Chapter 1

The toy gun slipped from my hand and hit the floor with a dull thud.

The wariness in Oscar Stanton’s eyes didn’t ease in the slightest. After watching me in silence for a moment, he stripped off his shirt, took the barbed whip in both hands, and knelt rigidly in front of me.

“As long as you don’t hurt Cammie, you can whip me as many times as you want.”

I stared at his kneeling figure, my eyes burning with unshed tears.

“Oscar, do you remember why you brought Camilla back to the country in the first place?”

Oscar’s back stiffened. He lowered his gaze in fear, avoiding my eyes. “Those are the grievances of the previous generation. It has nothing to do with Cammie herself. She’s innocent.”

Camilla Isley was the daughter of my father’s mistress.

Her mother, Hester Isley, had been so determined to take my mother’s place that she drove her to jump from the twentieth floor.

After marrying into the Constantine family, Hester found endless ways to torment me.

On my eighteenth birthday, she drugged my milk and had me delivered to the bed of an older man who had AIDS.

Oscar saved me.

During the darkest years of my adolescence, he was the only light I had.

When I was twenty, my father’s investments failed and the Constantine family went bankrupt.

He liquidated every remaining asset, transferred all the money to Camilla and sent her overseas to escape the fallout.

Then he used my personal information to register me as the debtor, saddling me with hundreds of millions in debt.

While creditors beat me until I permanently lost the hearing in my left ear, Camilla sat beside the Seine, drinking coffee in the sun.

As I choked down dry bread in a cheap apartment, Camilla dined on thousand-dollar caviar at Michelin-starred restaurants.

When I was so poor that I had to sell my blood on the black market, she swept through luxury boutiques, buying enough designer handbags to fill an entire car trunk.

By the time Oscar found me, I weighed barely eighty pounds. I lay slumped across a bench in the clinic, too weak even to open my eyes.

He gathered my skeletal body into his arms. His eyes were bloodred as he gritted out each word.

“I swear I’ll make that bloodsucking parasite suffer a fate worse than death.”

But during the second year after Camilla was brought back, Oscar slept with her.

Once, he said that he would get justice for me to make up for the youth I had lost.

The boy who had once promised to get justice for me and protect me was now kneeling at my feet, telling me Camilla was innocent.

A tear struck the back of my hand, burning against my skin.

It felt as though someone had carved a piece out of my heart.

I stepped back, my voice barely more than a whisper.

“Let’s get a divorce, Oscar.”

Oscar’s head snapped up. His gaze was hateful, like I was an enemy.

The next second, one large hand came down on my pregnant belly and pressed viciously.

His voice was cold as ice.

“Haven’t you played this hard-to-get game enough? If Cammie loses so much as a single hair, I’ll make the baby in your belly pay with its life.”

My pupils contracted. It felt as though all the blood in my body had frozen, the cold spreading from my fingertips straight into my heart.

It was not the first time in the five years after Oscar’s affair that I brought up divorce.

But every time he signed the papers without so much as a frown, my hatred and resentment overwhelmed what little reason I had left.

I retaliated against Camilla like a woman possessed and found countless ways to torment Oscar.

I had pushed him so far that he had developed a conditioned stress response to my threats. He didn’t believe I would ever truly let him go.

As if sensing the danger, the baby inside me kicked restlessly.

The pain forced me to curl up on the floor.

There wasn’t a trace of concern in Oscar’s eyes. His voice was as calm as if he were merely delivering a notice. “Cammie had a scare. I need to take her to the hospital. I’ll go home with you after her check-up.”

He paused, then added as though he were making an enormous sacrifice, “I won’t see her again until after you’ve had the baby.”

With that, he stepped around me and walked straight into the bedroom.

The door slammed shut, leaving my ears ringing.

Leaning against the wall for support, I made my way out of the hotel one agonizing step at a time.

I had barely reached the lobby when my vision went black.

Then I lost consciousness.