Chapter 1

The roar of the yacht's engine faded into the vast, empty blue of the ocean.

I stood on the white sand, watching the dot that was my life disappear over the horizon. On that yacht were my fiancé, Liam Miller, and my adoptive sister, Brittany Hayes. They had promised this was a celebratory trip, a final adventure before our wedding.

They left me here.

For ten days, the emergency beacon on the smartwatch Liam gave me had been blinking. It was a top-of-the-line model, he' d said, a symbol of how he would always keep me safe.

For ten days, he ignored my signal.

The battery icon on the watch face was now a thin red line. Hope dwindled with each passing hour. Hunger was a constant ache in my stomach, a deep, gnawing emptiness that made my head spin.

Yesterday, a wild boar charged me near the freshwater spring. I scrambled up a rock face, my foot slipping, and a sharp, cracking sound echoed in the silent jungle. My leg twisted beneath me at an unnatural angle, and a wave of pure agony washed over me, so intense it made me vomit. I dragged myself back to the beach, the broken bone grinding with every movement.

Now, I was not only starving, but crippled. Death felt close, a patient shadow waiting just beyond the treeline.

Just as my vision started to blur from a combination of pain and starvation, a figure emerged from the dense green foliage.

He was tall and broad, with sun-bleached hair and a rugged, unshaven face. He moved with a quiet confidence that was completely at home in this wild place. He carried a primitive-looking spear, its tip stained dark.

He stopped a few feet away, his eyes assessing me, my broken leg, my tattered clothes.

"You' re in bad shape," he said. His voice was rough, like gravel.

He didn't wait for a reply. He knelt, his large hands surprisingly gentle as they examined my leg. I flinched, biting my lip to keep from screaming.

"It' s a clean break, but it needs to be set," he said, his focus entirely on the injury.

He introduced himself only as "Jax." For the next few days, he became my savior. He disappeared into the jungle and returned with fish and strange, edible fruits. He built a fire that never went out. He crafted a splint for my leg from sturdy branches and vines, setting the bone with a swift, painful movement that left me breathless but immediately felt more stable.

In the long, quiet evenings, as he roasted fish over the fire, I found myself talking. I told him about my life as an architectural designer in the city, about the buildings I dreamed of creating. He listened, his gaze fixed on the flames, but I could tell he was absorbing every word.

In return, I taught him things he seemed to have forgotten, or maybe never knew. I explained how the internet worked, what a skyscraper was, how people lived in a world so different from this isolated island.

I felt a connection to him, a pull that was as undeniable as the tide. He was strong, silent, and capable. He had saved my life when the man who promised to love me forever had left me to die. I told myself this was fate, that the universe had taken away my false love to show me a real one. I was falling for him, hard and fast.

One night, the pain in my leg was a relentless throb, making sleep impossible. I lay on the soft bed of leaves Jax had made for me inside his small, sturdy shelter, staring out at the moonlit beach.

That' s when I saw it. A small, pulsing light, deep in the jungle, where no fire should be.

My heart started to pound. Curiosity, mixed with a sudden, unexplainable unease, pushed me to move. I used a long branch as a crutch and slowly, painfully, dragged myself off the beach and into the trees, following the faint glow.

The light led me to a small clearing I had never seen before. Jax was there, his back to me. He was no longer the rugged survivalist. He stood straight, and in his hand was a sleek, black satellite phone. The pulsing light was coming from its small screen.

I hid behind a thick curtain of vines, close enough to hear his voice. It wasn't the rough, gravelly tone he used with me. It was clear, sharp, and professional. The voice of a different man.

And the person on the other end of the line was Brittany. Her voice, sickly sweet and triumphant, carried clearly in the still night air.

"The heiress's engagement is settled. Why haven't you left that woman on the island?"

I held my breath, my entire body going cold. That woman. She was talking about me.

Then Jax, my savior, my fated love, replied. His words struck me with the force of a physical blow.

"I need to stay here to ensure she doesn't escape and challenge the heiress for her inheritance."

My mind reeled. Heiress? Inheritance?

Brittany laughed, a sound that was no longer charming but reptilian. "Good. Liam is getting impatient. He wants to be sure she's out of the picture for good."

Jax' s next words sealed my fate and shattered the last piece of my heart.

"Even if I have to play the 'wild man' for life... it's worth it. For you."

The world tilted. The man who saved me was my jailer. Our fated encounter was a calculated performance. Every kind gesture, every shared look, every moment I thought was real, was a lie. He was working for Brittany.

The next morning, he brought me a breakfast of roasted nuts and berries. He knelt to check the splint on my leg, his touch now feeling like a violation.

"How does it feel today?" he asked, his voice back to its usual rough tone.

"It hurts," I said, my own voice a hollow echo.

He nodded, his expression one of fake concern. "A break that bad... it' s going to take a long time to heal. It might not ever be the same. You could have a limp for the rest of your life."

I looked into his eyes, searching for the man I thought I knew, but he was gone. All I saw was a stranger, a cold-blooded operative delivering a verdict that he himself had orchestrated. This wasn't a sympathetic diagnosis. It was a life sentence.

I forced a weak smile onto my face. "Thank you for taking care of me, Jax. I don' t know what I would do without you."

He smiled back, a warm, reassuring smile that now looked monstrous. "I'll always take care of you, Chloe."

I had to keep playing my part. I had to let him think I was still the naive, grateful victim. I had to act like I was still falling in love with my captor, even as the truth burned inside me like a poison. My survival no longer depended on him saving me, but on me outsmarting him.