Introduction

For five years, I was Mrs. Davenport, cleaning up after my husband's one-night stands and enduring his casual cruelty.

Call it a gilded cage, but this mansion was my prison, bought by my sacrifice: I was the secret medical lifeline keeping him, Ethan Davenport, alive.

Our cruel contract was nearing its end, just three months left.

Then, Chloe, his perfect ex-girlfriend, waltzed back in.

Her arrival wasn't a gentle reunion; it was a wrecking ball designed to finish what Ethan's neglect had started.

She smeared my name, orchestrated a public humiliation, and then watched, smiling, as Ethan, fueled by rage and alcohol, dragged me to a damp, cold cellar.

He tore apart my most sacred possession-my fiancé's diary-then brutally killed my loyal dog, Buddy, right before my eyes.

As I bled, collapsing into unconsciousness, I heard his ex's venomous whisper: she'd had all my precious memories of him incinerated.

They had taken everything.

My dignity, my love, my last connection to a life I cherished.

My heart was a hollowed-out space, suffocating under a mountain of grief and betrayal.

How could a human being be so cruel, so blind, to the sacrifices I'd made to keep him alive?

But on the day our notorious contract officially expired, I walked out.

With nothing but the clothes on my back and a one-way ticket to a remote Pacific Northwest retreat, I finally chose myself.

It was time to disappear, to burn away the past, and somehow, exist again.