"Baby, you're amazing!"
A woman's breathy, syrupy voice drifted down clearly from upstairs.
Mia Winters blinked her eyes open, still half out of it, honestly thinking she was dreaming.
But the second she saw the black dress half thrown over her body, and the black sexy lingerie hanging off the sofa arm above her head, she realized with a jolt—
Yeah. This was real.
"Ew—"
With a look of pure disgust, Mia pinched the dress between her thumb and forefinger and flicked it aside like it was contaminated.
Those blush-inducing sounds kept pouring down from upstairs. She braced herself on the couch and slowly sat up, face blank with confusion.
Wasn't she supposed to be lying in bed, pulling an all-nighter over some ridiculously dog-blood, over-the-top CEO romance novel?
So how the heck had she ended up here?
She stared at the towering three-story ceiling above her, then at the massive crystal chandelier spilling down from the center of it, and a strange sense of familiarity hit her hard.
This looked exactly like... the male lead's house from the novel she had been reading.
Had she really transmigrated into the book?
Then that meant her current identity was...
Mia lowered her head and looked at the grandma-style pajamas on her body. In an instant, it all clicked.
She had become Mia Winters, the cannon-fodder side character in the novel—the hopeless lovestruck idiot, the vicious wife, the tragic joke of a woman, and, on top of all that, the one with a giant cheating-green hat on her head.
And of all moments to drop into this story, she had landed right at the scene where she caught her husband of three years cheating—the same husband who hadn't even touched a single strand of her hair in all that time.
Her husband, the novel's male lead, Vincent Shaw.
Wow.
Mia suddenly got excited.
A live show this spicy? If she didn't go take a look, that would seriously be such a waste.
Snatching the phone off the coffee table, Mia Winters quietly made her way upstairs.
All along the way, shoes, a suit jacket, and underwear were strewn across the floor. Looking at the mess, Mia kept clicking her tongue. "Wow. Seriously."
It was obvious enough how desperate and out of control those two had been. They’d been so into it, they could completely ignore the original Mia sleeping on the couch.
"Baby, I’m gonna... I’m gonna—"
With the woman’s shrill, high-pitched cry, the noise in the room suddenly stopped.
Mia looked at the video on her phone, perfectly catching the key moment, and nodded in satisfaction.
Good thing she’d moved fast. If she’d missed this, that would’ve been a huge loss.
Now that she had proof of the cheating, the most important thing was getting out of here.
She remembered what happened in the book. When the original Mia caught them in the act, she broke down on the spot and cried like the world had ended.
Not only did she not dare say one harsh word to the cheating bastard, she didn’t even need Vincent Shaw to say anything before she started frantically blaming herself.
The original Mia had loved Vincent way too much, so much that she was willing to do literally anything for him.
But Vincent took pleasure in humiliating her, messing with her, and treating her like a joke.
Three days ago, Vincent had been drinking at a club with a bunch of rich brats. While playing games, he made a bet with them.
Even on a stormy night like that, with the wind howling and rain pouring down, as long as he made one phone call, the original Mia would still come running like some obedient lapdog just to bring him an umbrella.
Vincent had even emphasized it over the phone—she had to walk there.
The original Mia loved him to the extreme, and she was humble to the point of having no bottom line. To her, Vincent’s words worked better than an imperial decree.
On the way there, the storm was brutal.
Her umbrella got flipped inside out again and again. Several ribs snapped. Halfway through, the entire canopy was ripped away by the wind.
And when she finally arrived at the club two hours later, soaked through, exhausted, and looking utterly miserable, what she got in return was a room full of cold laughter and cruel mockery.
After that, Vincent and his crowd moved on to the next round.
He had left the original Mia all alone at the club, then very "generously" tossed her fifty bucks in cash like he was doing charity, saying it was for her cab ride home.
One of his friends laughed and said, "Fifty dollars? That wouldn’t even buy a few bites of my dog’s kibble."
Vincent Shaw gave a contemptuous little smile too. "That’s all she’s worth."
At that moment, the original Mia was so heartbroken she was practically drowning in despair, yet even then, she still never once thought about leaving Vincent Shaw.
For that alone, Mia Winters had mentally cursed her for three straight days without repeating herself once.
If it weren’t for the fact that the original owner had the exact same name as her, she seriously wouldn’t have made it through this novel. Not one word.
Mia Winters felt that love itself wasn’t a crime.
But loving someone until you were dirt-cheap, until you lost all your dignity and even lost yourself? Yeah, that was just plain brain-dead.
And Vincent Shaw was no better.
If you didn’t love someone, fine. You could just say no.
But he didn’t reject her. Instead, he used the original Mia while mocking her, trampling her, messing with her feelings like it was some sick game. That made him a full-on premium-grade trash man.
With her phone in hand, she carefully made her way back to her room on the first floor. Looking at the cramped little space in front of her, somehow even more suffocating than the novel had described, Mia Winters took a long, deep breath.
There was a saying: endure long enough and the knife hangs over your own head.
But honestly, if someone had to get cut, better them than her.
Life was already hard enough as it was.
So if she had to go a little unhinged? Whatever. Bring it on.
