Pretending to Be His Dead Bride

Abstract

Elsie Lane accepts a strange job—impersonating her deceased twin sister Emily to become the "stand-in" fiancée for the cold CEO Sebastian Deville. She intends to use this opportunity to investigate her sister's "accidental fall," but at a banquet, when she tests Sebastian by humming a nursery rhyme known only to the sisters, she unexpectedly catches a flash of panic in his eyes. In a locked studio, she discovers her sister's final painting—a nightmarish work filled with despair and struggle, hiding a strange and eerie emblem. When the same emblem appears on a death threat letter addressed to her, Elsie realizes: her sister wasn't killed by accident, but murdered! After becoming pregnant, she's forced to flee, living in hiding with her son Leo for seven years in Crescent Harbor, where she opens a gallery called "Thornbird." But a mysterious collector of her "Thorns" series paintings disrupts her carefully constructed peace—Sebastian has found her. He admits he's known her true identity all along and proposes they work together to uncover the truth. From mutual manipulation to life-and-death partnership, when he takes a deadly knife for her at the docks and calls out not "Emily" but "Elsie" before losing consciousness... When the evidence becomes irrefutable and the true culprit is brought to justice, Elsie can finally stop being anyone's shadow. Her union with Sebastian is no longer based on lies and exploitation, but on two souls who have walked through thorns, choosing to stand side by side as equals, each crowned in their own right.