Chapter 3

ADRIA

The hot water scalded my skin, turning it pink and raw, but I didn't move to adjust the temperature. I stood under the shower spray until the bathroom filled with steam, until I could barely see my own hand in front of my face, until every trace of that soup-and his touch-had been washed down the drain.

My phone buzzed on the bathroom counter, the sound cutting through the white noise of running water. I ignored it. Then it buzzed again. And again.

With a sigh, I turned off the shower and wrapped myself in a towel, my wet hair dripping onto the tile floor. The phone screen lit up with a new message, and I already knew who it was from before I picked it up.

**Damien: Don't bother coming back to the club. Your presence and that horrible soup you made have made Adina sick. I won't be coming home tonight either.**

I stared at the message, waiting for the familiar ache in my chest, the desperate need to fix things, to apologize, to beg him to reconsider. I waited for the tears that usually came so easily, for the crushing weight of failure that had become my constant companion.

Nothing came.

I felt nothing but a distant, clinical observation of the words on the screen. Adina was sick. Of course she was. Probably from laughing too hard at my humiliation. And Damien wouldn't be coming home-meaning he'd be spending the night with her, or Amber, or whoever else caught his fancy.

A month ago, I would have called him. Begged him to come home. Promised to make it right. Waited up all night in case he changed his mind, sitting by the door like a dog waiting for its master.

I rolled my eyes and dropped the phone on the counter without responding.

The silence that followed felt liberating.

I walked to my closet-the small, pathetic closet where I'd hung all the bland, modest clothes Damien preferred. Beiges and grays and navy blues. Nothing too bright, nothing too attention-grabbing, nothing that might embarrass him or make me stand out. I pushed past them all, reaching for the very back where I'd shoved everything from my old life into a single garment bag.

My fingers closed around soft fabric, and I pulled out a pair of black joggers and a faded gray sweatshirt from my alma mater-MIT, where I'd triple-majored in computer science, business, and engineering. The sweatshirt had paint stains on one sleeve from an art class I'd taken for fun, and a small burn hole from a late-night soldering accident in the robotics lab.

I pressed the fabric to my face and breathed in deeply. It smelled like storage and dust, but underneath that, I could almost catch traces of who I used to be.

Adriana Salvadore. Heiress. Genius. Fighter. Friend.

Not Adriana Chen, the pathetic, desperate wife who'd erased herself for a man who'd never wanted her in the first place.

I dressed quickly, my body remembering the comfort of clothes that actually fit properly, that didn't restrict my movement or make me feel like I was playing dress-up in someone else's life. I pulled my wet hair into a ponytail, grabbed my keys, and headed for the garage.

The Mercedes SUV Damien had bought me sat pristine and barely used-he preferred I take taxis so I wouldn't "embarrass him with my terrible driving." Next to it, covered with a tarp and gathering dust, was my baby: a matte black Ducati Panigale V4 that I'd customized myself. I'd told Damien it belonged to a friend who was storing it here.

I bypassed both vehicles and went for the BMW sedan I'd registered under a shell company-untraceable, unremarkable, perfect for disappearing.

The drive to the storage facility took forty minutes. I'd rented the unit three years ago, back when I was still myself, before I'd seen that necklace and lost my mind. It was located near the outskirts of the city, in a neighborhood that straddled the line between industrial and residential, the kind of place where no one asked questions and security cameras were more for show than function.

I parked in the empty lot and made my way to unit 247, punching in the code I'd memorized but never written down. The metal door rolled up with a screech of protest, revealing boxes stacked neatly against the walls, labeled in my own handwriting: **Books. Equipment. Clothes. Documents.**

And there, in a fireproof safe in the corner: **Identity.**

I pulled out the safe, entered the combination, and lifted the lid. Inside lay everything I'd locked away to become Damien's wife. My real driver's license. My credit cards linked to my actual accounts. My passport. My old phones-three of them, each serving different purposes.

I grabbed the primary one, a custom-built smartphone with encryption that would make the NSA weep, and powered it on.

The boot-up screen glowed in the dim light of the storage unit. I watched the loading bar inch forward, my heart rate picking up for the first time since I'd dropped that thermos upstairs at the club.

Then the notifications started.

The phone vibrated so violently it nearly jumped out of my hand. Messages flooded in, thousands of them, the notification counter climbing so fast it became a blur. Missed calls: 3,847. Text messages: 12,493. Emails: 28,756. Social media notifications: exceeded maximum count.

