Chapter 1

For seven years, I was a prisoner in a wheelchair, and my husband, Carter, was my devoted savior. After the accident that stole my legs, he fed me, bathed me, and carried me. He was my entire world.

Then I discovered his secret: he was having an affair with Jade, the daughter of the man who crippled me. My "recovery" smoothies weren't for healing; they were laced with sedatives to keep me weak and dependent.

When I confronted them, Jade pushed me down the stairs. As I lay bleeding on the cold marble floor, I felt a sharp, agonizing pain. I was losing our baby.

Carter looked down at me with disgust.

"You're pathetic, Alayna. Stay here and rot."

He walked out, leaving me to die.

But I didn't die. My family found me. And as I slowly, miraculously, learned to walk again, the broken wife he knew was gone.

They took my legs, my child, and my trust. Now, I would take everything from them.

Chapter 1

My world had shrunk to the confines of this mansion, a gilded cage where the only freedom I knew was the turning of the pages of a book. For seven long years, my legs had been useless, souvenirs of an accident I barely remembered, a blur of screeching tires and searing pain. Carter, my husband, had been my rock, my devoted caregiver, or so I had believed. He fed me, bathed me, carried me, his strong arms a constant presence. He was the only window to the outside world, my sole connection to a life I' d lost.

Then Jade Howard arrived. She was Carter' s new live-in assistant, a whirlwind of efficiency and charm. She moved with a strange, almost unsettling grace, her smile a little too wide, her eyes a little too bright. There was something about her, a flicker in her gaze, a certain angle of her jaw, that snagged at a forgotten corner of my mind. It was a phantom ache, a whisper of dread that I couldn't quite place.

"She's excellent, isn't she, Alayna?" Carter would say, his voice warm with approval as Jade effortlessly navigated the house, bringing me tea, organizing Carter's chaotic schedule. "So capable. A real asset to the company."

I' d try to voice my unease. "There's just something about her, Carter. I can't put my finger on it, but she... she reminds me of someone." He would brush it off, a gentle hand on my forehead, a dismissive chuckle. "You're just not used to new faces, my love. Being cooped up can make you imagine things." His words, meant to soothe, only amplified the gnawing suspicion in my gut. I hated feeling helpless, hated being dismissed.

I started watching her. Not overtly, but with the quiet intensity of someone whose only currency was observation. I noticed the way she' d sometimes flinch when a car horn blared outside, a subtle tremor in her hand when she poured water. Little things, insignificant to anyone else, but to me, they were pixels in a blurry image struggling to come into focus. One afternoon, while she was busy in Carter's study, I managed to wheel my chair close enough to peek at her open laptop. A photo winked back at me from her desktop background: a smiling young Jade, arm-in-arm with a man. My breath hitched. It was just a glance, a fleeting image, but it was enough. The man' s face was older, lined, but unmistakable. My mind screamed. Fidencio Howard. The sketch artist' s rendering from the old police file, the one they still hadn' t closed, the one Carter always made sure I never saw. The hit-and-run driver. Her father.

A hot wave of nausea swept over me. My hands tingled, then went numb. My vision blurred, the room spinning around me. This wasn't some vague suspicion anymore. This was concrete, terrifying truth. My body, already a prison, now felt like it was actively betraying me, trembling with a mixture of shock and white-hot rage. I wanted to scream, to shatter the elegant silence of this house, but the sound was trapped in my throat, a painful gasp.

I had to act. I had to. My heart hammered against my ribs, a furious drumbeat of defiance. This wasn't just about me anymore. This was about justice. My first thought was to confront them, to expose the lie that had festered for so long. I pushed myself away from the laptop, the wheels of my chair scraping softly on the polished floor, a sound that in my heightened state felt deafening. I gripped the armrests, my knuckles white, a fierce resolve hardening my gaze. I would make them pay.

I wheeled myself towards Carter' s office, my breath coming in ragged gasps. Every turn felt like a monumental effort, every inch forward a battle against my own failing body. Just as I reached the slightly ajar door, a murmur of voices stopped me cold. It was Carter. And Jade. My hand froze on the cold metal of my chair.

"Are you sure she's settled, Jade?" Carter' s voice was laced with a frantic anxiety I'd never heard directed at me. "I don't want her making any trouble. Not right now."

"She's fine, Carter," Jade purred, her voice dripping with false concern. "Just took her usual evening smoothie. She'll be out cold soon enough."

My blood ran cold. Smoothie? The one he insisted I drink every evening for "recovery." Recovery he had been sabotaging all along?

"Are you sure about this, Carter?" another voice, gruffer, older, interjected. It was Mr. Henderson, Carter's long-time business partner, who often stopped by. "Keeping Alayna sedated... It's a dangerous game. And bringing Jade's father into the picture, even just to hide him... What if someone finds out?"

"No one will find out!" Carter snapped, his voice now a low, dangerous growl. "I've covered every track. And Fidencio is perfectly safe, hidden away. He won't be a problem."

Fidencio. The name echoed in my mind, a death knell to my sanity.

"But why, Carter?" Mr. Henderson pressed, sounding genuinely disturbed. "Why go through all this for Jade's father? You risked everything."

A breath, heavy with self-pity and a chilling sense of possessiveness, escaped Carter's lips. "Because Jade was... is my true love. The one I should have been with all along. The accident... it was an opportunity. Fidencio crippled Alayna, yes, but it meant Jade needed me. She was so lost, so vulnerable. I couldn't let her father go to jail, not if it meant losing her. Alayna was just... collateral."

