Chapter 1

The New Year' s trip was supposed to be a fresh start. My fiancée, Chloe Davis, had insisted. Her family, her younger brother Leo, all of us together at a fancy mountain resort. It was my final test, my chance to prove I was good enough for the powerful Davis family.

So I spent the entire time entertaining Leo. He was seventeen, full of restless energy. I played video games with him, listened to his terrible music, even went with him to the resort's arcade. I did everything to be the perfect future brother-in-law.

Chloe smiled at me, a soft, approving look that made it all feel worth it.

"Just a few minutes, Leo," I said, my stomach churning. "I need the restroom. Don't go anywhere."

He just waved me off, his eyes glued to a racing game on his phone.

Those few minutes changed everything. A scream cut through the cold mountain air. Not a playful shriek, but something raw and terrified. I ran out, my heart pounding against my ribs. A small crowd was gathering near a fenced-off area. A sign read: 'DANGER - DEEP EXCAVATION' . A section of the temporary fencing was down.

I pushed through the people and looked down. Into the pit. Leo was at the bottom, partially buried under a heap of fallen steel beams and concrete debris. His body was twisted at an angle that wasn't human.

The world went silent. Then the sirens started.

The Davis family turned on me instantly. Mr. Davis, a man whose hand I had shaken just that morning, grabbed my shirt. His face was purple with rage. "This is your fault! You were supposed to be watching him!"

Chloe stood behind him, her face a mask of horror and blame. She wouldn't even look at me.

Their influence was a weapon, and they used it with brutal efficiency. The next morning, my father called me, his voice trembling. Our family' s construction business, built over two generations, was finished. Contracts were canceled overnight. Suppliers demanded immediate payment. The bank called in our loans. We were ruined.

It didn't stop there. A week later, two men cornered me in an alley behind my parents' now-foreclosed home. They didn't say a word. They just beat me. I felt my bones crack. One of them kicked my leg until something snapped. Another smashed my face into the brick wall. The pain was absolute. When they left me bleeding on the pavement, I was no longer the same person.

I woke up in a public hospital with a face that wasn't mine and a permanent limp. The doctors told me I was lucky to be alive. It didn't feel like luck.

While I was recovering, I saw the news. Chloe Davis was marrying my best friend, Mark Johnson. They were the city's new golden couple, smiling for the cameras. My betrayal was complete. I was a broken, disfigured joke.

Months crawled by. I was destitute, living in a rundown apartment, the city's charity case. The weight of it all was too much. I climbed to the roof of the tallest building I could find, the wind whipping at my torn clothes. I set up my phone to livestream. I wanted the world to see what they had done to me before I jumped.

Just as I was about to step off the ledge, a voice cut through the wind.

"Don't do it!"

I turned. A woman stood there, dressed in a sharp, expensive suit that seemed out of place in this decaying part of the city. It was Sophia Anderson, the most powerful and mysterious tech mogul in the country. Her face was on every business magazine.

"Even if the whole world abandons you, I love you!" she shouted, her voice shaking with what I thought was genuine emotion.

She saved me. She married me. She paid for the best doctors, for therapists, for physical rehabilitation. She gave me a home, a life of quiet comfort. She was my savior, the light that pulled me out of an endless darkness. I believed I had found my reason to live again.

Until one day. I was walking down the hallway of our sterile, modern mansion, my limp less pronounced but still a constant reminder. I heard voices from her office. Sophia and her assistant.

The assistant' s voice was cautious, low. "Ms. Anderson, about the Davis incident... wasn't it a bit much to have Leo Davis fall into that pit?"

I froze, my hand on the doorknob.

Sophia' s reply was ice. "If I hadn't done that, how could Mark have smoothly married Chloe?"

My blood ran cold. The assistant pressed on, her voice trembling slightly. "What about Mr. Miller? All the suffering he endured..."

I could picture Sophia's face, the blank, emotionless expression I had sometimes seen when she thought no one was looking.

"He's my husband," she said, her voice flat. "He has a comfortable, well-off life. That's his compensation."

The words hit me harder than any physical blow. My salvation wasn't salvation. It was just a deeper, more calculated hell. My light was the source of the darkness.

I stood there, my heart turning to solid ice.

On the surface, nothing changed. I continued to play the part of the grateful, healing husband. But inside, the broken pieces of Ethan Miller were reforming, not with hope, but with a cold, sharp purpose.

Revenge.