chapter 2: Stranger in My Own Home

The doctor’s words clung to Amelia like a curse.

“Mrs. Blackwood, your husband suffered a head injury. Temporary memory loss is common. Don’t pressure him to remember. Familiarity may help… or it may not. Recovery takes time.”

Time. The one thing she no longer had.

Amelia nodded weakly, though the doctor’s explanation did little to soothe her. How could she “not pressure him” when he had just denied her very existence? How could she sit back and wait while Damien—her husband—looked at her with the eyes of a stranger?

When she returned to his room, her heart lurched.

Damien was no longer in the bed.

Instead, he stood by the window, tall and imposing despite the hospital gown. His posture was perfect, regal even, as though he had stepped straight from the pages of a financial magazine instead of an ICU ward.

The nurse beside him stammered nervously. “Mr. Blackwood, please, you need to rest—”

He silenced her with one glance, the same icy authority that had once made entire boardrooms tremble. Even weakened, he radiated power.

Amelia swallowed hard. This was still Damien Blackwood. The world’s billionaire titan. The man who had saved her family from ruin—and destroyed her heart in the process.

But he didn’t recognize her.

His dark gaze slid to her, sharp and cutting. “You again.”

Her throat tightened. “I told you… I’m your wife.”

His expression hardened, lips curling in disdain. “Impossible. I’d remember if I had shackled myself to someone like you.”

Her chest ached, but she refused to flinch. She had endured two years of his coldness, of existing in the shadows of his empire. She could endure this too—she had to.

“Damien,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “Please… we stood at the altar. You said vows. You—”

“Enough.” His command cracked like a whip, silencing her. He stepped closer, towering over her, his cologne—familiar yet foreign—wrapping around her. “You want me to believe we’re married? That you are Amelia Blackwood?”

“Yes,” she breathed, clutching her handbag like armor. “Because it’s the truth.”

He studied her for a long, unbearable moment. His gaze lingered on her simple dress, her trembling hands, the ring glinting faintly on her finger.

And then he laughed—soft, dangerous, mocking.

“My wife, if I had one, wouldn’t look at me with fear.”

Her nails dug into her palms, fighting the tears that threatened. “You’re wrong,” she said quietly, surprising even herself with the steadiness in her tone. “I may have feared your silence, your indifference. But I never feared you.”

His eyes flickered, just for a second, as though her words had struck something buried deep. But then the steel returned.

“Until I confirm the truth,” Damien said finally, his voice a mixture of command and warning, “you will stay. But don’t mistake this for acceptance.”

Her pulse raced. “Stay…?”

“Yes.” He turned back to the window, dismissing her as though she were an employee rather than a wife. “Stay here. In my home. Until I know whether you’re a liar… or a fool.”

The words stung, but she forced herself to nod. Leaving him now would mean surrender. And Amelia Blackwood refused to be erased.

As the nurse guided her out, Amelia’s mind spun with dread. Damien’s accident had wiped away her fragile place in his life. If he no longer remembered her, what was to stop someone else from stepping in to replace her completely?

And as she walked through the hospital corridors, her fear sharpened into a chilling realization:

She wasn’t just fighting Damien’s memory. She was fighting for her very existence in his world.