From Ashes, A New Love Reborn

My husband, the city's most formidable lawyer, destroyed my family to protect his ex-girlfriend. He framed my brother, leading to my parents' deaths and our company's collapse.

He promised to free my brother if I stayed. But on the day of the final appeal, he never showed up.

My brother lost his last chance at freedom. I later found out why Hamilton was absent. He was at a picnic, celebrating his ex-girlfriend's dog's birthday.

My brother's life, my entire world, was worth less than a puppy. The love I had for him shattered into dust.

So I underwent an experimental therapy to erase him from my mind. When he finally tracked me down in Paris, begging me to come back, I looked at the man who had been my world and asked,

"I'm sorry, have we met?"

Chapter 1

April POV:

The first time my husband, Hamilton Jones, raped me, I did nothing. The second time, I called the police. It was Thanksgiving Day, our first as a married couple, and the smell of roasting turkey filled the air as I told the 911 operator that the man I had promised to love, honor, and cherish had just violated me.

When the two officers arrived at our penthouse apartment, their expressions were a mixture of confusion and deference. They knew Hamilton. Everyone in New York knew Hamilton Jones, the formidable corporate lawyer who had never lost a case.

"Mrs. Jones?" the older officer, a man named Peterson, asked cautiously. He kept glancing at Hamilton, who was leaning against the marble archway of our living room, looking completely unbothered. "There must be some misunderstanding."

"There' s no misunderstanding," I said, my voice trembling. I clutched the torn fabric of my silk dress at my chest. "I want to report him for rape."

The word hung in the air, ugly and sharp. The younger officer shifted uncomfortably.

Hamilton pushed himself off the wall and walked toward us, his expensive leather shoes making no sound on the polished floor. He was still in his bespoke suit, not a hair out of place. He looked at the officers with a familiar, charming smile. "Gentlemen, I apologize for my wife. She' s been under a lot of stress lately."

"Hamilton, don' t you dare," I hissed, taking a step back.

"April, darling, stop this," he said, his voice dropping to a low, intimate murmur that was meant only for me, but loud enough for them to hear the feigned concern. "You' re making a scene."

"I have evidence," I said, my voice rising with desperation. I turned to Officer Peterson, my eyes pleading. "My dress is torn. I have bruises." I pulled the collar of my dress aside to show the darkening marks on my shoulder.

Hamilton sighed, a long, theatrical sound of a man burdened by a hysterical wife. He ran a hand through his perfectly styled dark hair. "We had an argument, officers. Things got a little heated. It happens in a marriage."

He walked over to me, and I flinched, pressing myself back against the cold wall. The officers watched, their faces unreadable but their postures tense, ready to intervene but unsure on whose behalf.

Hamilton didn't touch me. He just stopped a foot away, his cologne, a scent I once loved, now suffocating me. "Tell them, April," he said softly, his grey eyes locking onto mine. "Tell them about the scratch on my arm from when you were on top of me an hour ago, begging for more."

A wave of nausea washed over me. He was twisting it, turning our lovemaking from earlier, the consensual part, into a weapon against the violence that came after. He lifted his sleeve, showing a faint red line on his forearm. "She likes it rough. Always has."

"That' s a lie!" I screamed, the sound tearing from my throat. "That was before! Before you..." I couldn' t say the words again. The shame was a physical weight, crushing my lungs.

He took another step, his presence overwhelming. He reached out and gently tucked a strand of my disheveled hair behind my ear. His touch felt like a brand. I tried to jerk away, but he was faster, his fingers brushing against my cheek in a parody of affection. "Don' t be difficult, April. We have guests coming. Your favorite cranberry sauce is on the stove."

My entire body went rigid. The casual mention of our life, of the mundane details of a holiday meal, felt more violent than his hands had been.

"Please," I whispered, looking past him to the officers. "You have to help me."

Officer Peterson cleared his throat. "Mr. Jones, perhaps it would be best if you gave your wife some space."

