Chapter 1

My body lay faceup at the end of an alley. My face was unrecognizable.

The people who reported the body said I was covered in wounds, my face slashed beyond recognition.

Even the officers who found me doubled over and vomited.

One of them, a seasoned officer named Marcus Reed, was furious. "What kind of grudge could drive someone to do this? Poor girl."

They called in the medical examiner. Julian, my husband of three years.

Julian was wearing the white coat I'd ironed for him more times than I could count. He crouched beside me, but the moment he saw my face, he froze.

The city's best medical examiner had handled countless bodies and seen every kind of horror, yet the sight of me stopped him cold.

He stared at my unrecognizable face, then at the wounds covering my body. He swallowed hard and said nothing for a long time.

Marcus spoke first, his voice heavy. "Every one of these wounds was inflicted while she was alive. She must have been in agony, but her tongue had been cut out. She couldn't even scream."

Julian said quietly, "I'll find out exactly what happened to you, and I'll find whoever did this."

Marcus nodded. "With Julian on the case, we'll have it solved in no time."

Julian crouched beside me, my blood on his gloves, promising me justice.

He had no idea he was the reason I'd ended up in their hands.

That day, after I refused to donate bone marrow to Alice, he slammed the door and went to her. And right after that, masked men broke into our house and took me.

While I was tied to a chair in a warehouse, the men torturing me made a phone call. Before long, Alice walked in.

"Clara, don't blame me. Blame yourself for getting in my way. As long as you're alive, Julian will never be mine!

"So you have to die!"

I looked at her face, twisted with hatred, and finally understood. She was the one behind the whole kidnapping, because I stood between her and Julian.

Later, just for fun, the men tossed a phone in front of me and told me to call Julian.

Still bound to the chair, I dialed his number again and again with shaking hands, blood running down my wrist onto the screen.

But he never picked up. I called seven times, and he hung up on every one.

In the end, he sent a single cold text. "I'm with Alice. I don't want to fight with you. Think about what you did tonight!"

I stared at that message and couldn't tell what hurt more, my heart or my wounds.

After those seven calls, I never got to make an eighth...

My body had been brought to his autopsy table. Julian turned to his assistant. "Go over everything. Don't miss a single clue."

I stood behind him, looking at his clenched jaw, and my heart ached.

He cared more about a nameless dead woman than he ever had about his living wife.

His assistant, Allen Park, sighed. "She must've made a very dangerous enemy. Why else would someone torture her like this?"

Julian's expression hardened. "Whoever did this, I'll catch them. This poor woman deserves justice."

Standing beside him, I almost laughed. He still didn't know that the poor woman he was talking about was the wife he'd called selfish.

Julian and I had met five winters ago. It snowed hard that winter.

After work, he'd always take a detour to the shop where I worked, cupping his freezing ears and insisting he was just "passing by."

Later he admitted he'd come just to see me.

After that came the flowers, the movies, the trips...

Two years later, he proposed. His hands shook as he pulled out the ring. "Clara, marry me. I'll love you for the rest of my life. I'll be good to you, and I'll never let anything hurt you."

Marriage wasn't quite as sweet as when we were dating, but we were happy.

Until six months ago, when Alice came back from Paris.

She was his first love. Back then, she'd dumped him for being too poor and never looked back.

Now that he was famous and had money, she came back for him.

She cried and said she'd only left because she'd been diagnosed with a serious illness. The treatment was so expensive, and she didn't want to drag him down, so she'd said those cruel things on purpose to push him away.

Julian's expression softened at once, the coldness gone from his eyes, and he let her throw herself into his arms.

After that, nothing between us was ever the same.