Chapter 1

I was brutally attacked and suffered traumatic amnesia.

My husband and son confiscated my phone and moved me to an unfamiliar city.

Claiming they wanted to spare me the agony of remembering, they locked me in a golden cage.

They forbade me from setting foot outside, but allowed me to do whatever I wanted inside the sprawling estate.

Like solving ciphers.

I had a natural obsession with cryptography.

Two months in, I stared at the chaotic, grotesque scars on my right arm and deciphered eight words:

"Find the truth. Escape them."

Standing before the vanity mirror, I saw an impeccably dressed woman with a bloodless face. My eyes were hollow, numb with confusion.

I had no memories. Yet my gut screamed that I was utterly miserable.

Every fiber of my being recoiled from the husband and son who treated me with sickening devotion.

I slipped out of my silk robe, exposing skin covered in jagged, ugly scars.

My husband, Vincent Vance, told me I had survived a horrific assault. He claimed a criminal left these marks, and the sheer trauma erased my past.

Yet… the scars carved into my right forearm were different from the rest. They weren't made by a blade. They were gouged out, pinch by pinch, bitten raw with human teeth.

I had lined them up. The faint bite marks matched my own teeth perfectly.

I had done this to myself.

I closed my eyes, piecing together a terrifying realization:

Before whatever happened to me, I knew I was going to lose my mind. I mutilated my own flesh to leave an unbreakable warning.

"Find the truth. Escape them."

My amnesia wasn't an accident. It was forced on me.

Vincent lied to me.

So who were "they"? Who was I running from?

"Clara, honey! I’m home!"

Vincent's cheerful voice echoed from the foyer.

I quickly pulled on my robe, collected my composure, and painted a tender, wifely smile onto my lips.

Walking out of the bathroom, I saw Vincent holding a large bag of fresh, live seafood.

My throat tightened, a sudden craving hitting me.

I loved fresh seafood. Even amnesia couldn't kill my physical instincts.

And right alongside that craving was an overwhelming wave of disgust toward Vincent.

"You must be exhausted, Vincent. Let me cook dinner," I said softly, brushing imaginary dust off his tailored blazer. I naturally took the groceries and headed into the kitchen.

Vincent lingered in the living room, calling over one of the maids.

There were sixteen maids in this villa, rotating day and night.

Except when I was in the bathroom or asleep, I was never out of their sight.

Hearing his footsteps approach, I unclenched my trembling fists and took a steadying breath.

"The usual?" I asked with a smile. "Steamed crab, and the rest into a rich chowder?"

He wrapped his arms around me from behind, resting his chin on my shoulder. "Whatever you want, sweetheart."

That evening, our son, Lucas, called to say he was stuck working late at the office.

Vincent went to bed early and asked me to wear sheer silk lingerie.

Enduring sheer nausea, I let him have his way with me for half an hour. While he showered, I lay drenched in sweat, staring at the ceiling.

On the nightstand rested our framed wedding photo. Inside the drawer below were our marriage certificate and a DNA paternity test confirming Lucas was my biological son.

They intentionally kept those documents in plain sight to win my trust.

I played along. For two months, I gave them the performance of a lifetime, slowly earning tiny shreds of freedom.

Eventually, they let me look through some of my old belongings.

I was forty-four. Among the boxes, I found a personal diary that ended when I was forty-one.

When Vincent walked out of the bathroom, I was flipping through the pages.

He sat beside me, his eyes softening with apparent sentiment as he pointed to the entry I was reading.

"That was your thirty-eighth birthday. Lucas and I bought you that beachfront villa in Malibu. You cried so hard. Look at those faint water stains—probably your tears from that night."

My eyes welled with fake emotion. "Vincent… you're so good to me. I'm older now, my mind is broken, and my body is covered in hideous scars. Yet you still love me."

He chuckled softly. "Older? You look stunning. If you didn't tell people, they’d swear you were barely thirty."

I stayed silent, my eyes glued to the last two lines of the page.

Judging by the ink, they had been added much later.

Underneath the casual handwriting lay a hidden cipher. Decoded, it formed a string of numbers: "1-3-5-2-5-0-6…"

A phone number.

I burned every digit into my brain, then turned the page casually.

"Vincent… tomorrow is my birthday again."

"Can we go out? Just for a little while?"