MasukChapter 292 Ethan's POV I barely noticed when the light started fading. Didn't register the sun moving across the sky, didn't feel the temperature dropping as evening approached. All I could see was her face. Cynthia’s face. The memory had ignited something in my brain — not everything, not a flood of returned memories like I desperately wished for—but enough. Enough to remember the curve of her jaw, the exact shade of her eyes, the way her blonde hair fell just to her shoulders. I needed to get it down on paper before it faded. Before the details blurred back into the fog that had consumed the last six months of my life. I'd found paper in Prisca's room and a pencil, and I'd started drawing. Over and over. Sketch after sketch. The first one was wrong — her eyes weren't quite right, too wide, too round. The second was closer but her nose was off, too sharp. The third was better. The fourth is even more so. I kept going, my hand moving frantically across the page, erasi
Chapter 291Ethan's POVPrisca's lips were soft against mine.Warm. Insistent. Moving with a hunger I couldn't reciprocate but couldn't seem to escape either.My hands were on her bare shoulders—when had I let them get there?—and she was pressed against me, her naked body seeking heat and connection and something I couldn't give her.This is wrong, the rational part of my brain screamed. Stop. Push her away. This isn't—And then I felt a bright and sudden and overwhelming.Like lightning cracking across a dark sky.…I was in a car.Night outside. The ocean somewhere close—I could hear waves.And there was a woman beside me.Short blonde hair. Beautiful face. Eyes that held years of pain and longing and something fierce that made my chest ache.Cynthia.My wife.I could see her. Actually see her for the first time in six months.I had just finished kissing her then I led her to a beach house close by and she turned and looked at me."Kiss me again," she said, her voice raw, desperate.
Chapter 290Ethan's POVPrisca stood completely naked in front of me.No hesitation. No shyness. No attempt to cover herself.Just bare skin and deliberate seduction, her body positioned in a way that was impossible to ignore.And despite everything—despite the confusion clouding my mind, despite the emptiness where my memories should be, despite the desperate loneliness that had been my constant companion for six months—I felt my body respond.Heat pooled low in my stomach.Blood rushed places it hadn't in half a year.My breath caught.Because it had been so long.Six months since I'd woken up in this farm house with no memory of who I was or how I'd gotten there.Six months of living in this isolated farmhouse with Gavin and Prisca, working the fields, trying desperately to piece together fragments of a life I couldn't remember.Six months without touch. Without intimacy. Without anything resembling normalcy.And my body—traitorous, desperate thing that it was—wanted this.Wanted t
Chapter 289Cynthia's POVI was still trying to figure out how to politely extract my hand from Nikolai's when he suddenly smiled and said, "I have something for you."Before I could respond, he stood up from his seat and moved around the table to stand behind me."Nikolai, what are you…" I started.I felt something cool and delicate settle against my collarbone, heard the soft click of a clasp being fastened at the nape of my neck.A necklace.He'd put a necklace on me."There," Nikolai said, his voice warm with satisfaction. "Perfect."I reached up instinctively, my fingers finding the pendant—something smooth and substantial, probably expensive if I had to guess based on the weight of it."What is this?" I asked, my voice coming out sharper than I'd intended.Nikolai returned to his seat, looking pleased with himself."Just something I saw on my way to your restaurant," he said casually. "I thought it would be beautiful on you."The words hung in the air between us.Just something
Chapter 288Ethan's POVSix months.One hundred and eighty-three days since I'd woken up in a strange bed, pain radiating through my chest, my head pounding, my memories completely blank except for fragments — scattered pieces of a puzzle I couldn't put together.My name was Ethan.I knew that much because the old man who'd found me half-dead in his field had gone through my pockets looking for identification and found nothing except a wedding ring.A simple gold band that had two names engraved on the inside.Ethan & CynthiaEthan. That was me.And Cynthia... Cynthia was someone important. Someone I'd married. Someone I needed to find.But I didn't know who she was.Couldn't picture her face. Couldn't recall a single moment we'd shared together.Just her name, burning in my mind like a brand.Cynthia.The old man's name was Gavin.He was in his seventies, weathered and bent from decades of farm work, with kind eyes and calloused hands that had carefully tended to my wounds when he'd
Chapter 287Cynthia's POVNikolai had insisted on staying to help me close up the restaurant.We moved through the space together in comfortable rhythm—him wiping down the counters in the prep area while I organized the sample menus and design sketches I'd been reviewing earlier."I still can't believe they actually found him," I said, breaking the silence. "After all this time, Pascal was just... here. In Missford. The whole time."Nikolai looked up from the counter he was cleaning, his expression thoughtful."It makes sense, though," he said. "Sometimes the best place to hide is in plain sight. The police were searching everywhere except right under their noses.""But now they have him," I said, unable to keep the excitement from my voice. "Or they're close to having him. And once they do, he'll have to tell them where Ethan is. He'll have to—"My voice caught, emotion threatening to overwhelm me.Nikolai set down the cloth he'd been using and crossed the kitchen to stand beside me.
Chapter 60 Cynthia's POV I stared at my phone, watching it ring and ring until it went to voicemail. Ethan wasn't answering. Perhaps he was deliberately ignoring me. After what happened, standing him and Amber up without so much as a proper explanation — I couldn't blame him. He was angry. He h
Chapter 67Cynthia's POVI'd come all this way… flown across an ocean, abandoned my restaurant in crisis and I couldn't even bring myself to walk into my son's room.Pathetic.I pulled out my phone and called the security detail Nathaniel had arranged. "I'm ready to be picked up. Front entrance.""
Chapter 64Kevin's POVI am doing this for my sister and my nephew.That's what I kept telling myself as I pulled into the hospital parking lot. The address Cynthia had forwarded me led to Missford General, a sprawling medical complex that I'd driven past a hundred times but never had reason to ent
Chapter 59 Ethan's POV The hangover hit me like a freight train the moment I opened my eyes. Sunlight streamed through the curtains with aggressive brightness, and my head throbbed with each pulse of my heartbeat. My mouth tasted very awkward, and when I tried to sit up, the room spun sickeningl







