"He Traded Me for His First Love, Not Knowing I'm a Vampire "

Chapter 3

I stared at her, confused. "Who's this Ziya you're talking about?"

She choked for a second, completely thrown off. "You don't even know who Ziya is?"

From what she said, I finally put two and two together. The sister everyone kept going on about was Ziya.

Jaxsen's childhood sweetheart, the one that got away, his ex-girlfriend.

Back then, after a huge fight, Ziya had left the country to study abroad and broken up with him.

Jaxsen stayed single for ages after that, right up until he met me.

The girl sneered, "If it weren't for that face of yours, Jaxsen wouldn't even spare you a second glance. Know your place. Don't go thinking you're actually his real girlfriend."

She spun on her heel and stormed back into the private room, while I stood there, my heart stinging like someone was jabbing it over and over with a needle.

I thought back to that night Jaxsen got blackout drunk. He'd clung to me, slurring the name "Yeya" over and over.

Oh. It had never been "Yeya"—the pet name I thought he had for me. It was short for Ziya.

A month later, Ziya actually came back to the country.

Jaxsen got all spacey and distracted, zoning out nonstop when he was with me.

I rested my cheek in my palm and said flatly.

"You're missing Ziya, aren't you?"

After his friends let things slip again and again, I'd pieced together just how head over heels Jaxsen had been for Ziya back in the day.

He'd dropped out of the national Olympiad math competition for her, even cut ties with his own parents.

He'd kept it from everyone when he went skydiving with her, just to make her 18th birthday wish come true.

The Jaxsen back then was nothing like the calm, mature guy he was now.

Every single part of his youth had revolved around Ziya.

At my words, Jaxsen froze for a beat, then chuckled softly and tapped the tip of my nose.

"What made you think of her? That's all ancient history. Right now, you're the only one in my heart, Yeya."

He hung up on dozens of incoming calls from Ziya.

He turned down every group hangout invite his friends sent his way, too.

He looked like he was fully determined to scrub Ziya from his world entirely.

All that came crashing down the day Ziya was kidn*pped.

Jaxsen wrenched his hand out of mine so hard his fingers shook, then bolted outside like a man possessed. "Ziya!"

The video the kidnappers sent showed Ziya tied to a chair, passed out cold.

Jaxsen stared at the screen, eyes bloodshot, like he would jump straight through the screen if he could.

The kidnappers, using a voice changer, demanded a ransom of thirty million. Worse, they explicitly demanded that I be the one to come exchange for the hostage.

"The one that got away or your current girlfriend? Let's see how you choose, Young Master Grant."

Jaxsen's face crumpled with conflict. He swiped his arm violently across the table, sending everything on it crashing to the floor with a loud clatter.

"It's got to be the Thorne family! It has to be! k********g me once wasn't enough for them, they still won't give up this grudge! I'm sorry, Yeya... I can't let anything happen to Ziya."

The words had barely left his mouth when he ordered his men to knock me out and stuff me into the car.

Why couldn't he have just talked to me first?

Ziya meant the world to him, but he meant just as much to me.

If he had just asked me for help, I would never have said no.

But he didn't even give me a chance to speak.

He just sent me straight off to the kidnappers.

When we swapped places, all I could hear was Ziya sniffling and sobbing. "Waa, Jaxsen... I thought you really weren't gonna come for me."

Jaxsen's eyes were blazing with relief at getting her back. He held her so tight it looked like he was trying to merge her right into his own body.

Ziya's eyes fluttered shut, and she went limp in his arms.

In that split second, nothing else mattered to Jaxsen. He scooped her up in his arms and yelled at his men to floor it to the hospital.

Soon, the car's exhaust fumes vanished into the distance, and it was completely out of sight. All that was left was me, tied up and helpless, and a crew of vicious, scowling kidnappers.