Chapter 2

The hospital room descended into utter chaos in an instant.

At Ethan's furious roar, the men who had been standing guard outside rushed in all at once.

But the moment they saw Greta-her face and hands slick with blood-they froze, no one daring to move.

Greta stared straight at Ethan and let out a soft laugh.

"Ethan, you can forget who I am," she said calmly. "But if you keep letting her disgust me like this... I'll kill her."

Ignoring the fury blazing in Ethan's eyes, Greta grabbed the white dress Cara had tossed beside the bed and wiped the blood from her hands.

Then she turned, swept the strawberry cake she had just made onto the floor, lifted her chin, and walked out of the hospital room.

That night, Greta sat alone in the vast, empty villa for a long time, so long that darkness came and went, dawn broke and faded again, and she never once felt sleepy.

She had lived peacefully for too many years. She had almost forgotten what it felt like to stay alert every second, afraid to close her eyes.

From the age of eight, she had been locked in a lightless iron cage. She never knew which day she would be dragged into an octagonal cage she had never seen before, where the only way back to her cell was to kill everyone else in the arena.

Countless lives... all for a scrap of food.

She was the sole survivor of that brutal hunger game, the one left alive to work for the drug lords.

She had thought that was all her life would ever be.

Until Ethan, there on business, had dragged her out without hesitation.

That day, he had been shot five times.

One of those bullets was meant for her. It tore into his chest, too close to the heart, the slug lodged forever beneath his ribs.

Greta, who had only ever known the metallic sweetness of blood, learned for the first time that tears tasted salty.

Ethan said he wanted to take her home. She hesitated.

She didn't know how to love. She was a rose bristling with poison thorns. Anyone who came close was bound to bleed.

Ethan only smiled. "Roses are most beautiful because of their thorns," he said. "With me here, you don't need to change. Just be yourself."

And he meant it. Ignoring the warnings of the senior members in the organization, he forced her way back into Portwick.

When the drug lords launched a cross-border manhunt, he took everything on himself, shielding her at all costs.

Over the years they spent together, she had pulled out every thorn for him.

She stopped holding guns and knives. She learned to hold spatulas instead. She learned how to bake cakes.

Yet now, Ethan's gun was pointed at her head.

She knew him far too well.

Anyone who hurt the people he cared about, no matter who they were, would never escape his wrath.

Back when someone had tried to send her back to the Red Delta, each of them had been cut down, their hands and feet chopped off, thrown into the drug lord's lair.

Even the men who had fought alongside Ethan for years vanished from the organization after daring to call Greta a "bitch."

Now, after she had slashed Cara's face, there was no way Ethan would let it slide.

For days and nights, she hadn't slept in the villa. She had been waiting, waiting for Ethan to come to her.

So she could see for herself who truly mattered to him after his memory was gone.

Ethan stood in the shadows, the cold barrel of a gun pressed against Greta's forehead, his expression dark and terrifying.

"I don't care who you are. Anyone who hurts my people pays the price."

He had said those words countless times before, to anyone who opposed them being together.

Never had Greta imagined that today, he would say them to herself.

How ironic.

Greta tugged at the corner of her mouth and met his icy gaze without flinching.

"What price do you want me to pay? My life? Then go ahead-shoot."

In the darkness, Ethan's eyes flickered.

He had forgotten everything about this woman, yet for some reason, he couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger.

After a long moment, the gun finally lowered.

"Take her to the basement. No food for three days," he ordered.

He couldn't bring himself to kill her, but she had hurt Cara. Punishment, however small, was necessary.

His men stepped forward, bowing to Greta respectfully.

"Ma'am, please cooperate and walk with us. Don't make it hard for us," one of them said.

Greta looked at Greta one last time, but he had turned away, refusing to meet her gaze.

Her eyes darkened. She nodded to his men.

Before leaving, she tossed a silver ring onto the floor at Ethan's feet..

The ring spun across the tiles before coming to rest, its soft clinking somehow shattering the walls around Ethan's heart.

His body jerked. He stared at her receding figure, as if something crucial had slipped from his memory.

Greta sat in the pitch-black basement, a faint, mocking smile playing on her lips.

He had taken three days to drag her out of the abyss, bloodily wiping out the drug lord's lair.

So she would repay him with three days in this basement, a symbolic clearing of debts.

The silver ring had been bought on a whim from a small stall at the border when he had rescued her.

A gift to celebrate her first taste of a new life.

He had promised that one day, when he officially proposed, he would get her a one-of-a-kind diamond ring.

Now that ring he had promised rested on someone else's hand. Keeping the silver ring held no meaning.

Ethan had taught the girl who only knew how to kill how to love. And yet, he had forgotten everything, forgotten enough to claim he no longer loved her.

Greta had never belonged to Portwick in the first place. Without a reason to stay, leaving was the only choice.

Three days. After that, Ethan would release her, and she would walk away, from him, and from Portwick.

But she hadn't expected that not even three days had passed before Cara came first.