Chapter 1

After My Husband Sent Me to a Psychiatric Hospital, I Decided to Fake My Death

Every time my fiancé found a mistress, I would order a male escort at a nightclub.

Until I caught him and my best friend in bed, and in a frenzy, I slept with his best friend, Ethan Hayes.

But after my fiancé found out, he only raised an eyebrow at Ethan Hayes in public at a business reception and said, “Have fun? How was my fiancée’s… service?”

Ethan Hayes had his arm around his new date and laughed without the slightest restraint. “Not bad, just a little uptight, nowhere near as good as that influencer last time.”

I completely broke down and slashed my wrist with a dinner knife in front of all the guests.

After I was saved, Adrian Blackwood sent me to a sanatorium on an isolated island.

After a year of electroshock therapy there, my fiancé finally came to pick me up.

But he did not know that I had already forgotten how to love him.

A staff member swiped open the heavy metal door. “Miss Bennett, your evaluation has been approved, and Mr. Blackwood has arrived.”

I sat on the hard plank bed, looked at the helicopter parked on the lawn outside the window, and nodded.

As I walked through the long, pure white corridor, I could hear the idle chatter coming from the control room behind me.

“She really knew how to make trouble. With someone like Mr. Blackwood, couldn’t she just turn a blind eye?”

“Exactly. He’s handsome and rich, so what’s wrong with him having a little fun once in a while? Why put herself through all this?”

A year ago, those voices were nails being driven into my eardrums.

Now, they were only voices.

Beside the helicopter, Adrian Blackwood wore a crisp cashmere coat and stood in the early winter wind.

I walked up to him.

He reached out, seeming to want to tuck my windblown hair behind my ear.

I moved one step ahead of him and gathered my hair myself.

His hand hovered in the air for a moment before slipping back into his coat pocket.

He pulled open the cabin door. “Get in.”

The cabin was filled with the unfamiliar scent of expensive perfume, and on the leather seat lay a wrinkled piece of expensive women’s lingerie.

Adrian Blackwood’s expression changed, and he quickly grabbed the lingerie and stuffed it into his coat pocket.

“My assistant is always careless. Don’t mind it.”

I smiled faintly without saying anything, because that style of lingerie was Sophia Lane’s favorite.

But it was fine, because I had stopped minding long ago.

I fastened my seat belt, looked out the window at the outline of the isolated island rapidly shrinking below, and smiled. “Okay.”

During the flight, Adrian Blackwood looked at me several times, his fingertips tapping unconsciously on his knee.

“On the island… did you adapt to the treatment?”

“Mm.” I looked at the clouds.

He continued, “I had the servants clean your things every day, so nothing gathered dust.”

“Thank you.”

He was silent for a while, then took a dark blue velvet square box from his pocket and opened it, revealing an unprecedentedly gorgeous diamond ring with a shockingly large center stone.

“The wedding will be held as scheduled next month. I’ve already reserved the seaside church you like.”

I did not look at the ring. “Cancel the wedding, Adrian.”

He frowned, closed the box, and stuffed it into my hand.

“Enough, stop throwing a tantrum. I slept with your best friend, and you slept with my best friend, so we’re even.”

“The position of Mrs. Blackwood will always be yours. Be good.”

I held the cold velvet box without opening it.

I was not throwing a tantrum.

I was just going somewhere else.

A distant, quiet seaside town, with a lighthouse and waves, without him, and without pain. The helicopter landed on the helipad on the top floor of the villa.

Everything was the same as always, yet everything was different.

I did not walk into the room that belonged to me and him, but dragged my suitcase toward the guest room.

Adrian Blackwood grabbed the handle of my suitcase. “What do you mean by this?”

“The room on the island was small, and I got used to it.” I stopped without turning around. “The master bedroom is too empty, so I can’t sleep there.”

I remembered the surveillance video where he held Sophia Lane’s waist on our custom water bed, while around her neck she wore the pearl necklace my mother had left me.

The pain in my heart at that moment was enough to make me die once.

Adrian Blackwood stared at me for a few seconds, then suddenly let out a scoff and released his hand.

“Suit yourself. Don’t go too far. My patience is limited.”

He turned and left, his back resolute.

I looked at him, and the place where my heart was felt as calm as a pool of dead water.

It seemed the sanatorium’s treatment really was effective, because I had already forgotten the feeling of my heart beating for him and my emotions rising and falling with him.

Late at night, I had grown used to the sanatorium’s hard plank bed, and now I was no longer used to sleeping on a soft bed.

During the more than three hundred days on the island, Adrian Blackwood had not called once and had not answered a single letter.

When fear soaked into my bones like ice water, I cried and begged the doctors, hitting my head against the wall, only asking them to let me call him.

Once, ten times, a hundred times…

There was only ever a busy tone in the receiver.

Later, I stopped calling.

When I got better, I no longer wanted to call either.