Chapter 1 - The Chains of Betrayal
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I woke up to the freezing bite of steel around my wrists.
My vision was completely blurred, the heavy sedative still coursing through my veins like ice water. I blinked hard, trying to adjust to the blinding crystal chandeliers hanging above my own living room. The grand mansion, a place I had bought with my own blood, sweat, and tears, felt completely foreign tonight.
When my eyes finally focused, I realized I was kneeling on the cold marble floor.
My arms were pulled backward, heavy iron chains wrapping around my wrists and locking onto the base of the grand staircase. Panic surged in my chest, but before I could cry out, the sound of clinking champagne glasses and low, cruel laughter filled the air.
I looked up.
Thirty guests were standing in a wide circle around me. They were people I knew. My board of directors, my supposedly loyal executives, and the socialite friends I had invited to my thirtieth birthday party. But they weren't helping me. They were holding their expensive cell phones, recording me like a caged animal in a zoo.
And standing in the center of them all was my husband, Brandon.
He wore a tailored tuxedo, looking as handsome and charming as the day I met him. But the loving warmth in his eyes was completely gone. In its place was the cold, hollow stare of a sociopath who had finally dropped his mask.
"Look at you," Brandon whispered, taking a slow step toward me, a glass of bourbon in his hand.
I struggled against the chains, the metal biting into my skin. "Brandon... what are you doing?"
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"You really thought you were untouchable, didn't you?" he sneered, leaning close to my face. "You thought you could run a billion-dollar empire and treat me like your little pet husband?"
I wanted to scream. I wanted to fight him. But looking at the thirty smiling faces surrounding me, I knew showing fear was exactly what he wanted. He had drugged me in my own home, in front of everyone I trusted, and the nightmare was only just beginning.
