Chapter 3

When I woke up, I found myself being thrown onto the deck like a dead dog.

Open ocean in every direction, waves slapping the hull like a warning.

Liam stood over me, handsome face twisted with urgency.

"Stop playing dead, Chloe. Get down there and bring Mia back."

When I didn't move, his jaw tightened.

"I promise you—save her and I'll consider remarrying you. You'll come home. You'll never have to gut fish in that filthy market again."

Filthy?

That word gutted me. Six months ago, fresh out of prison, I'd gone back to the Lu family mansion, still stupid enough to hope for a scrap of family left.

Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, I watched my parents, my ex-husband, and their precious Mia share a warm Christmas Dinner. Laughing. Toasting.

And I stood outside in the freezing wind—an ex-con, a half-deaf wreck who'd done eight years for someone else.

That's when I finally understood. The hell I lived in was built by their hands. In that house, I was the stranger.

My eyes snapped back to a photo clutched in Liam's fist. A beach volleyball shot—Mia in a bikini, laughing among the dive team.

What stopped my heart was the scar on her right shoulder.

Ten years ago, I was the dive team captain. Liam and Mia were both on my crew.

That day the current turned vicious without warning. I signaled everyone to surface. Then the riptide hit.

I shoved Liam and Mia toward safety and got dragged under.

By some miracle, I washed up on an uninhabited island and survived three days unconscious before rescue.

When I finally came home, Mia threw herself at me sobbing.

"Chloe! You're alive! If only I'd stopped you from diving—if only I'd been stronger, I wouldn't have only saved Liam, I wouldn't have watched you get swept away!"

And now I understood everything.

That's why Liam would frame me to save her. He'd spent ten years believing Mia was the one who saved his life.

For three days, while I was presumed dead, she'd rewritten history. She became his hero.

But I became the reckless fool who almost got them all killed.

What a goddamn joke.

"I TOLD YOU," I screamed, voice cracking.

"My ear can't take the pressure! I'll have a brain hemorrhage! Are you trying to kill me?"

Liam's eyes flickered—a brief, real flash of doubt.

Then Arthur lunged and kicked me in the ribs.

"Keep acting! You're rotten to the core, Chloe! Even now, faking a disability to save your own skin!"

Susan collapsed on the deck, sobbing.

"God… Mia is such a good girl, so sweet, so obedient."

"If she doesn't come back, how are we supposed to live?"