Chapter 003

Lisa's POV 

Before I could react, the attackers had suddenly seized me again, rough hands tearing at my clothes and underwear as I struggled beneath them. Panic consumed me, my cries swallowed by the storm. The man they called boss unbuckled his belt and forced me down, pinning me beneath him, his weight crushing, his breath foul against my skin.

And just as he was about to thrust inside me, something in me suddenly snapped.

With the last of my strength, I twisted free just enough to drive my knee hard between his legs. His scream tore through the night as he collapsed, and in that single moment of chaos, I ran.

I didn’t think. I didn’t look back. I just stood up and ran, running as fast as I could.

But before I could even go far, gunshots suddenly rang out behind me. They missed at first, but when they fired at me again, the bullet tore straight into my shoulder, pain exploding through me. Still, I kept going until I reached the edge of the bridge, and without hesitation, I jumped.

Within seconds, I hit the water with a violent splash, the impact knocking the air out of my lungs as the cold swallowed me whole. My body went rigid, shock freezing me for a moment as I sank beneath the surface, everything around me fading into a heavy, silent blur. In that moment, only one thought stayed with me—

I would rather die than let those monsters touch me. But I still couldn’t believe that my ex-husband, Christopher, would go as far as sending men to execute me.

~~~~Three days later~~~~

I woke up slowly, my body heavy and aching as if every part of me had been dragged through fire. The pain made it difficult to even breathe properly, and for a moment I couldn’t understand where I was or how I had ended up here.

The last thing I remembered was the bridge, the rain, the gunshots… and then I was drowning.

The room I was in looked like a hospital at first glance, but something about it didn’t feel like one. The equipment was too refined, the space too controlled, and the atmosphere felt too quiet. 

It felt like a hospital had been carefully built inside a mansion, hidden away from the world. Before I could process anything further, I noticed someone sitting close to my bed.

My breath caught the moment I finally recognized him—Mr. Vincent Storm, Christopher’s father. The same man I had only seen once in five years, on my wedding day, when he had appeared briefly as the groom’s father and disappeared before the ceremony even ended properly. 

Since then, I hadn’t seen my father-in-law again, nor had I been able to get in touch with him.

I had tried more than once to ask Christopher about him, but he never welcomed the topic. He always shut it down immediately, changing the conversation as though the man didn’t exist at all.

And yet now… he was here, sitting beside me as though this was perfectly normal.

I tried to push myself up, but a sharp pain shot through my entire body, forcing me back down before I could even properly react. Only then did he finally speak—leaning slightly back in his chair as if nothing about the situation was unusual at all.

“The strongest survivor is back to life,” he said calmly, almost casually, like he was commenting on something ordinary rather than the fact that I had just escaped death.

My throat felt dry as I forced the words out. “Where am I?”

Vincent didn’t hesitate. “Brazil,” he said almost immediately.

The answer hit me so hard I almost sat up despite the pain. My voice rose instantly, disbelief and shock flooding through me. “What the fuck am I doing in Brazil? How the hell did I get to Brazil?”

He studied me for a moment, completely unbothered by my reaction, before leaning back again as if he had all the time in the world. “Have you forgotten?” he said quietly. “You were almost killed by the man you lived with for five years. The same man you loved, the same man you supported when he had nothing, the same man whose company you built from the ground up. And yet, he rewarded you with betrayal and sent people to erase you.”

My chest tightened painfully as I stared at him. “How do you even know all of that?” I asked, my voice breaking slightly despite my effort to stay composed.

That was when his expression changed just slightly, as if something long buried had finally surfaced. “Because I have been watching you, Lisa” he said. “For five years. Since the moment you married my son.”

The words didn’t register immediately. My mind refused to accept what I was hearing, but he continued anyway, his tone steady, controlled, almost like he had been waiting for this moment for a long time.

“I studied everything about you,” he continued. “Your background, your identity, the life you tried to hide. I even know what you’ve been running from. You are not just anyone, Lisa. You are the daughter of the late founders of Maxwell Holdings.”

My entire body went cold. My lips parted, but no words came out. I felt my thoughts scatter as the truth he was revealing started to sink in, and for the first time since waking up, I felt completely speechless.

“How….how—” I swallowed hard, “How the hell did you know that—?” I choked.

The man watched me carefully for a moment before continuing, his gaze steady and undeniably seductive.

Even in his stillness, there was something unmistakably eye-catching about him—a striking appearance that made him look far younger than he was.

His features were sharp yet refined, carrying a quiet pull that made it hard for any woman to look away after the first glance.

Compared to Christopher, his charm was even more intense.

And if Christopher carried himself like power wrapped in charm, then this man embodied something even more dangerous—controlled, effortless allure, the kind that didn’t need attention to command it.

After a final, careful look at me, he leaned back slightly and began to speak at last.

He began to explain his past—how he had remarried seven years ago after losing his first wife twenty-one years earlier during childbirth.

“I got married to Christopher’s mother seven years ago,” he started calmly, his voice steady as though he were recalling something distant, yet still sharp in his memory. “She already had Christopher when I met her, and I didn’t see that as a problem. I had a son too, Lucian, so I thought it would work… I thought they would grow up like brothers under one roof.”

He paused for a moment, his gaze hardening slightly before he continued.

“But things are never that simple,” he said quietly. “At some point, everything started falling apart. I had a fatal car accident that left me in the hospital for a year—an entire year of silence, away from everything I had built, everything I trusted.”

His jaw tightened, but he didn’t stop.

“When I woke up,” he said, his voice lowering slightly, “my son, Lucien, was dead. The reports claimed he had been involved in drugs and was jailed after being found guilty. To cut the story short, they said he died in prison four months later from food poisoning.”

“And just like that,” he added quietly, “I returned to a world where my son was no more.”

Vincent let out a slow breath, as though holding something heavier inside him. Then he continued.

“At first, I refused to believe it. I thought it was a mistake—something impossible, something I could still fix. But when I began investigating everything myself, digging through the dirt and gathering evidence piece by piece, the truth became clear. My son had been innocent… and Christopher had orchestrated everything. He destroyed my son to save himself from being exposed.”

He stopped, swallowing hard as he sniffed softly, his voice breaking as he continued, “I knew my son would never do drugs. I could swear Lucien was the last person on earth who would ever touch them.”

Vincent’s eyes lifted to mine now, sharper, colder.

“My son didn’t do it,” he said firmly. “Christopher framed him. He set everything up just to save his own sorry ass. That bastard took my son from me.”