Chapter 1

The first clue my life was a lie was a moan from the guest room. My husband of seven years wasn't in our bed. He was with my intern.

I discovered my husband, Brendan, was having a four-year affair with Kiya-the talented girl I was mentoring and personally paying tuition for.

The next morning, she sat at our breakfast table in his shirt while he made us pancakes. He lied to my face, promising he'd never love another, just before I learned she was pregnant with his child-a child he'd always refused to have with me.

The two people I trusted most in the world had conspired to destroy me. The pain wasn't something I could live with; it was an annihilation of my entire world.

So I made a call to a neuroscientist about his experimental, irreversible procedure. I didn't want revenge. I wanted to erase every memory of my husband and become his first test subject.

Chapter 1

Ellery POV:

The first clue that my life was a lie came not as a shout, but as a muffled moan from the guest room down the hall.

I blinked my eyes open, the digital clock on my nightstand glowing a soft, mocking 2:14 AM. The space beside me in our king-sized bed was cold. Empty. Brendan wasn' t there.

A knot of unease tightened in my stomach. He' d been working late for months, his tech empire demanding more and more of his time, but he always, always came to bed. Even if it was just to kiss my forehead and whisper that he was heading back to his home office, he always checked on me first.

I sat up, the silk sheet pooling around my waist. The house was still, wrapped in the deep silence of our secluded cliffside property. And then I heard it again. A low, feminine giggle, quickly shushed.

My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic, trapped bird. It couldn' t be. Not in my house. Not in our home.

I slid out of bed, my bare feet silent on the cool hardwood floor. I didn' t turn on the lights. I moved like a ghost through the familiar shadows of the life I thought we had built. The hallway was a long, dark tunnel leading to a truth I wasn' t sure I could face.

As I drew closer to the guest room door, the voices became clearer. His voice, deep and familiar, a voice that had once saved my life and had promised to love me forever. And another voice. A younger voice, breathy and eager.

"Brendan, stop," she whispered, but her tone was playful, encouraging. "She' ll hear us."

My blood ran cold. She. I was she. The obstacle. The afterthought in my own home.

"She' s a heavy sleeper," Brendan murmured back, his voice thick with a desire I hadn' t heard in months. "Besides, she' s exhausted. She was in the studio all day."

The casual way he spoke of me, like a piece of furniture he had to navigate around, was a physical blow. I pressed my ear against the cold wood of the door, my breath caught in my throat.

"Is she really that good?" the girl asked, her voice laced with a strange mix of admiration and challenge. "The great Ellery Rich. The architectural prodigy."

"She' s brilliant," Brendan said, and for a sickening second, I felt a flicker of hope. He was defending me. But then he added, "But you, Kiya... you have something she doesn' t."

Kiya.

The name ricocheted through my skull.

Kiya Schmitt.

My intern. My mentee. The quiet, talented girl I' d taken under my wing, the one I was personally mentoring, paying for her final year of tuition out of my own pocket because she reminded me of myself at that age-hungry, ambitious, and alone.

I had grown up in the foster care system, a world of temporary homes and conditional affection. I learned early to be self-reliant, to build my own walls, to never expect anyone to stay. Then Brendan came along. He hadn't just stayed; he had built a fortress around me, his love the mortar holding every brick in place. He was my family. The only family I had ever truly had.

And Kiya... I saw that same loneliness in her eyes. I had vouched for her, championed her work, brought her into my firm, into my life. I had told Brendan how proud I was of her, how she was going to be a star one day.

It seemed she was already a star in his eyes. Just not in the way I' d intended.

"Oh yeah?" Kiya' s voice was a purr now. "And what' s that?"

I didn' t need to hear his answer. I could imagine it. Youth. Awe. The thrill of the forbidden. Everything I, at thirty-two, supposedly no longer possessed.

The sounds that followed-the rustle of sheets, the soft, rhythmic creaks of the bed-were a confirmation that shattered the foundation of my entire world. This wasn't a one-time mistake. This was a comfortable, established routine. They were doing this in my home, in a room just down the hall from where I slept, a room I had designed.

I backed away from the door, my hand clamped over my mouth to stifle a sob. Betrayal wasn't a strong enough word. This was an annihilation. The two people I trusted most in the world, the man I had given my whole heart to and the girl I had tried to give a future to, had conspired to destroy me.

I wanted it gone. All of it. The seven years of marriage, the memory of his hands on my skin, the sound of his laughter, the sight of the home we built together. I wanted to scrape him out of my brain until there was nothing left but a clean, empty space.

I stumbled back to my bedroom, my movements stiff and robotic. I didn' t look at our wedding photos on the wall. I didn' t look at the city skyline I had designed, the one that had made my name. I snatched my phone from the nightstand.

My fingers trembled as I scrolled through my contacts, past Brendan' s name, past my friends, until I found the one I needed. Dr. Evans Calderon. My old college mentor. A leading neuroscientist whose work was so groundbreaking it was practically science fiction.

A few months ago, over a reunion dinner, he' d told me about his latest project, his voice low and secretive. A highly classified, experimental procedure designed to target and eliminate specific memory pathways. A way to erase trauma. At the time, I' d been fascinated from a purely academic standpoint.

Now, it was my only lifeline.

The phone rang twice before he picked up, his voice groggy with sleep. "Ellery? Is everything alright? It' s the middle of the night."

Tears streamed silently down my face, hot and useless. "Evans," I choked out, my voice a stranger' s, raw and broken. "The experiment you told me about... the one that erases memories."

A worried pause on the other end. "What about it, Ellery?"

I took a shuddering breath, the decision crystallizing in my soul with the cold, hard finality of a diamond.

"I want to be your first subject."