly at those words. Alva was Eudora's sister. They looked exactly the same and often misidentified.
Usually, she would deliberately disguise herself as an ugly woman in Kenison City, but she didn't bother to do so tonight since she was doing food delivery late at night. However, she didn't expect to have entered her biological father's hospital by accident and been recognized.
She could only acknowledge tacitly that she was "Alva" and pay 5,000 in her name for the guy's surgery.
After everything was done, she returned to her rented apartment wearily and took a shower. While she was doing laundry, however, she was surprised to find a black diamond ring in her pocket. 'Probably fell into my pocket when that guy grabbed my shirt,' she thought. Without thinking much of it, she put the ring on the table, ready to get some shut-eye.
But soon there was a knock on the door from outside. Eudora walked over in slippers and opened it.
"Are you trying to be a btch, Eudora? Did you forget what I had said to you?" Alva, who was tall and slim, slapped Eudora across the face before she could say anything. "I warned you to never go around showing my face in Kenison City!"
Offended, Eudora slapped Alva's face in return.
Alva let out a cry of pain. "How dare you hit me, Eudora?" Her cheek was slightly swollen from the slap Eudora gave her, which was much harder than the slap she had given Eudora just now.
Eudora flung her hand-which ached from slapping Alva's face-with a slight frown between her beautifully arched eyebrows. "Just put up with it when I hit you! Do you think I'm gonna let you boss me around? I'm not your mom!"
"How dare you talk as if you're in the right, huh? You took a guy to my dad's hospital late at night! How am I supposed to show my face in public if word gets out about it?" Alva pointed at Eudora, her cheeks flushing red with rage. "If it weren't for someone telling my dad about it this morning, I might've still been kept in the dark! Who knows how much more disgraceful filth you were gonna commit in my name, with my face?"
"Your face? Ha!" Eudora laughed in self-mockery, her eyes full of sadness. Such is how unfair life is. She was born with the same looks as Alva was, yet Eudora was denied the right to show her true appearance in public.
Because Abducted when she was born, Eudora was sold to different people before she finally ended up with her current adoptive parents. A month ago, however, her adoptive parents had a car accident and were hospitalized with grave injuries and sky-high medical bills. Just then, Eudora's biological parents appeared out of nowhere, saying they could provide medical treatment for her adoptive parents on condition that she donate her bone marrow to the Baldwin Family's leukemic youngest son. Not only that, but she mustn't show her face, which was the spitting image of Alva.
Just then, Alva's phone rang. She stepped aside to answer the call. As her eyes darted around, she happened to catch sight of the black diamond ring on the table. This ring looked familiar somehow... "What's up, Mom?"
Yvette was frantic with joy on the other end of the call; there was even a slight quaver in her voice. "Oh, my God! Darling, when did you save THE Colbert Steele? How could you keep such a big deal from me? Someone from the Steele Family just came and asked to meet you a week later!"
"Colbert?" Alva looked at the ring on the table. In a moment of realization, she recalled having seen the ring in a photo of Colbert Steele, which was shared by the socialites when she joined them in a gathering before. The diamond ring was an heirloom inherited by the Steele Family's heirs.
Upon associating it with what Eudora had done at the hospital the night before, Alva instantly realized that Eudora had saved Colbert's life yesterday. It was because Eudora had used Alva's name at the hospital that the man thought it was her who had saved him.
'To think that I'd become the one who saved the life of Young Master Colbert by accident! This is simply even more surprising than winning the lottery!'
"Mom, I've got something to deal with at the moment. Let's talk about it later." Suppressing the ecstasy within her, Alva slipped the ring from the table while Eudora wasn't looking. Then, she came up to Eudora and threatened domineeringly, "If you do that again, just wait until you collect your adoptive parents' dead bodies!" With that, she stormed off in a huff.
Eudora had wanted to take a short nap when she came back, as she was exhausted. At this moment, she wasn't in the mood to argue with Alva. Putting a face mask on, she rushed to the hospital to look for the guy. 'A reward of 100 million! That's what I'll be getting in exchange for risking my life!'
Unexpectedly, when she reached the hospital and asked about the man she saved, the nurse told her that he had left right after regaining consciousness the night before. Not only that, but he didn't even leave any contact information behind.
"What a liar! Son of a btch!" Blowing up on the spot, Eudora stomped her foot in anger. "That 5,000 is my living expenses for the next two months!" As expected, men are nothing but liars!
On top of losing 5,000 bucks for nothing, Eudora had over 100 bucks deducted from her earnings by the delivery platform because she had failed to deliver as scheduled. She was only doing food delivery as a part-time job, and now she lost all the money she had earned during her days off to the platform. Her heart was bleeding. Still too young for the harsh reality, duh!
Over the next few days, she worked with even greater diligence every single day. Besides doing food delivery part-time after work, she also brought meals to her adoptive parents at the hospital.
