Chapter One: Mine Alone

The sound of the clock ticked in the silence—slow, deliberate, merciless.

Emma stood by the window, one hand gripping the velvet curtain, the other clenched at her side. Outside, the city gleamed like a dream she once believed in—glass towers and silver lights, all shining with the illusion of choice.

But in this room—his room—the air didn’t belong to her.

Nothing did.

Not her name.

Not her body.

Not even her silence.

She’d given all of it to Ethan Lu.

Her boss.

Her lover.

Her captor.

Seven years.

That’s how long she’d been his.

First as his secretary. Then his confidante. Then—inevitably—his mistress. And through it all, the line between devotion and destruction blurred into something unrecognizable. Love? Obsession? Whatever it was, it lived beneath her skin now. It breathed when she did.

Behind her, the door clicked open.

She didn’t need to look. She felt him. The room shifted. The temperature changed. The air grew tense with expectation and the unspoken.

Ethan always entered like that—with gravity. With power. With a silence louder than any shout.

"You didn’t answer my calls," he said, voice low and deliberate.

Emma didn’t move. “I was in a meeting.”

He didn’t laugh, but she heard the amusement in his breath. “With Mark?”

She turned then. Slowly. Controlled. “He’s on my team.”

“And since when do junior analysts deserve your attention outside of boardrooms?”

Emma didn’t reply. There was no point. He wasn’t jealous—he was territorial.

That was different.

Ethan stepped forward, predatory grace in every movement. His dark gray suit clung to him like a second skin, and there was that same look in his eyes—the one that made you forget he had no heart.

“You’re not my husband,” she said quietly. “You don’t own me.”

He stopped inches away. “Don’t I?”

She saw it in his eyes—how easily he could lie. Not to deceive her. But because he believed his own madness.

He slammed his hand against the wall beside her, caging her in. His body didn’t touch hers, not yet, but the tension stretched between them like a violin string drawn too tight.

And then—his hand moved. Brushed her neck. His fingers dragged over her skin, feather-light, like he could still pretend it was tenderness.

His breath was warm against her ear. “You are a shameless slut.”

Emma’s body stiffened, tears springing to her eyes. But she refused to let them fall.

She met his gaze, voice trembling but defiant. “Then why don’t you leave me and marry Rose?”

For a beat, he said nothing.

Then his hand curled around her waist, yanking her against him. He slammed her against the door—not hard enough to bruise, but hard enough to warn.

“Because,” he said, voice a growl in her ear, “even in death, you are mine. Mine alone.”

The words wrapped around her throat tighter than any hand ever could. It wasn’t a confession. It was a verdict.

Her fingers trembled. Not from fear. Not entirely.

From the part of her that still responded to him. The part of her that had forgotten how to exist without his fire—even if it burned her every time.

She hated it.

She hated him.

She hated herself for loving any of it.

But when she closed her eyes, she didn’t see freedom.

She saw him.

The way he looked at her.

The way he owned her.

And somewhere deep inside, a question she’d tried to bury for years began to claw its way back to the surface.

Was she waiting to be rescued…

Or was she too broken to leave?

Chapter Two: Gilded Promises

The rain hadn’t stopped since dawn.

Emma sat curled on the edge of Ethan’s bed—no, his bed. She had to stop calling it hers. Her name wasn’t written anywhere in this penthouse. Not on the mailbox. Not on the lease. Not even on the pillow where her head had rested night after night.

She clutched the silk robe tighter around herself. His scent still lingered on her skin—sandalwood, leather, and something colder beneath, like steel after a storm.

Her fingers brushed the fresh bruise on her shoulder, not from anger, but from his grip. A possessive mark. Another invisible brand on a body that no longer felt like hers.

Seven years.

She whispered it aloud to no one. Seven years of becoming someone else. Of disappearing beneath someone else's shadow.

The worst part?

She let him do it. Piece by piece.

She hadn’t been naïve when she joined Lu International—just hungry. Driven. Sharp. Fresh out of business school, armed with ambition and no armor for the kind of man Ethan Lu was. He saw her potential, then bent it to his will with compliments, late-night assignments, and praise that felt like intimacy.

He groomed her with power—not flowers.

By the time she realized what she had become, it was already too late. She’d traded her freedom for his attention. And then his affection. And then, for a twisted version of love that came wrapped in diamonds, but cut like glass.

A noise broke the silence.

A knock. Sharp. Two beats.

Emma frowned and stood, her robe brushing the tops of her thighs as she padded barefoot through the penthouse.

She opened the door.

And everything changed.

“Hello, Emma,” Rose said, her voice velvet smooth, her expression unreadable. She stood poised in a cream trench coat, not a hair out of place, as if the weather couldn’t touch her. “I believe we need to talk.”

Emma’s stomach dropped. The air thinned around her. “Rose…”

There was no script for this moment. No protocol. Just years of secrets and silence shattering in the space between two women.

