Chapter1
My husband's first love claimed my son had ruined her haute couture gown. She called him an ill-bred bastard.
That very night, right in front of me, my husband locked our son inside the minus-twenty-degree wine cellar.
The next morning, I found his tiny, frozen body slumped against the back of the heavy door.
I rushed to call the police like a madwoman, only to be pinned down by my husband's legal team and forced to sign an "accidental death" certificate.
Everyone thought I would go insane, that I would die, that I would vanish from this city forever.
Three years later, wearing a striking crimson dress, I stepped back into the most exclusive gala in the city.
On stage, my rival, Mia, was busy flaunting the diamond ring on her finger. Catching sight of me from the corner of her eye, she sneered. "Well, if it isn't Chloe playing the beggar. Couldn't make it out there in the real world, so you came back to scrounge for a free meal?"
I walked straight up to her, grabbed her meticulously styled updo, and slammed her face hard into the shattered champagne tower. "We didn't quite settle our score from three years ago. Want to experience it again?"
Three years ago, that night, staring at my son's frozen body, only one thought remained in my mind. I was going to make Mia taste what it meant to beg for death. In front of a house full of guests, I had pinned her to the floor, my hands tightening around her throat until her face turned a bruised purple.
It only stopped when the bodyguards dragged me off her. Liam dragged my son's lifeless body away.
"What are you doing! Give him back to me!" I lunged forward frantically, but couldn't even brush the hem of his coat.
Liam looked down at me from above. "Sign the zero-asset divorce agreement and the accidental death certificate, and I'll have the boy properly cremated."
He paused, then added in a slow, deliberate drawl, "Refuse, and I'll have him thrown into the morgue right now to be disposed of with the John Does."
I shook uncontrollably, my throat too tight to force out a single sound. The legal team dutifully slid the documents in front of me. I signed my name, stroke by agonizing stroke.
That night, I was tossed out on the streets like a bag of garbage.
And I swore I would return to take back everything that was mine.
Now, with Mia pinned against the table, her screams were sharp and piercing. The crowd of sycophants hovering around her instantly exploded into chaos, pointing fingers and shouting at me.
"What are you doing!"
"How dare you touch Mia! Do you know whose woman she is?!"
One bodyguard stepped in and tried to pry my hands from her hair, but I struck back with a vicious elbow, sending him stumbling backward.
Mia lifted her head from the ruined champagne tower, playing the perfect picture of a bullied victim. I had seen these exact tears once before, three years ago. Back then, with those same red-rimmed eyes, she had told Liam that our son deliberately bumped into her and ruined her dress.
I let out a cold laugh and released my grip. "Three years, and this is still your only trick? Playing the victim?"
The surrounding crowd fell into a stunned silence for a split second.
"You're crazy!" Mia shrieked through her tears. "Liam won't let you get away with this! Just you wait!"
I casually picked up a napkin from the table and wiped my fingers. "Then let him come."
"I actually want to ask him how he managed to groom a woman—who can't even learn a new way to cry—into the arrogant homewrecker standing before me."
At those words, a collective gasp rippled through the room. Everyone knew Mia was the woman Liam spoiled to the absolute extreme, even if back then, she was nothing more than a shadowy mistress. Three years on, fueled by Liam's endless indulgence, Mia had practically become the most untouchable woman in the city.
And now, not only had I laid hands on her, but I was openly challenging Liam to show his face.
Trembling with rage, Mia spat at me. "Chloe, you're just a lunatic who got swept out with the trash! How dare you touch me!"
Watching her pathetic display, I took a step forward, towering over her. "Mia, do you need me to help you remember what minus twenty degrees feels like?"
All the color instantly drained from Mia's face. She shrieked and scrambled backward. "Stop her! Someone stop this crazy bitch!"
The onlookers shifted on their feet, eager to earn favor, yet not a single one dared to actually step forward.
Right at that moment, the crowd parted automatically, clearing a wide path. That all-too-familiar figure, surrounded by a dozen imposing bodyguards, strolled into view.
