Chapter 4

Vivian Sommers's POV

They took me back to the Vance estate.

Julian publicly claimed I was "recovering from trauma."

My adoptive parents never came to see me. They only sent a lawyer with a trust fund agreement, stating it was the final settlement they could offer for my future.

Money.

By then, I didn't know what money could possibly buy back for me.

I ate on time, slept on time, and sat through sessions with the therapists they brought in.

Julian told me not to look at the news, so I didn't. He told me never to mention the kidnapping, so I kept my mouth shut.

Everyone said I was finally "behaving."

Only I knew the truth.

I was terrified.

I was terrified of being locked away again, terrified of being abandoned, terrified that my screams would be treated as another dramatic scene.

But the hardest part was Julian's touch.

Whenever his hand brushed mine, my entire body would shake violently.

Even though I knew he wasn't one of the kidnappers, my body remembered the dark cabin in the mountains.

Julian put up with it at first.

But eventually, his patience ran out.

One night, after a celebration dinner, he came home smelling heavily of alcohol.

I was sitting on the edge of the bed, trying to massage my crooked pinky finger.

He stared at my bandaged hand, and his first words were, "How much longer are you going to act like this?"

I looked up. "I'm trying to get better."

"Better?" Julian let out a cold laugh. "I've waited long enough, Vivian."

He reached out to pull me toward him.

Panic seized me. I scrambled back, knocking over the bedside lamp.

The ceramic shattered with a loud crash. In the blinding panic, I grabbed a heavy bronze paperweight from the nightstand and threw it at him.

It struck his forehead, drawing blood.

Mila was the first to burst into the room.

She didn't ask what happened. She just screamed for the guards. "Call the doctor! She's having another episode!"

The next day, I was sent to a highsecurity private psychiatric facility.

Julian signed the papers himself.

He looked at me through the glass and said, "Vivian, when you're stable, I'll take you home."

I stood behind the locked doors, watching the heavy metal gates slam shut.

I knew he was never coming back.

From the moment I crashed his press conference, Julian didn't see me as his fiancée. He saw me as a problem that needed to disappear.

I stayed in that facility for a very long time.

Seasons changed.

I finally accepted that I would never be the happy twentythreeyearold girl again.

And then, the doctor delivered another piece of news.

I had been pregnant.

But the baby didn't survive.

When the doctor told me, it was raining outside.

I lay on the cold white bed, the red marks from the leather restraints still visible on my wrists.

When I heard "we couldn't save the baby," I didn't cry. I was just numb. I hadn't even known I was pregnant. I didn't know that during my darkest nights, a tiny life had been quietly keeping me company.

Then, the grief hit me like a tidal wave.

It froze my hands and feet, choked the air out of my lungs, and finally broke through my chest in a scream.

I thought I had already lost everything.

My identity, my parents, my fiancé, my violin.

But fate wasn't done with me. It took the one tiny soul I never got to hold.

That night, for the first time, I sobbed so hard the entire ward could hear me.

When the nurses rushed in, I curled into a ball, whispering, "I'm sorry... I'm so sorry."

I didn't even know who I was apologizing to.

For a long time after that, I couldn't bear to hear the sound of a baby crying.

Whenever a visitor brought a baby down the hall, I would pull the blanket over my head and dig my nails deep into my palms.

The doctor didn't force me to recover quickly. He only made me write one sentence every day: I am still alive today.

At first, my broken finger made the handwriting look like chicken scratch.

But eventually, I was able to fold the paper neatly and place it in my drawer.