The world tilted. The air left my lungs in a silent, agonizing gasp. My true love. Collateral. The words bounced around in my skull, a macabre tango of betrayal. My memory flickered back to his tender touch, his whispered promises by my bedside. All lies. Every single one. He hadn' t protected me; he had used me. He hadn't healed me; he had imprisoned me.

"And the smoothies," Mr. Henderson continued, his voice barely a whisper. "You've been giving her sedatives? To keep her from recovering?"

"She was getting too curious," Carter said, a flat, terrifying indifference in his tone. "Always asking about the accident, always trying to regain her mobility. It became a nuisance. I needed her quiet, predictable. I needed her to stay exactly where I put her."

My hands clenched, nails digging into my palms. Sedatives. Every night. Every single night, for seven years. The fog in my brain, the constant exhaustion, the slow, agonizing pace of my "recovery"-it all clicked into place with sickening clarity. He wasn't just hiding a criminal; he was actively poisoning his wife.

"I can't believe you, Carter," Mr. Henderson mumbled, his voice full of disgust. "You've changed. You used to be honorable."

"Honor doesn't build empires, Henderson," Carter sneered. "Alayna was... a distraction. A pretty face with a fragile body. Jade, on the other hand, she knows how to truly appreciate what I do. She understands sacrifice." He paused, a cruel laugh escaping him. "Alayna's always been too soft. Too weak. A broken doll."

My chest tightened, a searing pain radiating through my ribs. Weak. Broken. The very man who had vowed to protect me, who had presented himself as my savior, saw me as nothing more than an inconvenience, a burden. All those years, all those whispered words of love, the gentle kisses, the comforting embraces-they were a performance. A meticulously crafted illusion designed to keep me docile, dependent, and utterly unaware.

A sudden noise made me jump. My chair scraped the floor again, and the voices inside abruptly stopped. Too late.

The office door swung open. Jade stood there, framed in the doorway, a sly, triumphant smile playing on her lips. Her eyes, those unsettlingly bright eyes, met mine. There was no pretense of concern now, only a chilling, open malice.

"Well, well, look what the cat dragged in," she drawled, her gaze raking over my wheelchair, a sneer twisting her features. "Still clinging to life, are we, sweetheart?"

My breath hitched. The disrespectful term, delivered with such venom, was like a slap across the face.

Carter appeared behind her, his face a mask of false concern, quickly replacing the anger I' d just heard. "Alayna, what are you doing out here? You know you shouldn't overexert yourself." His arm slid around Jade's waist, pulling her closer, a possessive gesture meant for my eyes. Jade leaned into him, her gaze never leaving mine, a silent declaration of victory.

I tried to speak, but my voice was a fragile thing, caught in my trembling throat. I gripped the armrests of my chair, my knuckles white, a desperate attempt to anchor myself in a world that had just been irrevocably turned upside down.

"Oh, don't mind her, Carter," Jade said, her voice dripping with saccharine sweetness, her eyes still locked on me. "She's just jealous. Always has been, hasn't she? Stuck in her chair, watching us live." She let out a small, mocking laugh. "It must be hard, knowing you're just a burden, while some of us actually contribute." She paused, her smile widening. "What's wrong, Alayna? Did you lose your appetite? Or perhaps your ability to feed yourself? Such a shame, isn't it?"

Her words were daggers, each one twisting in the fresh wound of Carter' s betrayal. She was enjoying this, reveling in my pain. Without another word, she turned, pulling Carter gently into his office, the door clicking shut behind them, leaving me alone in the silent, echoing hallway.

I sat there, frozen, the weight of their words crushing me. The images flashed in my mind: Carter's deceitful smiles, Jade's mocking gaze, the image of Fidencio Howard's face. The mansion, once my sanctuary, was now a tomb of lies. My room, with its plush carpets and soft lighting, felt suffocating. I needed air. I needed escape.

I wheeled myself back to my room, the silence of the large house pressing in on me. I stared at the photo on my nightstand – a younger Alayna, vibrant and full of life, standing beside a smiling Carter on their wedding day. A painful echo of a life that was never real. He had never loved me. He had coveted my name, my hidden legacy, and then, finding me inconveniently disabled, he had simply replaced me, all while maintaining the charade.

Every act of kindness, every loving word, every moment of supposed care was a performance, a manipulation. My breath hitched. He had drugged me. He had sabotaged my recovery. He had planned this, meticulously, cruelly. His ambition, his cold calculation, surpassed anything I could have imagined. I had been a pawn, a placeholder, a convenient prop in his twisted play.

A cold, hard resolve settled in my heart, replacing the despair. The tears stopped. The trembling subsided. There was no more pain, only a chilling emptiness. I had been foolish. I had been weak. But no more. The Alayna Bell they knew, the broken, docile heiress, was dead. What remained was something far more dangerous.

My hand reached for the hidden compartment in the antique desk, a secret known only to me and my family. My fingers fumbled with the clasp, my heart pounding with a new, fierce rhythm – not of fear, but of determination. It was time to shed the disguise, to reclaim what was mine.

I pulled out my satellite phone, a relic of my past life, kept charged in secret. My fingers, rusty from disuse, dialed a number I hadn't touched in years. It rang once, twice, then a familiar, authoritative voice answered.

"Alayna? Is that really you?" My older brother, Arthur, his voice thick with emotion.

My voice, when it came, was steady, cold, and devoid of the vulnerability that had clung to me for so long. "It's me, Arthur. I need you. I need the family. It's time."

A pause, then his voice, sharp and decisive. "Consider it done. What do you need?"

"I need out. Now," I commanded, my gaze fixed on the mansion walls, each one now a symbol of my impending liberation. "And then, I need vengeance."