Chapter 1

Tom Barnes said that when you marry the one you love, the wedding suite ceiling should have a mirror, and the bathroom should have grab bars.

But five years ago, pregnant with a boy and a girl, I was cornered in that suite by his enemies and tortured until I lost them.

After that I never dared set foot in that place again.

Until the anniversary of my children's death, when I brought the little clothes I'd sewn by hand to mourn them.

Only to walk in on Tom and a woman tangled together on our wedding bed.

Caught in the act, all Tom did was shield her behind him.

"Maddie, I'm a man. I have normal physical needs."

"Just like five years ago, when you betrayed me to save yourself. You can understand that, can't you?"

I stared at the tattoo on the inside of the woman's forearm.

Exactly the same as the ones on the people who had brutalized me back then.

Then I remembered the vow Tom swore over me five years ago, as I lay in the ICU.

That he would chase them to the ends of the earth.

That he would kill every last one of the people who had killed our children.

I only found it laughable.

I reached back and pressed the villa's self-destruct button, and I asked him with a smile.

"If it's only a physical need, then it wouldn't matter if she died here, would it?"

"……"

"Madeline Gilbert! Calm down!"

"It's been five years, and you still won't let me lay a single finger on you!"

"Freda and I just each get what we need. She hasn't broken up our family, so why do you have to make her your enemy?"

I pointed at the tattoo on her forearm.

"She already broke it. Five years ago."

Only then did Tom notice the arm the woman had left uncovered by the sheet.

A flicker of panic crossed his eyes, and still he tried to talk his way out of it.

"Maddie, let me explain—"

But I cut him off.

"Tom, you truly disgust me."

I turned and walked toward the escape elevator, the one that held only two people.

Every step was so hard.

As the head of the largest underworld organization in Harbor City.

Tom and I lived every day licking blood off a knife's edge.

Until five years ago, when I fell pregnant by accident.

Looking at those two tiny shapes on the ultrasound.

I told Tom I wanted a steady home with him.

Tom agreed.

In less than a month he wiped out every old enemy.

On our wedding day, he even mobilized the whole city's security to keep me and the children safe.

But a few who'd slipped the net still worked their way in among the wedding staff.

They cornered me in the wedding suite and tortured me for three whole hours.

The children were gone, and I hemorrhaged so badly they took my uterus.

I lost the right to ever be a mother.

In these five years there hasn't been a single day I wasn't living in pain.

The moment I close my eyes, my head fills with the sight of my two children dissolving into a pool of blood.

I thought Tom was the same.

But not only was he not.

He was sleeping with the enemy who had killed our children.

I stumbled. Tom had shoved me from behind.

Dragging the woman by the hand, he rushed into the escape elevator, and still he had something to say to me.

"Maddie, I know you can't move past the children's death, but Freda is innocent."

"I'll take her up first. The self-destruct system has an emergency brake. Go over and press it to stop it."

"Once you're out, I'll explain everything properly."

But Tom didn't know there was no emergency brake anymore.

The tragedy five years ago took more than my two children.

It took the last of my reason too.

I'd disabled every emergency brake in the villa.

So that one day, if any of those who'd slipped the net set foot in here again.

I could take them down with me.

The explosion went off.

I thought I saw the children I'd missed for five years.

I reached out toward them.

But a pair of large hands pulled me out of the villa.