The car sped through the night, and I quickly boarded the ship.
I didn’t breathe easy until the horn blared and the coastline vanished into the horizon.
Finally, I ran away from that lunatic. But my mind kept circling back to the handcuffs Ethan had carried all day.
‘Did he plan to chain me too?‘ I wondered.
The image of Chiara’s broken body flashed before my eyes, and I shivered.
Ethan might love her, but his love was twisted. Just because he got jealous, he had brutally broken her leg.
The sight of the bruises on her body had blown my mind in that basement. His possessiveness was extreme, as if he wanted to carve his presence into every inch of her.
The salty sea breeze tangled my hair, pulling me from the memory.
Seven days and eight nights on the open ocean finally brought me to Noswood.
The operations team worked miracles, giving me a new name, a new identity, and a fresh start.
I immersed myself in work, watching the aurora together with my colleagues.
Everything felt so perfect it almost seemed unreal.
Thousands of kilometers away, Ethan awakened as the effects of the drug faded.
His fingers instinctively reached out to his pocket. The handcuffs were still there, but his heart plummeted.
“Clara?” His voice echoed through the halls, growing more frantic with each unanswered call.
The house felt hollow, stripped of the little trinkets that once filled it with life. The vase we’d picked out together, the Hello Kitty puzzle we’d painstakingly assembled at a night market, and even our photo he’d cherished like a sacred relic were gone.
His eyes widened in horror. He scanned the house again, unwilling to believe it.