Hamilton smiled, a thin, cold smile that didn' t reach his eyes. "Of course." He stepped back, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. But his eyes never left mine, and in them, I saw a promise of what was to come. He held up the signed divorce agreement I had thrown at him an hour ago. "She's upset about this. She thinks she wants a divorce, but we both know she'll come to her senses."

The officers exchanged a look. A domestic dispute. A rich couple's fight. That' s all they saw.

"Ma' am," Peterson said, his tone now a practiced, patronizing calm. "Why don' t you both take a few hours to cool down? It' s a holiday. No need to ruin it over a fight."

Tears streamed down my face. It wasn' t a fight. It was the culmination of a year of hell.

It hadn't always been like this. Our first year of marriage had been a dream, the union of April Banks, a gifted painter from a respected family, and Hamilton Jones, the city' s most formidable legal mind. We were the picture of a perfect power couple.

Then Brittany Mccray returned.

Hamilton' s ex-girlfriend, a socialite with a venomous heart, came back to New York and wanted him back. When Hamilton rejected her, she didn't just go away. She plotted. She orchestrated a sophisticated scheme, framing my brother, Dudley Banks, a brilliant tech startup founder, for insider trading.

The scandal was a tidal wave. Our family's company, Banks Tech, which my father had built from the ground up, collapsed overnight. The stress of it all, the public shame and financial ruin, triggered a massive heart attack in my father. He died in my arms.

Two weeks later, my mother, unable to bear the weight of the debt collectors and the loss of her husband and the imprisonment of her son, walked to the roof of our family home and stepped off.

I was shattered, a ghost haunting the ruins of my life. My only hope was Hamilton. I begged him, on my knees, to defend Dudley. To use his legal prowess to save the last piece of my family.

He agreed. He held me, promised me he would fix everything.

Then he betrayed me.

On the day of the trial, he walked into the courtroom not as Dudley' s counsel, but as Brittany' s. He stood on the other side of the aisle, a ruthless gladiator, and used his intimate knowledge of our family and his unparalleled legal skill to ensure my brother was convicted. Dudley was sentenced to ten years in federal prison.

When I confronted him outside the courthouse, his face a mask of stone, his excuse was a twisted sense of duty. "Brittany was fragile," he' d claimed. "She was a victim. I owed it to her."

He believed he was indebted to her, a debt he repaid with my family' s blood and my sanity.

That was the day the psychological abuse began. Publicly, he was the doting husband, caring for his fallen, grieving wife. Privately, he was my jailer. He controlled my every move, thwarted every attempt to escape. Once, I made it as far as a private airfield, my escape a mere runway away, only to see his black town car screech onto the tarmac, followed by security. He had shut the entire airfield down to stop me.

He prioritized Brittany' s feigned PTSD over my genuine, crushing grief. My suffering was an inconvenience. Her fabricated trauma was a noble cause.

I tried to fight back. In a fit of desperate, grief-stricken rage, I told him I was pregnant with our child, and then, a week later, I told him I' d aborted it. I wanted to hurt him, to make him feel a fraction of the loss I felt.

He just looked at me, his eyes cold. "Good," he' d said. "I didn' t want a child from a woman whose family is mired in disgrace."

The finality in the officers' eyes now was the same as the finality in his. I was alone. Trapped.

Hamilton walked to the door, placing a hand on Officer Peterson' s shoulder. "Thank you for your time, gentlemen. I' ll make sure she gets some rest."

He was dismissing them. And they were letting him.

As they turned to leave, a last, desperate surge of adrenaline shot through me. I lunged for the door, trying to squeeze past them. "Don' t leave me with him!"

Hamilton' s reaction was instantaneous. His arm shot out, not grabbing me, but blocking the doorway with his body, a casual, immovable wall. He looked at the officers with an apologetic smile.

"See what I mean? She' s not herself."

I was trapped. The door clicked shut, and the sound of the deadbolt sliding into place was the sound of my last hope dying. I was alone with my monster, the man I had once loved more than life itself.

He turned to face me, the charming mask gone, replaced by the cold, predatory emptiness I had come to know so well.

"Now," he said, his voice a low, dangerous purr. "Let' s talk about this little stunt of yours."