Chapter 2

𝐻𝐴𝑁𝑁𝐴𝐻

"He's suffering from amnesia," I heard the doctor say to his parents, the words bleeding through the thin wood of the office door while I sat on the waiting room bench outside.

Brenda had practically spat in my face when she told me to stay outside; her voice dripped with venom as she snarled that my presence was just unnecessary. I hadn't even fought her.

I had agreed right away because part of me simply didn't care what had happened to Jacob anymore.

But amnesia? That was a cruel twist I never saw coming.

Jacob couldn't remember a damn thing. Which meant he was completely spared from the memory of how brutally he'd treated me for the last three years.

"How come he has amnesia, Doctor?" Albert’s voice filtered out, thick with panic.

"He suffered a severe head injury during the accident, Mr. Lancaster. Frankly, it's a miracle he survived the crash at all, let alone wake up from coma so soon. Cases like this have low survival rate. Most patients are trapped in a vegetative state for years," the doctor explained.

"Is there anything we can do to force his memories back?" Brenda chimed in, her voice shrill with desperate ambition. "Jacob is the sole heir to the Lancaster empire. How is he supposed to manage the family business if he can't even remember his own name?"

"It's possible his memory will return, but pressing him right now will only cause psychological trauma," the doctor warned. "Let him piece it together at his own pace. He can still learn to run the business again... it's his personal history that's been erased."

My hands balled into tight fists, fingernails biting painfully into the fabric of my dress. A suffocating bitterness washed over me.

I wasn't relieved. I wasn't happy.

Why did he get the escape hatch?

Why did he get to hit reset and forget the endless nights he brought me to my knees in tears, just to rub it in my face that choosing to marry him was the most pathetic mistake of my life?

Why the hell did he get to walk away clean, while I was left carrying the weight of our history alone?

I was painted because I was now the only one with the memory of how our marriage had been like.

"Rest assured, Mr. and Mrs. Lancaster, time often brings these memories back," the doctor offered gently.

A few minutes later, the door clicked open. As Brenda and Albert stepped out, I forced my trembling legs to push me to my feet.

Brenda’s eyes locked onto mine, burning with a familiar, searing hatred that used to make me flinch. Now, it just made me sick.

"Why are you still hovering around here?" she spat, her lip curling in disgust.

"What kind of question is that, Brenda?" Albert snapped, placing a steadying, reprimanding hand on her arm. "Hannah is our son's wife."

He was the only one in the Lancaster family who had ever shown me a shred of kindness.

"His wife?" Brenda scoffed. "She was already drafting the divorce papers before the accident! Jacob told me everything right before his accident!"

"You can rest easy, Brenda. The divorce is still happening," I said, my voice eerily calm. "I'm only standing here today because this is officially the very last time I will ever play the dutiful wife to your son."

"How dare you speak to me with that tone!" she shrieked, stepping forward with her hand raised, ready to strike me, but Albert hauled her back.

"Don't try to make a scene, Brenda," he cautioned her.

"Don't try to make a scene? Did you hear the sheer disrespect coming out of her mouth?!" she hissed, squirming against his grip.

For three years, I had been Brenda Lancaster’s quiet, obedient little puppet. I swallowed her insults, jumped at her commands, and took her abuse with a forced smile, all because a desperate, naive part of me hoped that one day she might love me like a daughter-in-law.

But just like her son, her heart was a stone.

Both mother and son shared the exact same sick obsession: my stepsister. In their eyes, Chloe was a saint. Chloe was perfection incarnate.

Even my own father looked at Chloe like a miracle and looked at me like a footnote.

"I have despised you from the very second I set eyes on you, Hannah!" Brenda snarled. "If you hadn't used your stupid kidney as leverage to trap Jacob when Chloe was dying, he never would have looked twice at you, let alone put a ring on your finger!"

The truth of her words hit me like a physical blow, knocking the breath from my lungs, because she was right.

It was the stupidest, most desperate mistake of my life.

When Chloe suffered renal failure and Jacob came to me on his knees, begging and crying for me to save her, I saw a golden ticket to the love I’d craved my whole life. I agreed to undergo major surgery and hand over a piece of my own body on the condition that he marry me.

He didn't hesitate for a second. He gave up his freedom without a fight because he loved her that much.

And I was too blind, too pathetic, and too starved for affection to realize that buying a man's hand in marriage would never buy his heart.

"You don't need to waste your energy worrying about it anymore, Brenda," I said without flinching. "The divorce is going through, memory loss or not. You're finally going to get what you always wanted. Chloe will get to be your precious daughter-in-law at last."

I didn't wait around to watch her face twist with rage. I turned on my heel and walked away.

I didn't step foot in that hospital for days. Instead, I collapsed onto the guest bed at my best friend's apartment—the very lawyer handling my divorce papers.

Then, five days later, my phone buzzed with a call from the hospital network.

Jacob wanted to see me.

At first I didn't want to answer him, but I decided to. I needed to sign whatever needed signing, say whatever final words were required, and close the curtain on this nightmare forever.

When I pushed open the door to his sunlit VIP suite, he was standing by the floor-to-ceiling windows, staring absently down at the tiny figures on the street below.

"Jacob," I said, keeping my voice flat so he’d know he had a visitor.

He turned around slowly. His eyes locked onto mine, and suddenly, his face softened. "You came," he murmured, a faint, incredibly tender smile touching his lips.

It felt like an out-of-body experience. In three years of marriage, this man had offered me nothing but cold stares, cruel scowls, and disgusted sighs—never a smile. Never warmth.

Using his IV pole walker for balance, he slowly shuffled across the polished floor toward me. He stopped just inches away, his eyes scanning my face with an unreadable intensity.

"Why did you want to see me, Jacob?" I asked.

He tilted his head, his voice dropping into a soft murmur that shattered the silence of the room:

"You're really a bad wife, Hannah."

My jaw dropped.

A bad wife?

He was the one who had publicly humiliated me. He was the one who abandoned my bed to run to another woman.

He was the one who treated my existence like a curse, and he had the unmitigated audacity to look me in the eye and call me a bad wife?