I should have been dead.
The last thing I remembered was the blaring horns, the screech of tires, and the violent crash that ripped me out of existence. Everything after that was just… silence. Cold, endless silence.
But when I opened my eyes again, I wasn't lying in a mangled wreck on the highway. I was staring at a crystal chandelier above me, golden lights shimmering across a bedroom so vast it could have swallowed my old apartment three times over.
The sheets beneath me were silk. The air smelled faintly of expensive cologne. My hands—no, these weren't my hands—were smooth, pale, and adorned with a platinum ring that screamed wealth.
Panic surged through me. I stumbled out of bed and caught my reflection in the massive mirror on the wall.
Sharp jawline. Black hair slicked back in perfect order. Cold gray eyes that didn't belong to me.
I knew that face.
I had written that face.
Adrian Blackwood.
The villain's heir.
The man destined to burn everything he touched.
My breath caught in my throat. This wasn't a dream. I had woken up inside the very novel I abandoned years ago. A story where Adrian Blackwood was nothing more than the stepping stone for the male lead's glory.
And I knew exactly how it ended.
Adrian's life unraveled piece by piece—betrayed by his family, destroyed by rivals, and eventually executed like a rabid dog in the streets.
That was the fate waiting for me.
Unless…
"No," I whispered to myself, clutching the edge of the dresser until my knuckles turned white. "Not this time."
If I was really trapped in this body, then I had one advantage the original Adrian never had: I knew the script.
I knew who would betray me.
I knew which deals would collapse.
I knew the face of the woman who would one day bring Adrian to his knees.
…Her.
Her smile flashed in my memory—radiant, untouchable, forbidden. The daughter of my family's greatest enemy. The one woman Adrian should have never touched. The one who would eventually be the sword at his throat.
And yet, my chest tightened at the thought of her.
Because even in the story I wrote, I never truly hated her.
In a world of bloodlines and betrayal, she had been the single light. Untouchable, unreachable… and doomed to belong to someone else.
But I wasn't just Adrian anymore.
I was Daniel Lee. A failed writer who never had the guts to finish his own story. Now, fate had shoved me into the unfinished pages and handed me the pen.
For the first time, I could rewrite it.
This world was darker than ink, filled with daggers behind every smile and poison in every glass of wine. But if I wanted to live—if I wanted to claim her, protect her, and tear down the ending carved for me—I had to embrace the villain inside me.
No more cowardice.
No more hesitation.
If the world wanted a villain, then I would be one.
But this time, the story would end my way.
This time, the villain would win.