Dressed in a security guard's uniform, Eudora was sitting idly in the monitoring room at Philomel Club with her coworker on the security team. She complained, "How could I have possibly been eating only two meals per day this week if I hadn't saved that ungrateful ba-sta-rd? I'm starved out."
Her adoptive father had been comatose since the car accident, whereas her adoptive mother had been staying with him at the hospital every day. Even though Eudora's biological parents were paying for their medical expenses, she still had to spend a lot on daily necessities. As a result, she was desperately hard up after spending her last 5,000 on that random guy.
Her coworker Hugh asked, "I've heard you talking about that guy too much lately. Don't you know what his name was or what he looked like?"
"I remember what he looked like, but he was unconscious at the time. How could I know what his name " Eudora replied, only to break off mid-sentence and point at somebody on the surveillance video all of a sudden. "T-T-That guy! Did you see him? That's him! That was the guy!" she exclaimed with a slap on the table before standing up to walk outside. "Found you at last, you *s-s-h-o-l-e!"
"Wait a minute, Eudora!" Hugh grabbed Eudora's wrist while pointing at the man on the surveillance video in disbelief. "Are you sure it was him?"
"I can recognize this jerk even if he's reduced to ashes!" Eudora turned around to leave.
However, Hugh stood up and blocked her path at once. "Calm down, Eudora! That guy's Colbert Steele, the heir of the Steele Family, one of the four most distinguished families in Kenison City. He's a cruel and ruthless man with blood on his hands. If he had wanted to repay your kindness, he could've done that with a single word. Since he never came to you, it'd mean he's never going to pay you the money. Staying alive is important, Eudora. It's just 5,000, right? Just take it as you've fed it to a dog."
Eudora couldn't help but gasp at Hugh's words. "Colbert Steele, you say?" The club where she was working was the top money squandering establishment in Kenison City. It was frequented by businessmen and prominent figures, so Eudora was familiar with Colbert's name.
Hugh's advice made a lot of sense, but Eudora couldn't resign herself to it. She waited until 1:00 in the morning. When she saw Colbert walk out of a private room and enter the elevator, she entered the elevator after him.
The first eight floors of Philomel Club were dedicated to a bar, whereas the floors above were all hotel suites.
In the elevator, Eudora peeked at Colbert-who was half a head taller than her-out of the corner of her eye. The man's body was reeking of booze, and his peerlessly handsome face was flushing with an abnormal shade of red. He seemed to be feeling dry and hot after getting drunk, his slender fingers pulling at his tie every now and then.
The elevator door opened on the 38th floor. The man walked out, and Eudora followed closely behind.
However, no sooner had she made a few steps than Colbert suddenly stopped in his tracks, causing the former to bump into his back. "Ouch!" "You..." the man seized her by the throat right away. He asked in a cold voice, "Who are you? Shoot!"
"It hurts..." Unable to breathe, Eudora kept slapping Colbert's arm as her brain was being deprived of oxygen. "Let go of me! I... I can't breathe..."
Upon hearing her voice, Colbert knitted his brows slightly and knocked off the security cap she was wearing. "You're a woman?"
"Y-Yeah," Eudora replied. Since she was working at a club, she disguised herself as a man and spoke in a lower voice to avoid being groped. Few people except her manager and her coworkers in the security department knew that she was a woman.
"Who sent you here? Spill it!"
"I-I just wanted to "
Colbert interrupted Eudora before she could finish her sentence. "You wanna be my woman?" He had noticed that this security guard was behaving furtively, and his drink had been doped today. 'I knew it. Another woman who's trying to drug me to get me to sleep with her,' he thought.
Eudora almost died from being choked. 'What an *s-s-h-o-l-e who returns my kindness with ingratitude!' She swore, "F-F..."
Before she could finish uttering the four-letter word, the man let go of her neck.
Crumpling at once, Eudora placed her hands on the floor for support, gasping for breath while coughing non-stop. Only then did she notice that the entire 38th floor was designed as a luxurious suite with silvery gray cool-colored details that exuded poshness.
It seemed that Colbert had noticed long ago that something was wrong with her. "You know what I hate the most?" the man said while panting heavily, his eyes bloodshot.
"Cough... Cough..." Eudora's throat hurt from being choked, and at the moment, she was not able to say anything.
"Since you have a death wish, I'll grant it," said Colbert. Then, he grabbed her arm, dragging her into the bedroom before flinging her onto the bed effortlessly.
Eudora was frightened; she was truly scared upon confronting Colbert. "Hey! W-What are you doing?"
The man pulled off his tie with one hand while pressing a button on the remote control with the other. In an instant, the bedroom curtain closed, cloaking the room in complete darkness. In the darkness, he tore her clothes to shreds with a loud rip!
"No!!!"