I scrolled through them with shaking fingers. My parents. My brothers-Adrian, Mikael, and Elijah. My sisters-Sophia and Isabella. My best friends from college-Maya, Jordan, and China. Messages from my martial arts master, Sifu Wong. Encrypted messages from my hacker collective, the ones I'd built security systems with for Fortune 500 companies. Emails from fellow CEOs I'd collaborated with on tech startups.

**Mom: Adriana, please call us. We're worried sick.**

**Adrian: This isn't funny anymore. Where the hell are you?**

**Maya: If you don't respond in 24 hours I'm filing a missing person report.**

**Sifu Wong: Your absence from the dojo speaks of either death or cowardice. I hope it's the former.**

That last one made me smile despite everything. Sifu Wong had never believed in coddling his students.

I opened Facebook-an account I'd abandoned eighteen months ago with over fifty thousand followers. My last post stared back at me: **Going ghost for a while. Don't worry, I'll be back when I've found what I'm looking for.**

The comments section had exploded. People asking if I was okay, if I'd been kidnapped, if I'd joined a cult. Conspiracy theories about my disappearance. Memorial posts from people who'd assumed I was dead.

I navigated to Instagram, where I had a hundred thousand followers from my photography hobby and tech reviews. Same story. TikTok, where my martial arts videos and coding tutorials had garnered two million followers. Same desperate messages, same concern, same assumption that something terrible had happened to me.

Something terrible had happened to me. I'd lost my mind over a borrowed necklace and a childhood fantasy.

My fingers moved across the keyboard, typing before I could second-guess myself:

**I'm back.**

I hit post simultaneously across all platforms.

The response was instantaneous. Likes flooded in faster than I could count. Comments exploded. Shares multiplied. My phone started ringing immediately, the screen lighting up with incoming calls from dozens of numbers.

But only one mattered.

**Adrian - Twin Brother**

I answered on the second ring.

"ADRIANA FUCKING SALVADORE, WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?!"

Chapter 4

ADRIA

My twin brother's voice nearly shattered my eardrum. I held the phone away from my ear, wincing.

"Hi, Adrian. Nice to hear from you too."

"DON'T YOU 'HI ADRIAN' ME! You disappear for eighteen months, no contact, no explanation, nothing, and you think you can just waltz back in with a casual greeting?!"

I leaned against the storage unit wall, closing my eyes. Adrian and I had been inseparable growing up. We'd shared a womb, shared a birthday, shared everything. Going no-contact with him had been the hardest part of becoming Adriana Chen.

"I know," I said quietly. "I'm sorry."

"Sorry? SORRY?! Mom cried for three months straight! Dad hired six different private investigators! Elijah nearly got himself arrested trying to hack into government databases to find you! And Sophia-" His voice cracked. "Sophia planned your funeral, Adria. She picked out your casket and everything because she was convinced you were dead."

Guilt crashed over me like a wave. My baby sister, planning my funeral at twenty-two years old.

"I had to do something stupid," I said, the words spilling out. "And I knew if I told any of you, you would have stopped me."

"Damn right we would have! What could possibly be worth-" He stopped abruptly. "Wait. This is about that boy, isn't it? The one who saved you when we were kids?"

I'd told Adrian about that night, about the necklace, about my promise. He was the only one who knew the full story.

"I thought I found him," I whispered.

Silence stretched between us, broken only by Adrian's heavy breathing on the other end.

"And?" he finally asked, his voice softer now.

"It wasn't him. The necklace was borrowed. I spent eighteen months turning myself into someone else, marrying a man who treats me like garbage, destroying everything I was, all for a piece of jewelry he can't even be bothered to return to its actual owner."

"Jesus Christ, Adria."

"Yeah."

"And now?"

I straightened up, looking at the boxes around me, at the life I'd packed away like it meant nothing. "Now I've learned my lesson. It wasn't worth it. Any of it. I'm coming back to reclaim my identity. Soon."

"How soon?"

"I have something I need to do first. I need to find out which of his friends actually owns that necklace. The real owner. Then I'm done."

Adrian was quiet for a moment. "You're going to find the boy who actually saved you."

"Yes."

"And then?"

"And then I'm going to burn Damien's world to the ground and take back everything I gave up for him."

Adrian laughed, sharp and bitter. "There's the sister I know. Okay, I'm calling Mikael and Elijah now. They'll want to know you're alive. And Adria?"

