“I kept count of all 300 hits, Lucas, and this was the last one.” He b;ea;t his pregnant wife, thinking she was alone—but she wasn’t. He had no idea that within 24 hours, his life would be completely destroyed.

Chapter 1: The Three-Hundredth Mark

I kept a ledger in my mind. It was not an obsessive habit born of madness, but a cold, necessary calculation for survival.

Three hundred.

That was the exact number of strikes, shoves, and physical assaults I had endured in three years of marriage to Lucas Vane. To the world, Lucas was a golden god—a tech mogul who graced the covers of Forbes and Time, the face of modern philanthropy, the man who pledged billions to clean water initiatives while poisoning the soul of the woman he swore to protect.

But behind the triple-paned, soundproof glass of our Manhattan penthouse, he was a calculating monster. He was an artist of cruelty who knew exactly how to strike where the Chanel gowns and diamond chokers would cover the evidence.

I was seven months pregnant. The baby was a secret hope I held onto, a tiny spark of life in a mausoleum of marble and cold steel.