Rose’s eyes flicked behind her, taking in the disheveled sheets, the empty wine glass, the faint trace of Emma’s lipstick on the rim.

“You look tired,” Rose said softly, but there was steel beneath it.

Emma swallowed. “I wasn’t expecting—”

“No,” Rose interrupted. “You weren’t. Neither was I. When he proposed to me.”

The words struck like thunder.

Emma stepped back, heart slamming against her ribs. “He… he proposed?”

Rose nodded once. “Last month. His mother’s ring. A speech so practiced, it felt like something from a board meeting.”

Emma didn’t know whether to laugh or crumble.

How many other women had heard that same voice? That same low, dangerous warmth? The one that made you feel chosen. Special. Claimed.

“I didn’t ask for this,” Emma said quietly. “I never meant to—”

“To what? Fall in love with a man who only knows how to destroy the women who love him?”

That silenced her.

Because it was true.

They stared at each other, no longer strangers, not quite enemies. Just two women who had loved the same man—and been broken by it.

Rose’s voice softened. “I thought you were the problem. The mistress. The seductress in his closet. But now I see…”

She trailed off, shaking her head.

“I’m just another version of you.”

Emma’s throat tightened. Her hands trembled.

“Do you still love him?” Rose asked.

Emma looked at her. Really looked. At the clarity behind the heartbreak. At the strength buried beneath the sadness.

She wanted to lie. But she couldn’t.

“I don’t know what I feel anymore,” she whispered. “Only that it hurts.”

Rose nodded. “Good.”

Emma blinked. “Why?”

“Because if it still hurts, it means you haven’t given him all of you yet. There’s still a part of you that’s yours.”

And in that moment, something shifted. A thread loosened. A light flickered in the dark.

Hope.

Chapter Three: The Other Woman

The rain had thinned to a mist, but the storm wasn’t over.

It lived in the silence between them.

Rose stood by the window now, her arms crossed, her jaw tight with restraint. The skyline sprawled before her, lit with the cold indifference of a city that didn’t care how many hearts were broken behind penthouse glass.

Emma poured two glasses of water and placed one beside Rose.

Not wine.

Not whiskey.

Water—because this wasn’t a celebration, or a confession. This was war preparation.

Rose didn’t thank her. She didn’t need to.

Emma sat across from her, her robe now belted tighter, spine straightened, like she’d peeled off the guilt that had clung to her skin for years. For the first time, she looked at Rose not as a rival, but as a mirror. Another version of herself. A woman who once believed Ethan Lu was a future—not a sentence.

“He’s always had a type,” Rose said finally, her voice low, but sharp.

Emma tilted her head. “Broken?”

“No. Brilliant.” Rose’s eyes met hers. “He likes women who shine. But not for long. He polishes them until they reflect him, and when they don't anymore... he puts them in a drawer.”

Emma’s chest tightened.

She thought of the first time Ethan looked at her. Like she was a prize. Not a person. She had mistaken the gleam in his eyes for love. It was possession. It always had been.

“I used to think I was special,” Emma murmured.

“You were,” Rose said. “We all are—until we let him define what that means.”

They both went quiet again.

The hum of the city filled the room. Cars below. Sirens far off. The ticking of the vintage clock on the wall Ethan had bought from Paris—because it was expensive, not because it told time better.

He always wanted things that impressed others.

Even his women.

“I know about the penthouse in Shanghai,” Rose said suddenly.

Emma’s eyes snapped up.

“I saw the bank statements. He bought it two years ago. Had his assistant register it under a shell company. He’s been preparing a life for the next version of us.”

Emma felt her stomach twist. “You’re saying…”

“He’s not planning to marry me,” Rose said. “He’s planning to replace us.”

Emma stood slowly, as if the room had tilted beneath her.

All those nights of whispering promises. Of pulling her back in with soft words, violent kisses, and vows she never believed—but wanted to. Ethan had never planned a life with her.

He’d planned a trap.

“Then what do we do?” Emma asked. “Warn the next girl?”

Rose gave her a thin smile. “No, Emma. We stop him.”

Emma blinked. “You’d go up against him?”

“You already are,” Rose said. “You just haven’t committed yet.”

Silence settled again, heavier this time.

Emma walked to the bookshelf. She pulled down the leather-bound journal she had started a year ago. Inside were details—notes Ethan had dictated carelessly, information he never thought she’d use against him. Names. Accounts. Paper trails no one was supposed to find.

Rose watched her with something like respect. “You kept records?”

Emma nodded, voice steely. “I told you—I didn’t plan to survive him. I planned to outlive him.”

They looked at each other, a shared fire catching in their eyes.

Ethan Lu had made a mistake.

He’d built cages for two canaries.

But he forgot—

even pretty birds can grow talons.