"Yeah?"

"If you disappear on us again, I will hunt you down and kill you myself. Understand?"

"Understood."

I hung up and stared at the phone for a moment, watching new notifications roll in. Then I became aware of something else-the prickling sensation at the back of my neck that I'd learned to trust during my years of Krav Maga training.

I wasn't alone.

I pocketed the phone and stepped out of the storage unit, my eyes adjusting to the darkness of the parking lot. Five figures detached themselves from the shadows, spreading out in a semicircle to block my path to the car.

They were professionals-I could tell by the way they moved, coordinated and purposeful. Not random muggers. Someone had sent them.

The one in the center, built like a tank with a shaved head and neck tattoos, stepped forward. "Ms. Chen. Our employer would like a word with you."

I didn't bother asking who their employer was. It didn't matter. What mattered was that someone had been watching me, tracking me, and had sent muscle to... what? Intimidate me? Kidnap me? Kill me?

"I'm not interested," I said calmly, rolling my shoulders to loosen them. My body remembered the movements even after eighteen months of forced docility.

Tank laughed. "That wasn't a request."

The five of them moved as one, closing in.

I didn't give them time to coordinate their attack.

My first strike caught Tank in the throat-not hard enough to crush his windpipe, but enough to make him stumble back, gasping. I spun low, sweeping the legs out from under the man to my left. He went down hard, his head cracking against the pavement with a sound that made me wince.

The other three rushed me simultaneously. I ducked under the first punch, drove my elbow into the second attacker's solar plexus, and caught the third with a knee to the groin that probably ended any chance of him having children.

Tank had recovered and came at me with a knife-amateur move, bringing a blade to close quarters. I caught his wrist, twisted until I felt bones grind together, and used his own momentum to slam him face-first into the hood of my car. The knife clattered to the ground.

The man I'd swept was getting up. I kicked him in the ribs-three of them cracked audibly-and he went down again, staying down this time.

The one I'd kneed was on his knees, vomiting. The one I'd hit in the solar plexus was struggling to breathe. Tank was unconscious, blood streaming from his broken nose. The last one, the smallest of the group, held up his hands in surrender.

"Tell your employer," I said, not even breathing hard, "that Adriana Salvadore doesn't take meetings she didn't schedule."

His eyes widened at the name. Good. Let whoever sent them know exactly who they were dealing with.

I stepped over Tank's unconscious body, got in my car, and drove away without looking back.

My phone rang again as I merged onto the highway. I answered without checking the caller ID.

"Where are you?" Adrian demanded. "I'm tracking your phone and it shows you at some storage facility. Are you okay? I'm hearing sirens."

"I'm fine," I said, checking my rearview mirror. No followers. "Just taking out the trash."

"Why do I feel like that's not a metaphor?"

"Because you know me too well."

He sighed. "Come home, Adria. Come home to the family estate. Let us help you with whatever you're planning."

I thought about it-about going home to the Salvadore mansion, to my parents and siblings, to the life of luxury and power I'd walked away from. It was tempting.

But not yet.

"Soon," I promised. "I have a few things to handle first."

"Like finding out who owns that necklace?"

"Among other things."

"And your husband?"

I smiled, cold and sharp. "He's about to learn that the pathetic, desperate wife he married never actually existed. And when I'm done with him, he's going to wish he'd never heard the name Adriana Chen."

"I almost feel sorry for him."

"Don't," I said. "He earned every bit of what's coming."

I hung up and drove through the night, leaving five broken men and eighteen months of lies in my wake.

The hunt for my real savior was about to begin.

And this time, I was doing it as myself.

Chapter 5

ADRIA

The pharmacy was one of those twenty-four-hour chains that dotted the city, fluorescent-lit and nearly empty at this hour. I walked through the automatic doors with my sweatshirt hood pulled up, avoiding the bored cashier's gaze as I made my way to the first aid aisle.

My chest and stomach still burned where the soup had scalded me. I'd checked in the storage unit bathroom-the skin was angry and red, blistering in a few places. Nothing serious enough for a hospital, but painful enough that I needed something to take the edge off.

I grabbed burn ointment, bandages, and on impulse, added a bottle of extra-strength pain relievers. The cashier barely looked at me as she rang up my purchases, too engrossed in whatever show was playing on her phone.

The drive back to Damien's house-I couldn't bring myself to call it home anymore-took another thirty minutes. It was nearly two in the morning when I pulled into the driveway, expecting darkness and silence. Instead, every light in the house blazed like a beacon.

