Chapter 2

The sterile white of the room faded, and for a moment, Chloe was a child again. She was ten years old, standing at the top of the stairs in her family home. Her father, David, was leading a boy into the house. The boy was Liam. His mother, a woman her father had had an affair with years ago, had just died. He had nowhere else to go. Chloe remembered the cold feeling in her stomach, the feeling of an intruder entering her safe world. Her mother, Maria, had been kind, but Chloe had always felt a distance from Liam, a resentment that simmered just beneath the surface.

Then the memory shifted. She was twenty-four, sitting alone in a cafe, trying to recover from a bad breakup. The world felt gray and lonely. A man had walked up to her table, a warm smile on his face. It was Ethan. He had seen her sitting there, looking sad, and he had bought her a coffee. He was her light, her rescue from the darkness. He had made her laugh again, made her believe in love again. They fell in love quickly, deeply. He was her savior.

Now, looking at Ethan' s cold face in this sterile room, the irony was a bitter pill. Her savior had become the accomplice to her tormentor. The man who had pulled her from one hell was now helping her brother push her into a new one, one far deeper and more terrifying than she could have ever imagined. The past and the present crashed together in her mind, a dizzying wave of pain and betrayal.

She was so tired of fighting. The daily abuse from Nurse Emily, the shocks that scrambled her brain, the constant lies from Liam, and now this final, cruel betrayal from Ethan. A strange sense of calm washed over her. It was the calm of someone who had nothing left to lose.

"Fine," she said, her voice surprisingly steady. "Do whatever you want. Just... leave me alone after."

Ethan was taken aback. He had expected her to scream, to fight, to have another "episode." Her sudden compliance was unsettling. But he quickly rationalized it, just as Liam had taught him to.

"See? She's not thinking clearly," he muttered to Liam, more to convince himself than anyone else. "It' s for the best."

Later that day, when Dr. Jenkins came to check on her, Chloe made a request.

"I want the memory treatment," she said, her voice a monotone. "The one that erases things. I want to forget him. I want to forget Ethan."

As the nurses prepared her for the procedure, Ethan came back one last time. He grabbed her arm to help her sit up, and his fingers brushed against the deep, painful bruises that Nurse Emily had left. He stopped, his eyes finally focusing on the marks. A flicker of something-anger, maybe even guilt-crossed his face.

"Who did this to you?" he demanded, his voice tight.