Chapter 1 — Reborn to Love the Perfect One

The alarm bell rang at exactly six o'clock in the morning, monotonous and regular as usual, but Vệ Ánh Vy lay motionless on the bed for nearly a minute, her eyes opened wide, staring at the familiar ceiling, her heart trembling as if she had just fallen from a cliff.

She still clearly remembered her last sensations: the blinding headlights, the sound of breaking glass, the pain tearing through her chest, and, amid the cooling breath of death, a face bending over her and calling her name in a broken voice. It had not been Chu Bách Nam's face—the man she had devoted her youth to loving like a younger brother—but that of a quiet colleague whose real name and identity she had never known, though he had silently watched her for years.

Ánh Vy raised a hand to cover her face, feeling each heartbeat pound beneath her ribs. This was no nightmare. It had really happened: on the night of Chu Bách Nam's graduation ceremony, a day that should have filled her with pride after years of nurturing him, she had been betrayed by the person she loved most, dragged into a spiral of slander, rejected by her father's board of directors, and finally killed in a midnight crash on an empty road.

She sat up, pulled aside the silk blanket, and stepped onto the cold wooden floor. The room's layout and the family photo on the dressing table—including the silhouette of the mother she had lost young—were exactly as they had been ten years earlier, when Ánh Vy was a senior preparing to graduate and take over part of her father's business at Vệ Thịnh Group.

She walked to the window, lifted the curtain and looked down at the villa yard. The familiar shuttle bus was already parked under the shade of a tree, and leaning against the car door was a tall, thin young figure, bowing his head to carefully wipe the rearview mirror. That was Chu Văn Đạt, the private driver who had served the Ve family for nearly twenty years, and standing next to him, holding a brand new leather briefcase that Ánh Vy had given him as a gift for early graduation, was Chu Bách Nam.

At the sight of him, memories of her past life rushed back like a fierce wave. She remembered how she had treated him: at fifteen, she had asked her father to send him to the same international school, paying the tuition because she pitied his family's poverty. At eighteen, she had given him his first car. At twenty-two, after he graduated from university abroad, she had persuaded his father to bring him into the company, trained him, introduced him to every partner, and treated him as the younger brother fate had never given her.

But in return, what did she get? A knife stabbed in the back, right when she needed his trust the most.

Ánh Vy tightened her grip on the window rail until her knuckles whitened. If God had truly granted her a second chance, she would not let history repeat itself. She would no longer be the naïve girl who believed blind kindness could reach everyone.

There was a light knock on the door, then the housekeeper's warm but somewhat tired voice rang out.

"Miss, the chairman has already had breakfast. He told you to remember to prepare your speech for the closing session this afternoon, and Ms. Tiêu Gia Hạnh also just called to ask."

"I know. Thank you, Auntie." Ánh Vy's voice sounded so calm that even she was surprised. Over the years of that former life, she had learned to control the emotions of someone who had stood at the height of fame and fallen to disgrace. That memory was now her sharpest weapon.

She walked to the dressing table and looked straight into the mirror. The twenty-two year old face reflected back, still intact with its innocence and never experienced in life, but the eyes carried a cold light that was completely unfamiliar. She gently touched her cheek, feeling the smooth skin without any scars from the years of suffering to come, if she didn't change anything.

Bách Nam's graduation ceremony would take place the following night. In her previous life, he had stood before the board, major partners, and the media to receive her father's company's "Outstanding Young Talent" award. Immediately afterward, urged on by Kiều Ý Nhi, he had publicly accused Ánh Vy of embezzling investment funds intended for key personnel—a fabricated crime staged so convincingly that no one could refute it at once.

That night, she drove away from the ceremony in humiliation, tears blurring her vision. And the cargo truck lost control and crashed straight into her right at the fateful turn.

"This time will be different," she whispered to herself, her voice soft but firm like an oath. "This time, I will not blindly give away everything I have. This time, I will clearly see who is sincere and who is fake, before giving anything away."

She remembered the last face she saw before closing her eyes, the face of her colleague named Bạch Dịch Phong, an ordinary employee in the Business Strategy department whom she once thought was just a hard-working, quiet guy, always standing quietly in the back of important meetings. She did not know, until the last moment of her life, that he was the heir to the Bạch Dương Group, one of the largest energy and technology corporations in the region, and that throughout the years working alongside her, he never took his eyes off her, never stopped silently protecting her in his own way.

"I said I'm sorry for being so late," She clearly remembered every word he said in her ear at that time, his voice trembled rarely. "You said you had collected enough evidence to exonerate me, but you were still one step late," he cried. A man she had never seen show any emotion in the three years she had worked with the company, knelt down next to her in a pool of blood on the asphalt, holding her hand tightly until the last bit of warmth disappeared.

Ánh Vy took a deep breath and straightened. She did not know whether Dịch Phong would still work at her father's company in this life or keep his ordinary-employee disguise. But if he was still there, she would not let his sincere feelings remain buried in silence until the last minute of her life.

She opened her wardrobe and chose a simple but sharp navy blue suit, completely different from the elegant dresses she liked in her previous life. Standing in front of the mirror one last time, she told herself that from today, all her decisions would no longer come from pity or the loneliness she wanted to fill, but from the sanity of someone who had paid the price with her life.

When she walked down the stairs, Chu Bách Nam was already waiting in the lobby, a familiar smile on his lips, holding a cup of hot coffee that he knew she liked to drink every morning.

"Miss Ánh Vy, I've already made coffee for you. Are you tired today? Let me drive you to work, don't bother Mr. Dat."

That voice, that considerate attitude, were completely identical to what she had been used to for the past ten years. But this time, when looking into his eyes, Ánh Vy no longer saw the innocence and purity like before. She saw, hidden deep beneath that obedient shell, a small glimmer of calculation that she had never paid attention to before, never wanted to see.

"Thank you, but today I have personal matters to discuss with Mr. Dat before going to the company. Go ahead, don't wait for me," she replied, her voice was gentle but there was a vague boundary that she herself felt building up in front of him for the first time in her life.

Bách Nam paused for a moment, the smile on his lips stiffened for less than a second and then naturally returned as if nothing had ever happened. "Yes, please feel free."

Ánh Vy watched his back walking out the door, thinking to herself, this is just the first step in a long journey ahead. She still vividly remembers everything that would happen in the coming months: the conspiracy to seize shares, the appearance of Kiều Ý Nhi, the slander before the board of directors, and finally the fateful shareholders' meeting where everything would be exposed.

But this time, she will no longer be a passive pawn waiting for fate to be arranged. She will be the one to rewrite the entire chess game, move by move, starting from today.

Stepping out of the main door, Ánh Vy looked up at the clear blue sky over the sunlit villa grounds. An iron determination gradually formed in her heart: in this life, she would live for herself first and find the man who had secretly loved her all his life—the one she had missed in her previous life.