My stomach dropped.

Damien's Mercedes was parked in his usual spot, which made no sense. He'd said he wasn't coming home. He was supposed to be with Adina, or Amber, or whoever was warming his bed tonight.

I sat in my car for a long moment, gripping the steering wheel, trying to calm the sudden spike of anxiety. Old habits died hard-even now, knowing what I knew, my body still responded to his presence with that familiar mix of dread and desperate hope.

No. Not hope. Not anymore.

I grabbed the pharmacy bag and headed inside.

The front door swung open before I could reach it. Damien stood in the doorway, still dressed in the same clothes from the club, his hair disheveled like he'd been running his hands through it. His eyes locked onto me with an intensity that made me freeze mid-step.

"Where the hell have you been?"

His voice was sharp, demanding, but there was something else underneath it. Something that sounded almost like... worry?

I blinked, momentarily thrown off balance. This wasn't the script. This wasn't how things usually went. When Damien stayed out, he stayed out. He didn't come home early. He certainly didn't wait up for me, pacing and worried.

"I-" I started, then caught myself, adjusting my posture into something smaller, more apologetic. The docile wife. The role I'd perfected over eighteen months. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to worry you."

"I texted you over an hour ago." He stepped aside to let me in, and I noticed his phone clutched in his hand, the screen still lit up with our message thread. "You didn't respond. You always respond within seconds."

Because you trained me to, I thought bitterly. Because the one time I took ten minutes to reply, you accused me of ignoring you and didn't speak to me for three days.

But I didn't say that. Instead, I held up the pharmacy bag, letting confusion and contrition color my voice. "I had to get ointment for the burns. I didn't have my phone with me-I left it in the car while I was in the store. I'm sorry, I should have been more careful."

Damien's eyes dropped to the bag, then to my chest where the burns were hidden beneath my sweatshirt. Something flickered across his face-guilt, maybe, or something that looked like it from certain angles.

"Let me see," he said, reaching for the bag.

I handed it over, watching as he pulled out the burn ointment and examined it like he was verifying I'd actually bought what I claimed. Satisfied, he gestured toward the living room.

"Sit down."

It wasn't a request. It never was with Damien. Everything was a command, a directive, an expectation that I would comply without question.

I walked to the living room and sank into the armchair-my usual spot, the one farthest from where he typically sat, the one that let me stay small and unobtrusive. But Damien followed me and pointed to the sofa instead.

"There. Where I can see you properly."

My skin prickled with unease, but I moved to the sofa. Damien sat beside me, closer than he usually did, and held out his hand for my sweatshirt.

"Take it off. I need to see how bad it is."

Heat flooded my face-not from embarrassment, but from anger I couldn't afford to show. He'd poured that soup on me. He'd humiliated me in front of his friends, called me pathetic, told me to clean myself up. And now he wanted to play concerned husband?

But I needed to maintain the facade. Just a little longer. Just until I figured out which of his friends owned that necklace.

I pulled off my sweatshirt slowly, revealing the tank top underneath. The burns covered my chest and stomach in angry red patches, some already blistering. Damien's jaw tightened as he looked at them.

"Sit back," he said quietly.

I obeyed, settling against the sofa cushions while Damien opened the ointment. He squeezed some onto his fingers and began applying it to the burns with surprising gentleness. His touch was careful, almost tender, and I had to fight the urge to pull away from him.

This is a performance, I reminded myself. Just like everything else in this marriage. He's performing concern because that's what husbands are supposed to do. Or maybe someone said something to him. Maybe Marcus or Kieran told him he went too far.

"You need to get better at understanding what I need from you," Damien said as he worked, his voice taking on that familiar patronizing tone I'd heard a thousand times before. "If you had brought the soup at the right temperature, if you had been more careful, this wouldn't have happened. You understand that, don't you?"

My hands clenched in my lap, nails digging into my palms. He was actually blaming me for this. For him pouring hot soup down my front. For the burns that were currently making my skin feel like it was on fire.

"Yes," I heard myself say, the word tasting like ash. "I understand."

"Good." He applied more ointment, his fingers trailing across my ribs. "I don't like punishing you, Adriana. But you have to learn. You have to be better."

Punishing me. As if he was some benevolent teacher and I was a slow student who just couldn't grasp the lesson. As if pouring soup on me was a reasonable response to it not being hot enough for his mistress.